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, was an accomplished ophthalmologist, retinal surgeon, and clinician-scientist. She had been involved since the 1990s in the early development of 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. In fact, at the time, OCT research from Toth and others had already changed how sight-robbing macular degeneration in older adults was diagnosed and treated, by revealing retinal tissue that could be measured in images and used to guide treatment and predict the course of the disease.

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.

Ever since Duke Cancer Institute helped Meg Lindenberger survive breast cancer more than a decade ago, she and her husband, Bill, have been faithful supporters.