BE PERSISTENT AND WORK HARD Bitter To Better Medicine.(LEADERS & SUCCESS)(IBD'S 10 SECRETS TO SUCCESS)

Byline: Cord Cooper

5 Kenny Kramm turned the greatest heartbreak of his life into a vehicle to help others. That vehicle is a business that's given hope to thousands of people nationwide. Yet Kramm's own tragedy is something he'll never fully get over.

It was 1992, and Kramm's daughter, Hadley, had just been born. She weighed 3 pounds, 10 ounces, and was placed in an incubator to gain weight. When one of the other babies in the nursery ICU was discharged, Hadley was moved to that incubator. Unaware of the move, the night nurse gave Hadley the wrong medication.

"I got the phone call you don't ever want to hear: "There's something wrong with your baby,' " Kramm recalled. It was a long holiday weekend, and only resident doctors were on duty. "They called in the middle of the night saying they needed to do a spinal tap, and they needed us to sign papers."

When the Kramms arrived, "Hadley's eyes were rolled back in her head and her arms were flailing. The (resident doctors) insisted she wasn't having seizures. She wasn't given medication to treat the seizures till the following Tuesday, when staff doctors returned," Kramm said in a phone interview.

Frustration To Breakthrough

To control the seizures, doctors prescribed a liquid medication that was "nasty tasting and oily. It was critical that she take it, but she couldn't keep it down," Kramm said.