Our Patients Copy

13-year-old Aiden Ellis enters the swimming pool at Hazelwood Central High School, gearing up to practice his favorite stroke, the butterfly. Ellis is a competitive swimmer, making it to the division championships last year and finishing seventh in the 50-meter fly as a member of the Heat, a regional select swim club. “I love being…

Shaun Patterson was in tears. After years of hard work, he learned he would miss his high school graduation because he would have to remain in the hospital for weeks or months while awaiting a heart transplant. Shaun had been born with congenital heart defects that erased his dreams of playing basketball but he set…

When Benjamin was born in 2015 – six weeks early – his parents Kate and Clay were not prepared for the host of scary diagnoses that immediately followed. Ben has a clinical diagnosis of CHARGE Syndrome, a complex genetic syndrome that affects 1 in 10,000 children and often causes life-threatening birth defects. In Ben’s case,…

As a scheduler for an obstetrician’s office, Amy Rhoades from Wright City, MO is no stranger to dealing with expecting mothers. In the fall of 2018, Amy found herself walking the journey of pregnancy herself when she learned she was expecting twins with a due date of January 2019. There was a long history of…

Walking the halls of the inpatient Hematology-Oncology Unit on 4 North at SSM Health Cardinal Glennon, one will typically see children from infancy through their late teens. But lately, those halls have also been home for 27-year-old Kirby Frost. Kirby (KJ) is a lineman who works for the IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers). Originally…

Carlie Rose Jackson was born at 31 weeks gestation on August 16, 2018 at SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital. Along with some anticipated feeding and growing issues, Carlie also had tracheobronchomalacia, which is the collapse of the airway when a baby exhales, making it difficult for her to breathe. Tracheobronchomalacia can result in recurring respiratory illnesses…

When Matthew Shores was 2 months old in 2010, Matthew’s pediatrician noticed that he had an abnormal triangular head shape, including forehead ridging. He referred the family to SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital at SLU. It was here that Matthew’s mother Candice met Dr. Alexander Lin, MD, the Director of the St. Louis Cleft-Craniofacial…

Nikki Warnecke was an outgoing, ambitious, and hardworking girl who followed closely in the footsteps of her older sister, Mallory. She loved music – she played banjo for her bluegrass band, the Pickin’ Chicks. In July of 2015, she was enjoying her summer break before starting her senior year at New Athens High School, where…

Jessica and Mykel Ernest from Poplar Bluff, Missouri were happily expecting their second child in early 2019, when the unexpected happened. At 20 weeks and 6 days, Jessica began losing amniotic fluid. This was devastating news to the couple, as both knew the risks of this happening so early in her pregnancy. Though she was…

In December 2008, Tiffany Haberberger found out at 17 weeks of pregnancy that her unborn daughter had a very complex congenital heart defect known as hypoplastic left heart.  For a child with this heart defect, most of the left side of the heart is small and underdeveloped. This usually affects the mitral valve, the aortic valve,…