What Does The Money Donated To St. Jude Go To
Nosotros are continuing to report on the finances, fundraising and operations of St. Jude Children'southward Research Hospital. Do y'all know something about this charity? Please reach out.
A series of sharp knocks on his commuter's side window startled Jason Burt awake.
It was the middle of the night on a Saturday in 2016. Burt was sleeping in his pickup truck in the parking lot of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in downtown Memphis, Tennessee, where his five-year-old daughter was being treated for encephalon cancer. He'd driven more than 500 miles from his dwelling in Central Texas to visit her.
A St. Jude security guard peered into the truck and asked Burt what he was doing. Burt explained that his girl and her mother, his ex-girlfriend, were staying in the hospital'due south free patient housing. But St. Jude provides housing for but one parent. Burt, a school bus driver making $20,000 a twelvemonth, told the guard he couldn't afford a hotel. The guard let the exhausted male parent go back to sleep.
St. Jude would do no more than to find him a place to stay.
"They were aware of the state of affairs," Burt said. "I didn't push anything. I was but grateful she was getting treated and I was doing what I needed to do."
St. Jude is the largest and most highly regarded health care clemency in the land. Each yr, the Memphis hospital's fundraisers send out hundreds of millions of letters, many with heart-wrenching photographs of children left bald from battling cancer. Celebrities like Jennifer Aniston and Sofia Vergara sing the hospital's praises in televised advertisements. This year, St. Jude's fundraising reached outer space. The SpaceX Inspiration4 mission in September included a former St. Jude patient as a coiffure fellow member.
Concluding yr, St. Jude raised a record $2 billion. U.South. News & World Report ranked it the country's 10th-best children's cancer infirmary, and St. Jude raised roughly as much as the 9 hospitals ahead of it put together. It currently has $5.ii billion in reserves, a sum big enough to run the institution at current levels for the next four and a half years without a single additional donation.
St. Jude makes a unique promise as part of its fundraising: "Families never receive a neb from St. Jude for treatment, travel, housing or food — because all a family should worry about is helping their child live."
St. Jude's Raised More Money in 2019 Than the Rest of the Top 10 Children'southward Hospitals for Cancer — Combined
Simply for many families, treatment at St. Jude does not salvage all the financial burdens they incur in getting care for their children, including housing, travel and food costs that fall outside the hospital's strict limits, a ProPublica investigation has found.
While families may non receive a nib from St. Jude, the infirmary doesn't comprehend what's usually the biggest source of fiscal stress associated with childhood cancer: the loss of income equally parents quit or have leave from jobs to be with their kid during treatment. For many families, the consequence is missed payments for cars, utilities and cellphones. Others face eviction or foreclosure because they tin can't go on upwardly with rent and mortgage payments.
Parents at St. Jude have wearied savings and retirement accounts, borrowed from family unit and friends or asked other charities for assistance. ProPublica identified more than 100 St. Jude families seeking financial help through the online fundraiser GoFundMe, with half of the campaigns started in the past ii years. We counted scores of other events like concerts and yard sales organized to aid St. Jude families in demand.
Ane family relied on a mixed martial arts fighter to help raise coin for expenses like car repairs and cellphone bills, items that St. Jude would not encompass. Some other spent $10,000, originally saved to buy a abode, on costs related to treatment at St. Jude.
Only nearly half of the $7.3 billion St. Jude has received in contributions in the past five fiscal years went to the hospital'southward research and caring for patients, according to its financial filings with the Internal Revenue Service. About 30% covered the price of its fundraising operations, and the remaining twenty%, or $i of every $v donated, increased its reserve fund.
Further, ProPublica found, a substantial portion of the price for treatment is paid non by St. Jude but by families' private insurance or by Medicaid, the authorities insurance plan for low-income families. About 90% of patients are insured, bringing in more than $100 million in reimbursements for treatment a year. If a family shows upwardly at St. Jude without insurance, a company hired past the charity helps them discover it. St. Jude does cover copays and deductibles, an unusual benefit.
