Cheers! for Brenner Children's Hospital

Alisa L. Starbuck

For us here at Brenner Children's Hospital, we would not exist without the vision and the generosity of the Brenner family. They had that vision early on to create a space specifically for children, and at that time it was just one small unit.

Thomas Pranikoff

When I first came, it was one floor on the hospital. Since then, opening a children's hospital like I'm sitting right now, during that time has been a lot of growth, new specialists coming in, new programs that we've been able to develop.

Alisa L. Starbuck

Each year we serve over 66,000 children, but they come to us from 19 counties and three or four states.

Thomas Pranikoff

Providing healthcare for children is challenging. The world is really set up more for healthcare with adults.

Alisa L. Starbuck

Some people think you don't really need a children's hospital. You can be fine any place.

Lindsay Thompson

We're so lucky here in Winston-Salem to have Brenner Children's Hospital, which was literally built on philanthropy dollars.

Thomas Pranikoff

Philanthropic gifts give us the ability to do what we do, and they're really critical for us to establish programs and continue programs, and expand what we can offer the community.

Lindsay Thompson

I've been here at Brenner Children's Hospital for not even a year and a half, but I admire the holistic approach that the providers here take, everybody from physicians to nurses to techs on the floor.

Alisa L. Starbuck

I think people really underestimate food insecurity in our country and our population, even locally.

Lindsay Thompson

Do they have food on the table? Do they have transportation to get to and from the hospital?

Alisa L. Starbuck

Through the dollars of donors, with this patient and family assistance fund, we've been able now to bring meals directly to the families in their rooms while they're here. They don't have to leave their child.

Lindsay Thompson

This is incredibly important and somewhat obvious in some ways that a parent doesn't want to leave a child's side. We also want to have special spaces for children. We have a new music studio where they can come and be a kid.

Alisa L. Starbuck

And everything in this room has been completely made available by the generosity of donors. This allows our children families to have a release in this hospitalization and feel just normal for a few minutes. The child and the family will take the experience of hospitalization with them the rest of their lives. They will remember everything about it.

Lindsay Thompson

It really matters that when you walk into a facility for children, that they can put their shoulders down a little bit. They don't have to feel nervous, that parents can feel secure, that their children are getting the best care that we could offer.

Alisa L. Starbuck

And the more that we can do to minimize that stress has certainly been enhanced by the dollars that have been given to the organization.

Lisa Norman

Hi, I am Lisa Norman. This is my husband, Keith Norman, and we have four children: Ellie, Jack, Hamilton and Mary Claire.

Hamilton Norman

inaudible the fury, intimidator, aftermath-

Lisa Norman

Over the years, our family has experienced the Brenner ER, inpatient, and outpatient settings many times.

Keith Norman

That almost makes us sound like bad parents.

Lisa Norman

I know.

Keith Norman

It's a function of having four kids, I guess, who are very active.

Lisa Norman

Jack was born a healthy boy, and then when he was seven years old, out of the blue one night, he developed abdominal pain and started losing blood from his colon. And so over the course of two weeks, we watched him get weaker and more anemic, and he was continuing to lose blood. By the time we got to the hospital, Jack was so anemic that he could not walk from the car to the hospital.

Jack Norman

I just remember not really knowing what was going to happen. I don't know. It was the first time I've ever gotten that sick, because I was so little. I just remember everyone visiting me and everyone being really scared, and I was just confused because I was so little I didn't really know what was happening.

Keith Norman

Our minds were racing that this has got to be something pretty serious, so it was scary.

Lisa Norman

He was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, and thanks to Brenner, he has been able to live a relatively normal life the last 10 years.

Keith Norman

This past summer, we had one week where the whole family was free, so we decided to take the kids for our family vacation, and we left on a Friday, and so that morning, Hamilton woke up with a headache.

Hamilton Norman

I wake up and I have this throbbing headache like nothing I've had before, probably the worst headache I've ever had. And I am tired, but I can't sleep, and my head hurts. My stomach is churning.

Keith Norman

And then later that evening, it went from bad to worse to terrible, so we decided to rush him to Brenner's, and he was pretty quickly diagnosed with viral meningitis and the swelling of the brain in the encephalitis.

Hamilton Norman

It definitely was a scary moment for me, and because I had no clue what was going on. I probably went into there 120 pounds and I came out 100 pounds. All my muscle was completely gone.

Keith Norman

But the comfort that we felt there, as scared as we were, was amazing.

Hamilton Norman

So when the doctors first came in, they looked at me with a smile on their face and I could tell they were very confident and experienced in their practice. I could feel that they were going to solve and see what was wrong with me and help me get better.

Keith Norman

And everybody was constantly checking and concerned in a very genuine way.

Hamilton Norman

And I remember they're bringing me my last meal and they said it was okay if I could go home after I ate. And on the way home, I got a milkshake from Cookout. I ate that whole thing, so then we knew I was back to my normal self, eating and being happy again.

Lisa Norman

Brenner treated the whole person, and they treated the family too, because when your child is sick, one of us was always in the room. I felt like they did an amazing job treating everyone's physical, emotional, and even spiritual needs when we were there, and that really meant a lot to us.

Hamilton Norman

It means a lot to me to know that I have that accessibility to that level of care and doctors that I know are going to help me and support me throughout whatever I have. I really hope that maybe they even expand the hospitals to more parts of the country so that all kids in America would be able to get the help they need whenever they need it.

Thomas Pranikoff

I think the future of Brenner and Children's Care in Winston-Salem is bright. It's important to understand that the money that's raised locally here benefits our children here, and it stays locally.

Lindsay Thompson

Even though we're part of a huge and exciting system now that has the opportunity to impact children all across the US, any philanthropy dollars that we are able to bring in go to our patient assistance fund, they go to new and exciting research projects that are starred right here.

Alisa L. Starbuck

So it stays right here, but the impacts are very significantly spread throughout the region that we serve. This community has stood by Brenner Children's Hospital and the children that we serve. I just can't say thank you enough. It enables me and my team every day to do the extraordinary things for children, so thank you for coming tonight and thank you so much for your 19 years of commitment to Brenner Children's.