Barnes-Jewish Hospital

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Congratulations to St. Louis Children's Hospital on "topping out" the Children's Specialty Care Center in Wentzville earlier this week!

Projected to open in late 2027, the center will expand access to compassionate, leading-edge pediatric care in in one of the region's fastest-growing communities.

Today, it's steel, concrete, and open sky. In the years ahead, it will be where families turn for exceptional WashU Medicine Physicians pediatric specialists, innovative treatments, and the coordinated care that defines WashU Medicine and St. Louis Children's Hospital.

Under one roof, families will find:

- Outpatient surgical services designed especially for children
- 20+ WashU Medicine pediatric specialties, including cardiology, oncology, and neurology
- Pediatric urgent care for minor illnesses and injuries
- A pediatric sleep lab to diagnose and treat sleep disorders
- A Young Athlete Center with sport-specific rehabilitation to help athletes return to the game they love

Placing the final steel beam marks more than a construction milestone. It's a celebration of the skilled tradespeople, architects, and engineers bringing this vision to life—and a promise of the care, expertise, and healing that will one day fill these halls.

A hydrops diagnosis with no clear cause is usually fatal.

At her 22-week anatomy scan, Jill was numb when she learned the odds she and her daughter, Olive, were up against. Hydrops is a rare condition, occurring in about 1 in 2,000 pregnancies, that causes fluid to build around a baby’s organs, threatening survival.

After multiple miscarriages, Jill had come through so much to get to this point. She was not going to give up now—or leave without knowing her options.

“Which specialist do we need to see?” she remembers asking.

That determination brought her to Katherine Bligard, MD, MA, a WashU Medicine maternal-fetal medicine specialist and associate director of the Fetal Care Center—a collaboration between Barnes-Jewish Hospital, WashU Medicine, and St. Louis Children's Hospital.

Dr. Bligard listened to everything Jill and Alex had been through and understood what this diagnosis meant for their family. Then she got to work building a path forward.

First, a minimally invasive procedure was used to drain fluid from around Olive’s lungs. When the fluid returned, Dr. Bligard and her team placed two tiny shunts in Olive’s chest at just 24 weeks to divert the excess fluid.

The treatment worked, and Olive's condition improved. Dr. Bligard’s team then saw Jill twice a week for the remainder of her pregnancy.

At 35 weeks, Olive was delivered at Barnes-Jewish and then moved to the NICU at St. Louis Children’s so her lungs could get stronger. Soon after delivery, Jill crossed the walkway connecting the two hospitals to see her daughter. Everything she had been holding back finally caught up with her.

“It was the first time I was alone with her, and I just lost it and started crying,” Jill says. “That was the first time it all felt real to me.”

After 29 days in the NICU, Olive went home. Today, she is healthy, growing, and wriggling at the sound of her mother’s voice.

Read Jill’s full story and see how the Fetal Care Center’s expertise helped one family beat extraordinary odds: https://heyor.ca/GxRBcd

Shirene lay in a hospital bed, struggling to breathe. On a piece of paper, she wrote down a list of phone numbers and handed it to her parents.

“If anything happens,” she said, “call these people.”

She was 25 years old.

Just weeks earlier, Shirene had been a first-year resident physician—newly graduated from medical school and beginning the career she had worked years to build. Now, over Thanksgiving, her lungs were failing—and doctors couldn’t determine why. Test after test came back negative. There was no diagnosis—and no treatment to stop it.

Her oxygen levels continued to fall. She was intubated.

Among the numbers on that list were her residency program director and associate program director. As her condition worsened, word reached them, and they urged her family to transfer her to Barnes‑Jewish Hospital for advanced care.

There, WashU Medicine Physicians placed her on ECMO, a form of life support that oxygenates the blood when the lungs can no longer do so. Despite intensive care, her condition continued to decline.

Shirene needed a transplant.

On December 26, 2021, she was listed for transplant. On February 12, 2022, she received a double lung transplant, performed by WashU Medicine thoracic surgeon Ruben Nava Bahena, MD, at Barnes‑Jewish Hospital.

Recovery was slow. Learning to breathe on her own again took time.

“I felt so scared to come off the ventilator,” she says. “I was dependent on it.”

But the care she received while recovering at Barnes‑Jewish extended far beyond the medical care. A nurse swabbed a melted orange ice pop across her lips on a day she couldn’t eat. Therapists prayed with her. One afternoon, ten staff members carefully wheeled her and her equipment outside so she could take her first breath of fresh air in months.

On her 26th birthday, Shirene got a visit from her dad. Because of his cancer, it was the first time they had seen each other in person since her transplant. Two days later, he passed away.

That night, nurses came to Shirene’s bedside so she wouldn’t be alone.

By late May 2022, after nearly six months at Barnes‑Jewish, Shirene was able to go home.

She wrote a letter to her donor’s family: “It’s hard to find the right words,” she says. “But I’m so thankful for my donor, for my donor’s family, and for their decision.”

Also remaining close to Shirene’s heart are her transplant surgeon, Dr. Nava, and the team of nurses and therapists at Barnes-Jewish.

“They didn’t just treat me medically,” she says. “They cared for my emotional and spiritual health, and supported my family as a whole. I’m so glad I was in St. Louis when this happened. Who knows what would’ve happened if I wasn’t.”

Read Shirene’s story to see how organ donation gave her a second chance—and how she found a new calling: https://heyor.ca/6dI6po

A Young Physician Survives Lung Failure with a Double Lung Transplant, and Finds a New Calling In the summer of 2021, just weeks after graduating from medical school, Shirene Philipose, MD, began her first year of residency at a hospital in Kansas City. It was a season of beginnings—new colleagues and new challenges awaited the 25-year-old as she stepped into the role she had worked years t...