St. Jude spends about $500 million a year on patient services — a figure that includes all medical care and other assistance. Very footling of what St. Jude raises from the public goes to pay for nutrient, travel and housing for families, the investigation found. Last year, it was 2% of the money raised, or nearly $forty million.
In written responses to ProPublica, lawyers for St. Jude and its fundraising arm, the American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities, or ALSAC, emphasized that countless families take benefited from the charity provided since the infirmary opened its doors in 1962.
"ProPublica should be celebrating St. Jude and ALSAC for their commitment to finding cures, saving children's lives, and optimizing patient outcomes," one of their letters said.
It is unquestioned that St. Jude has helped thousands of children and their families over the decades. Patients take offered scores of testimonials nearly the hospital'due south generosity and care.
"This ofttimes comes as a huge relief to families who ofttimes look to sell all their belongings but so their children can go the medical intendance and treatment they demand to save their lives," the hospital'due south lawyers wrote. "St. Jude and ALSAC sympathise that this arrangement cannot cover all financial obligations of all families, nor tin St. Jude or ALSAC shield families from all the financial and emotional effects" of a child's illness.
St. Jude said it discloses the limits of its aid to families on its website and in material provided to those whose children are admitted to the hospital. That includes the rule Burt ran into, that the infirmary covers the travel and housing costs of only one caregiver and i patient. For many families, the daily food upkeep is capped at $50. In some cases, hotel stays en road are provided only if families travel more than than 500 miles to get to St. Jude.
St. Jude said its assistance is "based on guidelines to ensure fairness and responsible use of donor funds" and on remaining compliant with a federal anti-kickback statute that makes information technology a crime to offer something of value to induce a medical referral. St. Jude declined to explain how the police force affects the amount or type of financial assistance information technology provides to families.
"St. Jude has never promised anyone — neither patients nor the public in general — that it can solve all financial bug," the letter said.
When parents demand additional financial help, St. Jude's social workers often send them to smaller charities or in some cases suggest that they use for authorities aid.
They refer many to the Andrew McDonough B+ Foundation, which gives more than than $2.5 meg a year in grants to thousands of families of pediatric cancer patients at hospitals across the country to assist cover hire, utilities and other urgent expenses.
Joe McDonough, the foundation's founder and president, said St. Jude families accept the same money problems every bit families of patients at other children's hospitals, even though he said St. Jude's marketing creates the public perception that information technology alleviates these burdens.
"People say to me, 'Why are you helping St. Jude families?'" McDonough said. "Well, what happens when a family lives in Augusta, Georgia, and they're being treated at St. Jude? They however take to pay the rent on their apartment dorsum in Augusta, Georgia. They withal have to make their car payment. And information technology's not my position to say whether St. Jude should exist paying for all those expenses or non. I'm simply explaining that information technology'south non a totally costless ride."
The help St. Jude provides to families may soon be increasing.
Afterwards ProPublica provided St. Jude with the findings of its reporting, the infirmary informed families of a dramatic expansion in the aid it volition give to parents and other relatives during their kids' treatment in Memphis.
Among the almost significant changes are increasing travel benefits to two parents instead of i and covering regular trips to Memphis for siblings and other loved ones. St. Jude's letter to parents said the changes take consequence November. 15.
That would've made a big difference for Burt.
Burt'due south daughter, whom ProPublica is non identifying at her mother's asking, was originally diagnosed with cancer in early 2015, when doctors discovered a tumor pressing against her encephalon stem. She had successful emergency surgery to remove the mass at Dell Children'south Medical Center in Austin, Texas. Medicaid and Dell Children's covered the bill, but the family was still faced with the cost of her ongoing treatment.
"At that signal I'm thinking: 'What am I going to do? I gauge I'grand selling my business firm, whatever information technology takes,'" Burt recalled. "Honestly, that was probably a big deciding gene for St. Jude."
St. Jude accustomed Burt's daughter into a clinical trial, and the family moved to the hospital's patient housing in Memphis for several months. Both parents stopped working for a time, and people in their hometown raised cash to pay their bills.
