CANCER WARRIOR SPOTLIGHT: Winston

ST. JUDE CHILDREN’S RESEARCH HOSPITAL SEPTEMBER 2025 PATIENT OF THE MONTH

Winston easily steals the heart of anyone who meets him. His mom describes him as a lover and not a crier.

He is also among Taylor Swift’s youngest fans. The few times that the baby is restless, his mom, Katy, can count on Swift’s song “Lover” to soothe him.

You can hardly tell, Katy says, that Winston was diagnosed with a brain tumor at just a few months old. It was at 8 weeks that Winston, the youngest of four children, began to have seizures that caused him to stop breathing. After a few hospital stays, several tests and scans, a lesion was discovered in his brain. He was referred to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital®, about a nine-hour drive from his home in Ohio. Katy said her parents had been St. Jude donors for years.

“St. Jude was a pipedream, and I had no idea that it was an option,” Katy said. “We had just gotten such devastating news … but we would stop at nothing to help our son.”

After his arrival in Memphis in November 2023, Winston underwent brain surgery to stop the seizures. A biopsy revealed he had infant-type hemispheric glioma (IHG), a rare brain tumor. Winston received chemotherapy.

Katy said she’s grateful for the treatment her son has received which has stopped the seizures, but also the love and care St. Jude employees have shown them. “That is what you feel from every appointment, they truly care about your kid,” she said.