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Why I Didn't Want to Leave St. Jude Children's Hospital

By Joyce Shulman December 6, 2016
“I do not want to go through that gate,” I thought. “Ever. Under any circumstances.” But the metal gate swung open and, accompanied by six of my Macaroni Kid colleagues, I entered the expansive campus of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. A place I thought no parent would ever want to be.
  
We gathered by the front entrance where a professional photographer took a picture to memorialize our visit. Why anyone would want that photo was, at that moment, a mystery to me. And then we met Lindsey, a 30-something-year-old-mom of two in serious heels and a bright red dress, who would be our guide for the morning.
  
It was a beautiful Memphis day so we remained outside St. Jude’s revolving doors while Lindsey shared her St. Jude story: how more than 20 years before, she walked through those very doors in the middle of the night as a ten-year-old accompanied by her parents and an aggressive form of leukemia. How her shell-shocked family fell into the arms of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and remained there until her cancer battle was won three years later.

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“I remember my dad handed them his wallet,” Lindsey recalled. “And they handed it right back.” It is a cornerstone of the St. Jude mission that no family ever receives a bill for treatment, travel, housing or food because all a family should have to worry about is helping their child live.
   
“The first thing you’ll notice is that it doesn’t smell like a hospital,” Lindsey said as she guided us through those revolving doors just behind a mom and dad holding the hand of a tiny little girl, her patient status revealed only by the bright pink bandage wrapped around her arm. She was one of of more than 7,800 children who are treated at St. Jude each year, children who suffer from some of the nastiest forms of childhood cancer and other life-threatening diseases.
    
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is the legacy of Danny Thomas and his three children, who remain the stewards of his vision, succinctly captured in this mission: Finding cures. Saving children. They are making tremendous strides toward this; when St. Jude opened its doors in 1962, the overall childhood cancer survival rate was 20%. Today, thanks largely to research and treatment pioneered at St. Jude, it is more than 80%, at least in this country. And it is a key element of St. Jude’s goal to eradicate childhood cancer, not just in the US, but everywhere.
  
The work St. Jude is doing is groundbreaking. They were the first to cure a child with sickle cell anemia. They have pushed the survival rate for acute lymphoblastic leukemia from 4% to 94%. They hit brain cancer with proton radiation and blood disorders with gene therapy. They have an entire building dedicated to research, which is quickly, generously and freely shared with doctors and hospitals around the world.

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We spent the morning exploring the inner-workings of a hospital dedicated to curing cancer, supporting families and going to extraordinary lengths to give kids the most normal childhood possible. There’s trick or treating on Halloween, an annual prom for the teens, therapy dogs stopping by to visit, picture books being distributed from a nurse’s station, kids’ artwork hanging on the walls and Christmas ornaments being crafted at a table in the cafe.
   
“When I learned that there was a school in the hospital that I was expected to attend so that I wouldn’t fall behind, I realized that they expected me to have a future,” Lindsey told us. “And it made all the difference.” Six on-site teachers staff several classrooms and work hand-in-hand with the patient’s home teachers to help keep kids on track academically.
  
By the time we sat down to lunch in the Kay Kafe, where an extensive, fresh menu offers up everything from hand-tossed salads to freshly-made sushi to families, patients, doctors, nurses, volunteers and guests, we’d grown accustomed to seeing sick kids. That doesn’t mean you become immune to the heartbreak of children who are clearly in a fight for their lives. It means you become able to see past the IVs and bald heads to see these kids, not as their illness, but as themselves. Kids whose bravery and spirit and strength and dreams are bigger than their illness. And that is because St. Jude works as hard to care for the entire child as it does to treat their cancer.
  
All of this work takes money. A lot of money. $2.2 million a day, to put a number on it. St. Jude reaches that goal with the help of a generous public, dedicated corporate partners, and an annual Thanks and Giving campaign that brings together celebrities, media, retail and corporate partners to encourage people to share what they are thankful for and take action by donating to St. Jude throughout the holiday shopping season. People who want share in the St. Jude mission can do so by saying “yes” when asked if they would like to donate to St. Jude when they are out shopping this holiday season or by ordering from the St. Jude holiday catalog HERE.
    
At 3:30 that afternoon we headed back through the same revolving doors I had dreaded entering that morning. And I had the strangest sensation. I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to roll up my sleeves and get to work to be part of an extraordinary community of people doing extraordinary work.