Her cancer relapsed the following yr with several new, inoperable brain tumors. Burt and his girl'due south mom bankrupt up during that round of treatment, and financial problems piled up.
Burt said his credit score dropped so low that utility companies refused to set up service unless he get-go paid a deposit. One of the family's cars was repossessed, he said. Burt's 2005 Chevrolet Colorado pickup has 300,000 miles on it, many of them logged on trips from Texas to Memphis. When Burt's daughter was at St. Jude for treatment or exams, he'd work all week, so visit on many weekends where he would spend Saturday night sleeping in the hospital parking lot.
He asked hospital officials if he could sleep in St. Jude's housing, but they turned him downwards, he said.
Burt said he was happy with the care St. Jude provided. His daughter'south health is stable, he said, and encephalon scans taken during her September exam confirmed her two remaining tumors haven't grown. Only he's still trying to recover financially.
"Information technology's v years now," Burt said, "and I'1000 not completely caught up yet."
A Fundraising Giant
St. Jude began with a fledgling entertainer praying for a career intermission.
When Danny Thomas, a comic and actor best known for the TV sitcom "Brand Room for Daddy," was struggling to earn a living in the late 1930s, the devout Roman Cosmic went to church and asked for help from the patron saint of drastic cases, St. Jude Thaddeus. If he made information technology big, Thomas promised to build "a shrine where the poor and the helpless and the hopeless may come for comfort and aid," according to a history published by ALSAC.
Within five years, Thomas became a star and worked to fulfill his promise by building a children's hospital named after St. Jude and a fundraising organization to back up it. Thomas, whose parents were Lebanese immigrants, recruited others who shared his Middle Eastern roots to help.
He used his fame to heighten the infirmary's profile, actualization in ads for St. Jude and hosting fundraising events starring the likes of Elvis Presley and Sammy Davis Jr. Thomas' girl Marlo, herself a Telly star, succeeded him in championing St. Jude.
Today, St. Jude is a specialty treatment and research center with almost 5,700 employees and 73 beds. Other acme children's hospitals have more staff and beds, and they likewise treat more atmospheric condition.
Though St. Jude raises money across the earth, almost of its patients come from Tennessee and surrounding states. Patients from elsewhere are usually enrolled in clinical trials.
ALSAC, which handles St. Jude'south fundraising and investments, has two,188 employees in Memphis and in 36 regional offices across the country. More than 400 of the fundraising arm's employees are paid over $100,000, according to IRS filings. The charity takes in so much money each year that information technology regularly steers hundreds of millions of dollars in donations to reserve accounts, the filings show.
Overall, St. Jude's reserve has grown by 58% over the past five fiscal years, during which it has added $one.9 billion to its investment accounts and shifted its portfolio toward financial products designed to generate bigger returns than stocks, bonds and mutual funds traditionally deliver. The charity stowed more than a tertiary of the new surplus, $688 meg, in riskier individual equity investments.
IRS rules practise non limit the size of a nonprofit'due south reserves, and experts on charitable finance differ on best practices.
St. Jude meets Better Business Agency guidelines, which phone call for charities to maintain reserves of less than three times total expenses, but other experts expressed alert that the hospital had accumulated such a large sum of money.
The size of the St. Jude reserve is "staggering," said Laura Otten, the director of LaSalle University'due south master plan in nonprofit leadership. She said a typical reserve for a nonprofit the size of St. Jude is one to two years of expenses. Donors by and large want to know their dollars are beingness put to work, she said.
The hospital said it needs a large reserve because its unique operating model relies on donations to fund almanac operating costs. "[W]e are highly donor-dependent and discipline to the economic driven vagaries of charitable giving," the hospital said in a written response to ProPublica questions.
Just the hospital'southward reserve is already more than large enough to buffer confronting recessions and potential drops in donations, said Ge Bai, a professor of accounting and health policy at Johns Hopkins University. "They should exist spending the money every bit aggressively as they raise information technology, simply they seem to be hoarding," Bai said.
