Meet Grateful Patients

Joel Graybeal knows what it’s like to work at a business where people mean more than the bottom line. At Triangle Rock Clubs, where he is managing partner, employees find joy in helping clients climb their way to better health and fitness. Some of them even find their soul mates: the clubs’ colorful climbing terrains have served as backdrops for several marriage proposals.

It's all about leaving a legacy. That’s what Brad Branch said about establishing the Catherine S. and J. Bradford Branch Fund with his wife, Catherine Shingleton Branch. Through a generous estate gift to Duke, the couple has created an endowment to benefit both Duke Heart and Duke Cancer Institute (DCI).

'Jump for the Children' celebrates 40 years of incredible support for Duke Children's.

In 2021, a baby boy named Easton Sinnamon was the first person in the world to receive a combination heart transplant and allogeneic processed thymus tissue implantation. Six months later, a video showed Easton smiling and playing in a high chair, and tests indicated that the processed thymus tissue was working: building the T cells needed for a well-functioning immune system.

In 2008, Cynthia Toth, MD, set out to develop optical coherence tomography (OCT), a technology that bounces light waves off different parts of the eye, providing a finely detailed look inside the eye’s tissues for pediatric use. She is now recognized as the founder of pediatric OCT. For infants and children.

An anonymous $5 million gift has established a Presidential Distinguished Chair Professorship in endocrinology in honor of Diana McNeill, MD.

The Moore family marked dad Matthew’s 40th birthday with a special reunion following his artificial heart implant procedure. Duke Heart surgeons placed the first-in-North-America device in his chest July 12th.

Long an advocate for others with cancer, Nancy Wright is in the middle of her second battle with the disease. It has solidified her belief in Duke as a place for personalized, advanced care.

For 27 years, Heather Paradis, a 1995 graduate of Duke University’s Master of Science in Nursing Program, cared for cancer patients at Duke University Hospital as a hematology-oncology nurse practitioner. As she saw many patients fighting the disease, she had no idea that she would one day be on the other side of cancer care.

In 2011, Katie Corun was in her third semester of nursing school in Maryland when she began having personality changes—moodiness and anger. Neither she nor her husband of seven months, Ron, or her mother, Kathy, could figure out what was going on.