By Robert Medley
Managing Editor
There were at least two miracles this year in Okarche.
The miracles came in the form of a child and a mother.
When Rylea Kilburn suffered an aortic aneurysm while pregnant last April, her daughter had to be delivered by Cesarean section. Their lives were endangered. It took life-saving surgeries from doctors at Integris Baptist Medical Center to save them. Now it takes the community to sustain them.
A fundraising week, known as “Week of Love,” in Okarche Schools is Nov. 27 to Dec. 1. Each year a family in need in the community is selected to benefit from the fundraising.
There will be a dodgeball tournament, a cornhole tournament, food and bake sales, a pizza day and a week of activities, said Isha Kirby, the Okarche High School Student Council advisor.
The fundraiser will benefit the couple, father Hunter Frisby, an assistant basketball coach in Okarche, mom Rylea Kilburn and their daughter Ava, 6 months old.
“They are both miracles,” Kirby said.
Kilburn was 26 weeks pregnant when she suffered the aortic aneurysm. She had to have two open-heart surgeries. Ava was tiny, but was delivered and survived. Mom did not fare as well after the first open-heart surgery and a second one was needed.
“Being completely dependent on other people was very hard for me,” Kilburn says in a video on the Integris Health website.
“Thank you to everybody at Integris,” Kilburn says in the video. “I want to prolong my life as long as I can for her,” Kilburn said. “She (Ava) is the reason I keep going every day.”
Rylea Kilburn received the Integris Jim Thorpe Courage Award this year.
Details about “Week of Love,” events will be announced soon, Kirby said.
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