The hospital said it is also raising billions to fund the structure of new housing and research space, although its plans do not currently include spending any of the reserve on new facilities.
St. Jude's reserves have ballooned at a time when researchers, oncologists, advocates and families mutter about a dearth of funding for pediatric cancer studies nationally.
Dozens of other children's hospitals beyond the country take enquiry divisions devoted to pediatric cancer and enroll their patients in clinical trials for new drugs and procedures. They pay for research staff and studies in part with donations from their local communities, often competing directly confronting St. Jude. ALSAC has regional offices in several U.S. cities with elite pediatric cancer centers of their own, including Atlanta, Chicago, Denver and Seattle.
Coury Shadyac, an ALSAC vice president and daughter of the organisation's CEO, Richard Shadyac Jr., oversees a team of 45 fundraisers along the Westward Coast "raising $300 meg annually" for St. Jude, co-ordinate to her LinkedIn contour. That's $100 one thousand thousand more than in donations than either Children's Hospital Los Angeles or Seattle Children's Hospital, two of the nation'due south leading pediatric cancer institutions, received in financial yr 2019, IRS disclosures show. But it's but a small part of St. Jude's fundraising haul.
ALSAC's ubiquitous fundraising has led to concerns that it undercuts other hospitals' campaigns. Some doctors interviewed past ProPublica said they have encouraged donors to give their money to hospitals closer to home.
David Clark, a pediatrician and former longtime chairperson of pediatrics at Albany Medical Middle in New York, said St. Jude raises tens of thousands of dollars in his region that does little to benefit the children with cancer in his surface area since almost all are treated locally. ALSAC has a fundraising role located a few miles from Albany Medical.
"They think of every fashion they tin can to make money and the least amount of ways to spend it," Clark said. "They deceive people into supporting something that is totally dishonest."
Nigh all St. Jude solicitations feature the infirmary'southward patients — the children usually smile and bald from handling — forth with the familiar promise that it never sends families a bill.
It'due south a message that ALSAC has tested and researched to maximize donations. Donors appreciate the promise to never bill families, said Mary Kate Tolan, an ALSAC executive, in a podcast last yr. She added that no parent should take to take out a second mortgage or lose their job because their child is existence treated at St. Jude.
Alternative messaging to the no-bills promise did not "perform also," said Tolan, who develops emerging technologies for ALSAC. Tolan did not render requests for annotate.
"Borrowing and Begging"
Catherine Rainey thought she would be free of financial worry when her 2-twelvemonth-old daughter Harlee was admitted to St. Jude last year.
"The first affair my dad said was: 'Catherine, you take nothing to worry nearly. They raise billions of dollars. Anytime you accept a problem, y'all tell them and they will take care of it,'" she said.
Simply like many families, the Raineys discovered that St. Jude's charity came with limits on payments for expenses such as travel that could be bewildering.
Harlee concluded up at St. Jude later first going to nearby Niswonger Children's Infirmary in Johnson City, Tennessee, in October 2020. The doctors there discovered a cancerous mass attached to her correct kidney. The infirmary is a St. Jude chapter, and the doctors recommended the toddler be treated in Memphis.
Rainey, a single mother of two immature girls, had to leave her chore every bit a nurse for months to be with Harlee at St. Jude. The loss of income chop-chop created bug. "My family, nosotros don't come from money," she said. "We are not doctors and billionaires. Nosotros make information technology. That is it."
St. Jude did provide food and housing on campus. Only the infirmary said it couldn't help with the items that were causing Rainey to worry, including car payments, insurance and cellphone bills.
Rainey'due south boss set up a GoFundMe account to aid make up some of her lost income. A minor local clemency, Kari'due south Heart Foundation, also helped out past paying most $three,000 worth of phone bills and car payments, staving off repossession.
"It was just a agglomeration of borrowing and begging," Rainey said of her experience while her daughter was treated in Memphis. "They acted like it was coming out of their own pocket."
