LUZERNE COUNTY, Pa. — Mikey Ash, age 17, of Exeter, keeps his eye on the ball during a Wyoming Valley Challenger baseball game at Evercor Field in Wilkes-Barre.
Since Mikey was 4 years old, he's been treated by a team of therapists at Allied Services for complications with Rubinstein-Taybi syndrome (RTS), a rare genetic disorder.
"It's like 1 in 300,000. Mikey's version of that went through his whole body. It went through every gene in his system, so Mikey is medically affected from head to toe," said Mikey's mother Nicole Ash.
Years ago, doctors told Nicole that this diagnosis would be a setback, and things like walking, talking, and eating were likely impossible.
But Nicole says with the help of Allied Services over the years, now, Mikey does it all.
"That was at age 4. He is now 17, and he is eating. He still has a feeding tube as a supplement. We did the feeding program through Allied."
Days like these were made possible with items bought for Allied Services through WNEP's yearly campaign.
"We've been lucky to utilize a lot of the purchases that all of the money that total strangers have raised for us who don't even know us."
After this game, Mikey went to the hospital for a number of surgeries he needed, followed by weeks of recovery, which made Nicole a little nervous, but therapists at Allied Services told her not to worry.
"I was like, 'Well, is this surgery going to set us back?' And she just looked at me like, 'No.' And she didn't know me to give me that reassurance. She was just so confident without being pumped. I was just so reassured like, 'Yeah, we got this.'"
Because no matter the conditions on or off the field, Team Allied will continue to have their back
"I'm just not worried from that standpoint."