I give $100 every month to the Barnes-Jewish Hospital Foundation because I owe it to my family and our community. As community members, we owe our neighbors, our friends and ourselves the best medical facilities possible to help our community continue to thrive.
A few years ago, I was reminded why having Barnes-Jewish in our community is of the utmost importance. I have a private psychotherapy practice. A client of mine whom I hadn’t seen for a couple of months entered my office, and I saw that he had a grapefruit-sized swelling on his neck. Since I knew he previously had surgery for testicular cancer and that he didn’t regularly visit primary care doctors, I asked him if I could put him in touch with a friend of mine, Jerome Williams, MD, a family practitioner at Barnes-Jewish. Dr. Williams recommended he make an appointment at the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine.
Dr. Williams and the Siteman team assessed that at that point, he was 48 hours from dying of testicular cancer. Today, years later, he’s alive and healthy thanks to the swift, expert care he received at Barnes-Jewish.
In closing, I’d like to share an idea that friends taught me a long time ago. As adults, life is about envelopes. Monthly, we fill envelopes with money to pay toward each of our responsibilities. There are the typical bills—water, gas electric, rent or mortgage—and then there are the debts we owe our community. Barnes-Jewish receives an envelope each month from my family with $100 in it. I designate it to the Barnes-Jewish Hospital Support Fund (an unrestricted fund), so that Hospital leadership can decide what department needs my support the most.
As members of this community, we have an ongoing debt to each other to support the medical institutions that serve us. Please join me and dedicate one envelope each month to Barnes-Jewish Hospital.
Ed Koslin
Ed Koslin and his wife, Fran Weintraub, have private psychotherapy practices in St. Louis.
P.S. For your convenience, use the online giving form today as your "envelope"!