Gord Mason supports cochlear implant research, so more patients can fully benefit from the device. (Photograph by Doug Nicholson)

After cochlear implants allowed Gord Mason to hear again, he wanted to give back. The Mason Scientific Discovery Fund will investigate how the brain turns sound into signals, to improve implant results for all patients.

Gord Mason, who has enjoyed a long and successful career as a homebuilder and businessman, loves to share how he regained the ability to hear.

Gord first noticed trouble with his hearing as a young man. It was the late 1950s, and he was training with the Royal Canadian Air Force. The training included being tested in a decompression chamber to simulate the thin atmosphere pilots encounter at 3,000 metres in the air.

“I thought my right ear was going to blow apart,” Gord remembers. “It was killing me. They told me it was routine, but I ended up not going into the Air Force.”

Gord’s hearing difficulties continued after he founded his Stouffville, Ont.-based house and condo-building business, Mason Homes, in 1961.

“I used to travel a lot for business. I’d get off a flight and I wouldn’t be able to hear until the next day,” he says.

Progressive hearing loss over the next few decades affected Gord professionally and emotionally.

“You lose your confidence when you can’t hear,” he says. “I remember sitting down with four people, two on either side of me. They had a cross-conversation going. I’m sitting in between and I’m not getting anything.”

Gord says he wouldn’t realize that he was talking too loudly because of his hearing loss. He said he felt that could sometimes give the impression to others that he was angry or hot-tempered.

By the time Gord reached his 70s, he had lost much of his ability to hear the people and the world around him.

“It’s hard, and it’s especially hard when you’re in business,” he says.

Today, Gord hears quite well, thanks to dual cochlear implants he received from Sunnybrook’s Cochlear Implant Program. He received his second implant last year, several years after the first ear.

Gord says for him, the ability to hear properly is life-changing.

“It gave me my confidence back. Now I can go to meetings and hear people at the other end of the table,” he says. “And when I drive, I put on the radio. I listen to music!”

Gord’s journey back to hearing – and greater happiness – meant so much to him that he decided to donate funds to establish the Mason Scientific Discovery Fund at Sunnybrook.

The fund’s researchers are working to advance the science of cochlear implants, studying how the brain “listens” to sound and investigating why some implants are more successful than others.

“The Mason Scientific Discovery Fund will allow us to create a hub and bring researchers from different areas of electrophysiology and auditory science to innovate and find novel solutions to improve outcomes,” says Dr. Joseph Chen, director of the Sunnybrook Otology-Skull Base Fellowship Program and provincial coordinator of the Ontario Cochlear Implant Program.

In cochlear implant surgery, which takes up to two hours, an electronic device is implanted into the patient’s skull and inner ear, and the patient wears an external piece of the device behind the ear.

The implanted device stimulates the hearing nerve directly, bypassing damaged parts of the inner ear and sending signals directly to nerves connected to the brain.

After the surgery, the device must be calibrated with a computer, and it takes up to four weeks for it to start working at full capacity.

“It’s a medical miracle that has actually outperformed our wildest dreams,” says Dr. Chen, who began performing cochlear implant surgery at Sunnybrook in 1992. The Sunnybrook program is the largest in Canada, performing 200 implants every year.

Now I can go to meetings and hear people at the other end of the table.
– Gord Mason

Dr. Chen, who performed Gord’s implant surgery, says that cochlear implants have traditionally been implanted in people who were completely deaf.

“Over time, we have learned that people with a bit of residual hearing can benefit the most,” he says.

Adults with normal language skills who lose hearing later in life are perhaps the best candidates for cochlear implants, says Dr. Chen. Within this group, patients who are younger may have physiological and cognitive advantages to perform better.

But after 30 years of implant surgery, “what we have realized is that everything else being equal, the biggest impact to performance is related to the intensity of rehabilitation immediately after activation in the first six to 12 months of use,” says Dr. Chen. “We are becoming more and more focused on this window.”

Andrew Dimitrijevic is research director for the Cochlear Implant Program at Sunnybrook. He says the Mason Fund will enable researchers to study the interaction between cochlear implants and the nerves that translate sound into signals to the brain.

“We look at the brain waves of people who are hard of hearing and also of people who hear normally to see how the brain responds to sounds, including specific sounds such as speech and noise,” says Dimitrijevic, who holds a PhD in neuroscience.

“It turns out that you need to reach the higher centres of the brain to understand and process speech,” he says. “We hear with our ears, but our brain is where the listening takes place.”

He explains that our brains store a “template” of sounds we have heard in the past that helps us understand what we’re hearing. Cochlear implant patients may not have heard these stored sounds for years, or ever, so they must build new connections between what the implants allow them to hear and how the brain listens to these sounds.

“We’re trying to understand these connections better, so we can improve how patients hear,” Dimitrijevic says.

The research is endlessly exciting to Gord.

“I’m funding an idea,” he says. “And when I talk to Andrew and hear his excitement, I’m convinced there’s something [big] coming.”

While hearing has made him more productive at work, Gord says the subtle joys are perhaps the most satisfying.

“Shortly after I had the second implant, I stayed late at the office. I came outside around 7 p.m., and I heard something strange,” he says.

It was a gentle noise that Gord could not recall ever hearing before.

“It was a soft rain,” he says. “It was such a pleasant sound.”

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A Toronto developer sets an example with a $10-million gift to establish the Peter Cipriano Centre for Seniors Health

Property developer Peter Cipriano has thought a lot about care for the elderly and how to keep seniors healthy and at home longer.

Already a strong supporter of the geriatric medicine division at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and a generous donor, he is now donating $10 million to create the Peter Cipriano Centre for Seniors Health. This centre will pioneer a new model of coordinated care, so seniors can stay healthy for as long as possible.

