Acting Up

So MommyBlogsToronto is setting out on a mission - to find a cause to throw ourselves behind, with you, Canadian bloggers among you, as part of the action. So what cause? That's the question to start with. So HBM and Sandra have put out a call, asking for us to talk about some things we think are worthy. So what do I think is worthy?

Well, there are the global causes. The environment being a big one, and one I think Jana covered already. There is the horrible situation of child exploitation and trafficking that goes on in far, far too many places unchecked.

There are local causes. Shelters and supports for women and moms in need. Teen moms, women and families leaving abuse, families living in poverty, all around us in every town.

For me though, there is a place I hold dear. A place that gives hope and care and new leases on life to children from across Canada and beyond.

I have a longish history with the Hospital for Sick Children, known by most people as the more familiar Sick Kids. As a child, I was under the care of one Jack Crawford, the man who wrote the book on my eye condition. He performed my operations, but also looked after me for years before and after, assessing me, trying different methods to treat me, testing me for my glasses and eyedrops. He was a kindly old man, a man who knew how to work with a child to keep them relaxed and at ease while he kept an exam moving along. A man with warm, slightly bubbled hands, and white hair and glasses, by the time I knew him. I didn't know until many, many years later, when another opthamologist mentioned it, that he was a seriously big name, one who has lecture series and awards named in his honour. That's the kind of care he gave. Personal, child-focussed, warm, yet at the very highest echelons of his field. That's the kind of care that is a hallmark of Sick Kids.

In fact, Sick Kids' experts are so good, children are referred to them from all over the country for rare and special treatments and surgeries. Even further afield, Sick Kids has helped children from all over the world. Their own fund for this, the Herbie Fund, helps pay some of the costs of these highly specialized procedures, and they often work with other organizations, such as the Children's Bridge Foundation to help the families bring their child to Toronto. They have, as an example, separated some ten pairs of conjoined twins, including a pair that travelled from Zimbabwe for the surgery. They are currently assessing a boy from Vietnam for the possibility of removing a facial tumour that threatens to cut off his ability to eat and, eventually, to breathe.

In the years that I volunteered there, wheeling kids from their rooms to physical and occupational therapy, I saw some of these kids, the treatments they were withstanding, the things they were suffering. Minor injuries, casts and so on. Bodies made frail by long-term wasting diseases or more recently by anorexia, these children working in the gym to lift small weights to build back muscles eaten away by their diseases. A boy hit by a train, his limbs and head held together and in correct place by rods and rings of metal. Cancer patients, their bald heads gleaming. An amputee, foot sewn on backwards at the knee to provide a joint for a later prosthetic. Burn victims, isolated in sterile rooms, later wincing in therapy as they learn to use their hands again, working through the pain. It swells my heart with pride, even now, not just for the doctors and the specialists, but for those children, who work hard at their own recovery. And for the feeling of hope that I always felt in those halls. Now matter how desperate, how painful, how rare, there always seems to be hope, because they are here. Getting the best treatment. No doctor can win every time, but the staff there are amazing at creating the best environment they can for it.

They don't let parents forget either, for they see the results of everyday accidents and, as a result, their care for children extends beyond treatment and into their many campaigns for preventative health, publishing a health newsletter for parents, running campaigns for healthy gestation under the guise of MotherRisk, and advertising child safety measures with the Safe Kids Canada campaign. In their halls hang collections of objects retrieved from the stomachs of children, including large, open blanket pins. Posters for their poison control centre announce their number, which saved my friend's curious brother a number of times.

Even closer to my blogger heart is a recent resident of Sick Kids, a wee small baby, the daughter of another Toronto blogmama, Lisa B. Maybe you know Lisa? Or maybe not. She and her little girl are there now, in the NICU, under care of the doctors and nurses, hoping to be able to go home soon. They are reminding me how important it is to have really top notch health care available for our children, precious as they are.

It is, after all, among a mother's worst nightmares, to have a child who is ill or injured. To know that we have such a resource is amazing. It makes us fortunate, and I am proud that we extend this fortune out to others whose local facilities aren't equipped to handle everything that Sick Kids can. It makes me feel deeply down that we shouldn't take such a treasure for granted. Sick Kids does get some big name donors, it's true, but it still has young people canvassing on the street, is still in need of individual help where it can be found. I'd like to be a part of that.

Sick Kids even has a most interesting page to help people get started. A page of creative ways to give for those who aren't interested in or capable of simply writing a check. Ways to raise funds, to be involved, to spread out monetary donations, to involve your children.

How about our bloggers? I think this could be a cause close to all of our hearts. As parents who may have need of such care, as Canadians who should have pride in such a facility.