Q4 Report: A Season and Reasons for Gratitude

Crystal Hinson Miller, president of IU Health Foundation, is a national leader in healthcare philanthropy. Here, she shares her personal reflections.

Ask Matthew Cheatham what he’s thankful for this holiday season, and he’s sure to mention the team at IU Health Methodist Hospital. After all, if not for them, he wouldn’t be here this Thanksgiving.

Matt first arrived at Methodist by LifeLine helicopter in October 2021. He had been driving on a country road in Illinois just west of Terre Haute during a storm, when a tree fell on his car, plunging a four-inches-in-diameter limb through his windshield and into his chest. Impaled in the front seat, he rocked his car out of a ditch and drove until he got a cellphone signal so he could call 911. An ambulance took him to a Terre Haute hospital, where they removed the limb from his chest and called LifeLine to take him to Indianapolis.

At Methodist, Peter Jenkins, MD reconstructed Matt’s chest with steel plates and artificial ribs, but that was only the beginning of Matt’s miraculous recovery. He spent six weeks recovering at Methodist – he has no memory of much of that time – with his wife, Jill, virtually never leaving his side. Finally, on the day after Thanksgiving, Matt headed home to Illinois.

Talking with Matt at an IU Health Foundation event last month, I had a rush of emotions. I marveled at his courage and was quite touched by his expressions of gratitude for the team that saved his life. I also felt grateful for IU Health Foundation donors who help make stories like Matt’s possible.

After all, donors made it possible for IU Health Foundation to provide more than $1 million to LifeLine for equipment that helps to save people like Matt. (You might remember that I have my own reason for appreciating LifeLine: In 2017, my father-in-law survived what could have been a fatal aortic dissection because he was taken by helicopter from IU Health North to IU Health Methodist.)

Donors also have been integral to funding specialized education that prepares our care teams to treat traumatic injuries like Matt’s.

In addition, donors help support training for the nurses who played such a big role in Matt’s treatment and recovery. These same nurses have earned Methodist a “Magnet Hospital” credential to recognize excellence in nursing services and care, a designation the American Nurses Credentialing Center has awarded to less than 10% of American hospitals.

Plus, donors give our care teams the resources that let them go above and beyond the call of duty with personalized care. For example, during Matt’s – and, by extension, Jill’s – long stay at Methodist, the nurses put together a “date night” for the couple, bringing in special food and dimming the lights for a movie showing.

My sense of gratitude was fed even more when, at that same event, I got to talk with former Indy Car champion and Indy 500 winner Tony Kanaan. After a 2003 accident in Japan left him with a severely broken arm, Tony chose to have the arm stabilized in Japan before flying to Methodist for required surgery. Our donors help provide Indiana residents access to a level of trauma care for which professional athletes fly halfway around the world.

And that made me think of the ways donors make it possible for IU Health to innovate: by supporting clinical trials that make groundbreaking care available to Hoosiers; by providing resources that allow us to address factors in our communities that contribute to illness and injury; and by giving generously to further our mission of making Indiana one of the healthiest states in the nation.

Even as I list these many reasons for gratitude, I could say I have 10,000 more reasons for feeling thankful: Last month the 10,000th person contributed to our All the Difference campaign, helping to push us past 75% of our overall campaign goal of $200 million.

For these reasons and countless others, when I say I am thankful for the IU Health team that makes miracles like Matt Cheatham’s recovery possible, in addition to the physicians, nurses, therapists, food service workers and countless others who contribute to such care, I am also referring to the thousands of donors who have made financial contributions large and small.

So, as you pause to consider what you are thankful for this holiday season, know that I – and people like Matt – are thankful for you.