Meet Our Patients
Jacob Gibbs is doing well, just a few months after becoming the youngest baby to receive a liver transplant at St. Louis Children's Hospital. He also is among the youngest babies in the world to ever receive a transplanted liver.
Just mention a child’s name to her grandma or grandpa, and you’re sure to get smiles, photos and countless stories. But Selma Wilham has a story that tops them all. When her granddaughter Kourtney was 7 months old, Selma loved her so much that she gave her a part of her liver.
A baby in a Minneapolis suburb needed a liver transplant, so his mom called St. Louis Children’s Hospital to ask about a second opinion to double-list her son.
Despite repeated assurances from her pediatrician, her mother could not understand why Emery was draining eight ounces of formula every three hours and still not gaining weight. She also knew that the yellow tint to the whites of her eyes were outside the range of “normal.”
A dream came true for 11-year-old Austin Sprock. All his life, Austin had to stick to a low-protein diet. He had Maple Syrup Urine Disease, a rare inherited disorder causing an inability to process protein properly. The name comes from the sweet odor of the urine. If untreated, the disease is life-threatening, and severe disability and paralysis can occur.
Just about any parent would gladly trade places with their sick child – anything to make them feel better. That’s how Leah Gleason wound up a patient herself, in a room at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. She was on standby to donate part of her liver to then five-year-old daughter Lucie.