Harlee has checkups at St. Jude every three months that terminal well-nigh four days. The costs of travel to and from St. Jude put an boosted strain on Rainey and Harlee. St. Jude is an 8-60 minutes ride, without stops, from Rainey's domicile in Appalachia, Virginia, a town of 1,432 people about the Kentucky border.
Rainey said her girl generally can make it about ii-thirds of the way, with frequent stops, before she has had enough. "When she is done, she is really washed," Rainey said. "She will scream, cry and kicking."
In July, in advance of an August trip to Memphis, Rainey called the patient services section at St. Jude to see whether they could aid pay for a hotel to suspension up the travel twenty-four hour period — an expense Rainey said she could not afford.
To qualify for a hotel reimbursement, Rainey said, St. Jude told her she had to live more than 500 miles from Memphis. The ride from her home to the hospital is 530 miles (a measurement ProPublica confirmed with mapping tools). However, Rainey said, St. Jude told her it measured the trip from city limit to city limit and came upwards with a altitude of 491 miles. Even using that metric, the distance is however more 500 miles, ProPublica establish.
When she challenged the hospital's stance, Rainey said she was berated past a patient services representative.
"I was feeling pissed off, and I was crying," Rainey said of the interaction. "You lot surrender your whole life for your kid, and they tell you don't worry about anything, we will cover this and and so they tell you to just push through the drive."
Rainey did what she could to brand the trip become smoothly: She configured a small-scale table to extend across her daughter's car seat, so Harlee could play with the coloring books, markers and Play-Doh bought for the ride. She packed snacks and a cooler total of drinks. Since Harlee was notwithstanding potty training, she brought extra towels and clothes for accidents. The final stride was handing Harlee her Babe Yoda doll one time she settled into her motorcar seat. Rainey had sewed a port in the doll's breast to mirror the one Harlee has in hers.
Most iii hours from Memphis, Harlee was crying inconsolably. Rainey pulled off the interstate and stopped at the first hotel she could find. She later learned it had been described in online reviews as "awful," a "nightmare," "disgusting" and "horrible."
"I didn't know the area," she said. "The hotel was garbage. It simply made information technology worse."
The drive home too required a hotel stop, but this time Rainey was able to find ane that was cleaner. A $100 donation from a local charity helped to beginning the cost.
Amongst the changes St. Jude is making is to reimburse families like Rainey's, who live more than 400 miles from the infirmary, for an overnight stay at a hotel when making the trip to Memphis.
Rainey said she was called by a St. Jude representative after ProPublica asked almost her situation and was told the hospital would pay for her past hotel stays when traveling back and along to St. Jude. The representative, Rainey said, also told her the hospital discovered the way it had been measuring mileage was inaccurate.
"I am not the only one," Rainey said. "There are others. They should reimburse all the families."
The feet of unpaid bills piling upward, combined with caring for a child undergoing chemotherapy or radiations, takes a severe cost on parents and guardians, said Christopher Hope, a UPS driver who started a Memphis-based foundation subsequently meeting St. Jude parents who were in financial crisis.
Hope's small charity spent $12,000 last year to help families. Parents in St. Jude social media groups often refer families in need to it. The charity has helped families cover mortgage and automobile payments.
"I never knew anything almost this until hearing about it from families," Hope said. "All we hear is almost kids and treatment, non the other side of it."
"It's Not Free"
In addition to charities like Hope's, St. Jude families have repeatedly turned to fundraising sites and networks of their relatives, friends and neighbors to help embrace basic expenses while unable to work during their children's treatment. Parents' requests on fundraising sites are sometimes desperate pleas.
In January 2017, one father in North Carolina said he'd had to carelessness a business venture to have time for his son to receive care at St. Jude. His income had plummeted. He asked friends to give as little equally $ten to "at to the lowest degree make it possible to survive."
