Welcoming Our 2025 Champion, Briella!

Children’s Miracle Network is excited to start the fundraising year with Briella King, our 2025 Kansas City Market Champion! Briella will have local celebrity status, representing CMN at KU Medical Center on all campaign materials as well as special projects throughout the year. Briella and her family will do an amazing job not only highlighting the gift CMN has been to them but also representing the many families who found comfort at KU Medical Center while navigating challenging medical journeys.

Briella came into this world four months early and weighing one pound, six ounces. She was sweet but also a fighter, eager to see the world she arrived so early for.

Her four-month, 120-day NICU stay was filled with blood transfusions, cardiologists, learning to eat, swallow and breathe all while her parents patiently waited for her organs and lungs to develop. Briella’s parents also learned that Briella suffered a brain bleed at birth causing cerebral palsy. This unexpected diagnosis revealed another level of heartache, the fear of how this diagnosis would affect their daughter’s life. On the hardest days, her parents sat next to her incubator in the NICU telling her about all the places in the world there was to see, begging her to live so they could show her.

Every day, Briella grew stronger and was finally able to go home and meet her big sister, Aubrey. Once at home, Briella began daily physical, occupational, and feeding therapies that continued for the first three years of her life. During that time, she achieved a major milestone of walking for the first time at 16 months old and received her first pair of ankle-foot orthosis (AFO) braces. She was very eager to debut them in public and played soccer for the first time when she was 4 years old. Always working hard to reach the next milestone, Briella went through VitalStim therapy which is an electrode treatment that shocked her esophagus to contract, strengthening her swallowing muscles. Before this therapy, Briella could only drink liquids that had a thickener added to it, so she wouldn’t aspirate. After six-months of intensive work, at 6 years old, she could finally drink any liquid she wanted without the addition of a thickener. She has come a long way from that one-pound baby girl and her family knows that KU Medical Center will always be there for amazing care to help her to grow and thrive in all aspects of her life.

Briella is now a healthy 12-year-old and avid traveler. Her parents kept the promise they made to show her the world. She has been to France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Hawaii, and the Bahamas to name a few. She enjoys playing with her dogs, shooting hoops, spending time with her friends and listening to Taylor Swift. When she grows up, she would love to be an emergency doctor.

Congratulations Briella!