St. Jude stays are forefront of technology amid cancer fight

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WMC) - St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital provides customized care for some of the world’s sickest kids. That’s why once again, Action News 5 is a proud supporter of the St. Jude Dream Home Giveaway!

When you reserve a ticket for this campaign, you’re ensuring families never receive a bill from St. Jude for treatment, travel, housing or food so they can focus solely on helping their child live.

That is the mission of St. Jude - Finding cures. Saving children.

For more than 60 years, St. Jude has been providing children cutting-edge treatment not covered by insurance at no cost to families.

“It’s such a special place, such a positive place to work,” Dr. Liza Marie Johnson said. “I tell people, I call it Dr. Disneyland because of generous donors and the mission of the hospital, I can just focus on treating that patient. I don’t spend 2 hours fighting with an insurance company.”

Dr. Johnson runs the St. Jude medicine program, where she oversees a team of nurses and practitioners accessible to patients 24/7.

“So when their primary care doctor is not there because it’s the middle of the night, and weekend or it’s during the day but their child is sick and they don’t have a scheduled appointment, my team sees them in our acute care clinic,” Dr. Johnson said.

While St. Jude is primarily known for its work understanding and treating childhood cancer, other catastrophic diseases like sickle cell have also been a focus since St. Jude opened in 1962.

In 1983, a St. Jude patient became the first in the world to be cured of sickle cell anemia through a stem cell-bone marrow transplant.

Today, the breakthroughs continue.

“In January of this year, gene therapy was approved by the FDA as potential curative treatment for sickle cell disease and we at St Jude are actually doing our own research for potentially curative treatment for sickle cell,” Dr. Johnson said.

Childhood cancer treatments developed at St. Jude have helped raise the survival rate to more than 80 percent, and with Dr. Johnson and her team committed to providing around-the-clock lifelines to their patients, she says the real joy comes when she sees her work at play.

“There are sad days, but overall it’s so rewarding when you see a kid who’s sick in the hospital or sick in the ICU, and then you’re in line at the Starbucks on campus or the cafeteria and they’re running circles around their parents, and it’s really rewarding to know that we’ve helped them get better.”

And that’s what your support of the St. Jude Dream Home Giveaway does, too—help kids get better.

The time to act is now because tickets for the St. Jude Dream Home Giveaway aren’t going to be available much longer.

And you have only a couple of weeks to get in on this prize: the chance to win your choice of a 2024 Honda Civic Sport Sedan or a Nissan Kicks crossover, courtesy of Wolfchase Honda and Wolfchase Nissan.

Call 1-800-224-6681 or click here to reserve your tickets now.

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