Work being done at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital helping kids in Louisville and beyond

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WDRB) -- St. Jude founder Danny Thomas said, "No child should die in the dawn of life." That remains the motto for the massive research hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.

The St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital takes up a few city blocks in downtown Memphis, but its influence is worldwide. It’s a hospital, a campus to house families of children receiving treatment and a giant research facility. Research is happening here all day, every day.

St. Jude researcher Anna Stephan said, "I can really focus on research. I don't have to worry about funding, and another unique experience about St. Jude is that I'm directly helping these patients. Everything I'm doing in my lab could directly affect a patient being treated in another building, and I don't think you understand that until you come on to the campus and you feel that energy of, 'Wow, I'm making a difference.'"

Unlike a typical hospital, St. Jude can try treatments insurance wouldn’t cover, and if those don’t work, they can try something else. Bess Atkinson knows this from first-hand experience. The now St. Jude legal analyst was once a teenage patient with a type of cancer seen in only ten people in the world, ever. Her outlook wasn’t good.

"Mine was a test-and-learn kind of cancer where they were just going to try anything possible, and I know some of those chemos were millions of dollars just to try on me to see if they were gonna actually work on me," Atkinson shared. "So yeah, this hospital is amazing. And to know that they can just do whatever they need to do and not have to worry if my insurance was gonna pay for it is just--it's incredible."

Atkinson received inpatient care at St. Jude, but not all patients do. Many stay in on-campus housing while taking treatments at St. Jude’s medicine room. Others make periodic trips to Memphis for care.

"They don't make patient families pay for anything," Atkinson said. "I'm originally from Pennsylvania, and I would fly to Memphis and back every three weeks for treatment. We never had to pay for those flights; we never had to pay for us staying in hotels while we're here, and they would give us a meal card every day."

Many more children can stay in their hometown and receive treatment from protocols St. Jude researchers developed.

"You know, what we learn here is the research and the medical advances we freely share with the world. Donors that choose to give to St. Jude are really not just helping kids that have just made their way to Memphis. They're really helping children all over the United States in Europe and really globally," added St. Jude social worker Mary Gatlin.

The massive campus in downtown Memphis now has a couple cranes and a lot of construction equipment because St. Jude is expanding to house more families and treat more children like Reynaldo whose outlook was grim because only one chemo treatment was available in the hospital near his home in Puerto Rico.

"The only thing they had to offer me was just one chemotherapy, and that’s it," he explained. "It was going to be weekly, and I had to pay for it. But at St. Jude, they offered me more than that and I didn’t have to pay for it."

Now he credits St. Jude with sending his cancer into remission. His story is repeated many times over each year. Thanks in part to St. Jude’s research, the pediatric cancer cure rate in the U-S is 80 percent.

St. Jude’s next mission is to greatly improve outcomes around the world while continuing the research hospital’s incredible work here at home.

Tickets are already on sale for the 2023 St. Jude Dream Home Giveaway. The four-bedroom home is in Shelbyville, Ky. It has 2 1/2 baths, with an open floor plan and is 2800 square feet. The home has an estimated value of $495,000. Tickets for the raffle are $100. Here is a link to purchase a ticket.

Money raised will go to the research hospital in Memphis. The drawing for the house and other prizes will be live on WDRB Mornings on Oct. 5, 2023.