This yr, a female parent in Memphis whose one-year-quondam son receives care at St. Jude for sickle prison cell disorder ran out of medical leave and couldn't work her shifts at a clothing distribution heart. After the kid had a flare up in July requiring several days of handling at the hospital, she said she returned home to find her power shut off. Sitting in a nighttime apartment, unable to pay her utility bills, she prepare a GoFundMe campaign. She received less than $20 through the site; her relatives somewhen pooled $350 to get her electricity restored.
Fifty-fifty parents with stable jobs and private health insurance often take on debt and need outside help.
When Taylr and Treg Spud's 17-year-old son Peyton was diagnosed with cancer and needed monthslong handling at St. Jude in 2017, the entire family — mom, dad, sister and blood brother — went with him, traveling from their home in Lafayette, Louisiana, to Memphis. Treg took a leave from his chore at an oil mining visitor and Taylr, who works at her mother's bakery, did the aforementioned.
"We knew that information technology was going to be a collective team effort," Treg said. "Without even a discussion, we figured that if Peyton'due south got to get for the surgery, we're all going."
Peyton had an enormous tumor that had grown out of his correct femur and was crowding his knee. Rounds of chemotherapy appeared to have killed osteosarcoma cells elsewhere in his body. But he needed to undergo a procedure called limb-sparing surgery that would require weeks of recovery time at the hospital.
The infirmary agreed to allow all 5 family members to stay for free at St. Jude if they bunked together in a single room. It assigned them a spot in Tri Delta Place, its hotel-like short-term patient residence on the campus. Tri Delta is prepare up for visits of up to 7 days, according to the hospital's guide for volunteers, but the Murphys were at that place for almost l.
Taylr said the unit at Tri Delta had no oven or stove and St. Jude provided no grocery money, instead allotting them a $l-per-day credit at the hospital deli, Kay Kafe — not enough to feed the family of five. As the weeks wore on, the Murphys split grilled cheese sandwiches and paid for nutrient out of pocket.
Afterwards ProPublica asked about the infirmary'due south food allowances, St. Jude said it would increase them as part of the changes scheduled to become into effect this month. The hospital switched from a $50-a-day cap per family to providing $25 a solar day to each family member. For a family of four, that would double the nutrient do good. A weekly stipend given to families in long-term housing was increased to $150 from $125.
For the Murphys, it was the loss of their work income, more than than out-of-pocket expenses, that put them into a financial hole as Peyton'south treatment went on. Treg's employer couldn't pay him during his long absences.
Fearful of being evicted or having their car repossessed, Taylr said she asked a St. Jude social worker for assistance. The social worker helped her apply for grants from other charities. Taylr said the B+ Foundation paid their rent one month, which ensured they'd accept a dwelling house to return to.
In the years since his initial treatment, Peyton has gone back to St. Jude repeatedly for exams and surgeries to remove malignant growths in his lungs. Taylr and Treg have missed more work to bring Peyton to Memphis, costing them thousands of dollars more in income.
By the start of this twelvemonth, Taylr and Treg said they were nearly $twenty,000 in debt and panicking. Dustin Poirier, a former UFC champion from their hometown, heard from a friend virtually Peyton and the family unit'south financial trouble. He donated $10,000 to them from his personal charity and in May hosted a local fundraiser that collected enough to pay off their credit cards.
St. Jude families sometimes commiserate about money problems with each other, Taylr said, but few are aware of the extent of the hospital'due south unspent resource. The Murphys said they didn't know St. Jude has more $v billion in reserve or that it continues to enhance hundreds of millions of dollars in surplus donations each yr.
St. Jude's Stashes Nearly a Quarter of Its Revenue Each Twelvemonth
"That's just insane," Taylr said. "That just blows my listen. When we showtime started getting treated, people would exist like, 'Oh, St. Jude covers everything, that's awesome.' That'due south not how it works. People don't sympathise that. I truly didn't understand before I got into St. Jude."
Taylr and Treg said the doctors at St. Jude are "amazing" and they're grateful for their son's intendance. Only they bristled at the assumption that it was covered by the hospital's clemency. The family unit'southward insurance paid a substantial function of the bills.
