Hi, I am Jamie Corley. I’m originally from St. Louis, born and raised. In 2010 I was 22 years old and diagnosed with a benign meningioma tumor on my thoracic spinal cord. In 2014, I had the tumor removed by Dr. Ralph Dacey. Everybody I came into contact with, they were equally as nice and compassionate, but you knew that they were sharp and the trains ran on time and everyone was exceptionally bright. And I really appreciated that. I think that can sometimes be hard to find. You just know you’re in really good hands when you’re there.

I’m thankful for donors for providing support to the hospital so that patients like me can access incredible care and incredible doctors.

I had a liver transplant about 13 years ago. They said your chances of surviving are 50-50.

I felt that for some reason I came through it successfully and afterward I looked and said ‘why?’ For some reason, I stuck around. Why?

I found that they have excellent folks who can do the work, from the doctors to the support staff, the nurses, everyone. All the way down. I say thank you to everyone. I want to make a difference by giving to the Foundation to help others who can’t help themselves.

I give to the Foundation because the hospital has done so much for me and I have survived two rounds of ovarian cancer in almost ten years now. And I feel so very fortunate. I’m just so appreciative every time I go back to Barnes-Jewish, and they are so, so wonderful and just treat you so well.

Giving makes me feel as though I was contributing to saving somebody else’s life and also in appreciation for what somebody did for me. I’m sure thankful for Barnes-Jewish Hospital because they had the facilities to help me, and I just want to make sure that they can continue to help others.

The Foundation is important to I think the entire community in St. Louis as a whole because they provide so much, whether it’s money for research, money for outreach, money for education. There’s just so much that it does.

We kind of put together this big idea at the Foundation that got funded and it’s led to some groundbreaking discoveries that we hope are pretty soon to translate into new therapies that’ll really help patients.

My name is Bree and I’m a graduate at Goldfarb School of Nursing at Barnes-Jewish College. My mom and my dad, we sat down the day after I got accepted and my mom said, “Did you know how much this school costs before you applied?” And I said, “No, I was just so excited to get an acceptance letter from Goldfarb.” And so we made an appointment with the financial aid representative, and she began to crunch numbers and talk. Any my mom just kept looking at me like, “you know, um, okay.”

So, she then brought up information about scholarships. It was about a week before school started, and I got a letter in the mail, and I opened it. It was a scholarship, and I just, I started crying. I showed my mom and she started crying. I even ran to my boyfriend’s house and he started crying. I mean, people just knew that I really, really have been praying for it and really wanted this, so it was a blessing.

I want to be a part of making the world better. I just want to say thank you. Knowing that someone is standing behind me, pushing me to be the best that I can be, believing in me enough to invest in me, it just gave me more hope, more passion, more drive to be the best that I can be.