"Information technology'south not free," Taylr said. "My husband works very hard for the insurance we accept — and they are billed." The Murphys pay $12,000 in health insurance premiums each year.
Their struggle continues. Peyton'due south cancer has relapsed, and he's making regular trips with his mom or dad back to St. Jude for chemotherapy. The family unit is again applying for help from other charities.
Wiped Out Savings
The costs associated with care at St. Jude caused at least one family unit to end going to Memphis birthday.
Final wintertime, Kelly Edwards was excitedly searching through Tulsa real estate listings after years of diligently saving $x,000 for a down payment on a house. She craved a permanent home for herself and the two young brothers she had taken in five years earlier at the behest of a family friend. She hoped to adopt the boys, now 13 and ix, who call her mom.
In February, the older male child, DJ, was lethargic and uninterested in his schoolwork. Later several doctor visits, he was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia at a Tulsa hospital. The cancer, referred to as ALL, is the most common type amongst children, with survival rates that exceed 90%. A day afterwards his diagnosis, DJ and Edwards were driving six hours to Memphis for treatment at St. Jude, which is affiliated with the Oklahoma infirmary.
The pair stayed for free at an independently operated Ronald McDonald Business firm near St. Jude, and a weekly stipend from the hospital helped to pay for meals — aid that Edwards said was a blessing. DJ had wellness insurance through the Oklahoma Medicaid program.
But every bit with the Murphys, lost income presently put Edwards' family into financial jeopardy. She works equally a supervisor for a visitor that delivers packages for Amazon. After she used up ii weeks of paid time off, she stopped getting paychecks. The bills, however, kept coming: rent, car payments, utilities. To that was added the $250 a week she paid a friend to stay with DJ's younger blood brother and her two dogs in Tulsa.
Within four months, her house savings were wiped out. Edwards said she told her St. Jude social worker almost her financial woes just got no additional assistance.
Ane of Edwards' adult daughters started a GoFundMe campaign to help, bringing in just over $3,000. Edwards said she appreciated the aid but believes donations were kept depression by the widespread perception that St. Jude families don't have fiscal problems.
"Anybody hears that everything is taken care of by St. Jude," she said. "That is not true, simply anybody has that mentality." She said someone she knew asked her "what is that money going for if St. Jude's is paying for everything?"
DJ was scheduled to go dorsum to St. Jude for three weeks of treatment in Baronial, but Edwards decided she merely couldn't afford it. "I don't accept the money to get back and forth," she said. She worked with DJ's local doctors and found that the hospital virtually her habitation in Tulsa could provide the same treatment he was scheduled to make it Tennessee.
The local treatment immune her to continue working some shifts and to exist at dwelling house with both of her boys. DJ is also happier when he is home, Edwards said.
Edwards and the boys are now living in a small firm her brother owns but outside Tulsa. Belatedly on a contempo weekday afternoon, DJ slowly shuffled into the living room, exhausted from a day of chemotherapy treatment.
He is in the midst of a 20-week regimen where he receives the cancer-killing drugs every other day, just one phase of a almost iii-yr treatment programme. He wore an orange knit hat, T-shirt and shorts. He rubbed his optics before request a visitor, "How is your day going?" He smiled at the positive response. When he heard the family unit was eating steak for dinner, he eagerly jumped upwards to start helping in the kitchen.
Afterwards they moved in, Edwards hung family portraits on the walls to get in feel homier. She doesn't expect they will exist moving again any fourth dimension soon.
The dream of buying a home of their ain is gone.
ProPublica is continuing to study on the finances, fundraising and operations of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Do y'all know something almost this charity? Please achieve out to journalists David Armstrong, who tin can exist contacted past phone or Bespeak at 718-710-9494, or Ryan Gabrielson, who can be contacted by phone or Point at 917-455-1713.
Former ProPublica reporter Marshall Allen contributed reporting. Kirsten Berg contributed research.
Source: https://www.propublica.org/article/st-jude-hoards-billions-while-many-of-its-families-drain-their-savings
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