“My parents lived into their 90s and, like many, they were patients at Sunnybrook. This is a way to show my support,” says the founder and chief executive officer of the Vaughan, Ontario-based Goldpark Group.

One of the things Peter likes about supporting geriatric medicine is that he can see how his gifts have made a difference. His support over the years has helped Sunnybrook expand a unique fellowship program for hospitalists – the doctors who care for patients while they are in hospital.

All hospitalists accepted to Sunnybrook’s fellowship program now train in geriatric medicine. They return to work in hospitals across Canada and around the globe with an understanding of the complex health problems and specific needs of the elderly population.

Other educational initiatives Peter’s donations support include a residency position for physicians specializing in geriatric medicine to support tomorrow’s experts, and a geriatric medicine fellowship for an oncology resident at Sunnybrook’s Odette Cancer Centre to better understand the challenges older patients face during cancer treatment.

Peter’s generosity has also made it possible to renovate and refurbish two examination rooms in the Geriatric Medicine Clinic, which now offers quiet, comfortable environments for patients and their families.

Why does he care so much? In addition to being grateful for the care his parents received at Sunnybrook, “I’ve always felt the need to give back,” he says.

“I believe we as a community need to support our hospitals. Fundraising is a great way to do this.”

In September, Peter hosted the Circle of Friends Gala to encourage others to give.

“I wanted to extend an invitation to my peers and friends to join me in raising funds for Sunnybrook,” he says, “I had a matching challenge for my friends as I wanted everyone to be even more generous with their donations.”

Peter says that in thinking about where to focus his philanthropy, he chose Sunnybrook and seniors care. “Sunnybrook has always been special to me because they have helped and cared for many people in my family. They provided the best care possible.

“Geriatric care is important. Everyone ages, and as people age, daily tasks can become much more difficult to accomplish, and there can be many more health problems. Seniors need the right resources and sufficient support.”

He says his family found this support at Sunnybrook.

“The care my parents received is a motivator. It made me think about how many seniors and their caregivers would benefit from this new centre,” Peter says.

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Sandy Hudson says she received terrific care from everyone at Sunnybrook, but it was the woman who took care of the little things who made the biggest difference each day.

Filomena Madeira, patient service partner, was her personal care worker during Sandy’s three-week stay in late 2016.

“She added a third dimension to my stay. She always had a smile. She washed my hair – the personal things that I couldn’t do for myself,” Sandy says.

Filomena made such a big difference that Sandy designated her as one of Sunnybrook’s Champions of Care. The Champions of Care program is a meaningful way for patients to acknowledge exceptional care received from someone special at Sunnybrook – a doctor, nurse, technician, volunteer or any staff member – in the form of a donation.

Launched in 2007, Champions of Care was the first hospital- based employee recognition program of its kind in Toronto. It was set up to let patients recognize the individuals and teams who demonstrate and provide outstanding care and treatment – those who make a difference in someone’s Sunnybrook experience.

Each Champion of Care receives an acknowledgement card and a commemorative pin to wear in recognition of the donor’s generosity. In its first two months alone, more than 100 pins were given to hospital staff members, and to date the program has received more than $1.2-million in donations honouring more than 1,600 caregivers.

Filomena says she wears her pin proudly, and Sandy is still effusive with praise for her caregiver months after returning home from hospital and rehabilitative care. To Sandy, now 71, Filomena was a Champion of Care because she always made an extra effort to ensure she was comfortable during a harrowing time.

It started when Sandy was admitted to Sunnybrook for three weeks after returning from a vacation in Scotland. Feeling unwell, she thought she had a cold at first, but just kept getting worse.

Sunnybrook’s team diagnosed Sandy with an autoimmune disease. Until her trip, she had been healthy; when she was admitted to Sunnybrook, her condition was so severe that she could not walk and could do little for herself.

“The doctors were absolutely fabulous, and so was the nursing staff. When you’re there for a long time, though, the people you see most are your personal care workers. Filomena was just awesome,” Sandy says.

“At the beginning of my stay, I needed a lot of personal help. Whenever I asked, she took care of me.”

Filomena says Sandy was “wonderful,” but she gives all her patients at Sunnybrook the same kind of personal attention.

“When patients come, I introduce myself, tell them my name and let them know that whatever they need, I can help.” says Filomena, who has cared for patients at Sunnybrook for 29 years.

Sandy says after she came home from Sunnybrook, she received a survey in the mail asking whether she was happy with the care she received.

“I said yes to the nth degree for everything. I don’t in any way want to downplay the amazing work that everyone else did for me, but when the survey got to the part asking if I’d like to make a donation and nominate someone to their Champions of Care program, it had to be Filomena,” she says.

“She made such a big difference for me. When you can’t do things for yourself, that’s when you really notice.”

Filomena would help Sandy by doing everything from offering her a cup of tea to making sure she was not too warm or too cold. Perhaps her real secret, though, is that “I smile all the time. When I would come in and say good morning to Mrs. Hudson, she’d say, ‘You’re my angel!’ That was it.”

The generosity of donors like Sandy goes a long way to making sure that innovation at Sunnybrook is possible, in part because patients are able to choose which program area they would like their donation to benefit.

For patients, nominating a Champion of Care is a way of personalizing and recognizing the work individuals do at Sunnybrook; for recipients, it’s another reason to be proud of their dedicated service.

Today, Sandy’s condition is vastly improved. After her stay at Sunnybrook, she spent 10 days at St. John’s Rehab before returning home.

Now she is on medication that has stabilized her condition, making it possible for her to drive, sew and make meals in her own kitchen.

“The program I’m on through the rheumatology department appears to be working,” she says.

“I have to be really careful, but I’m feeling big-time better.”

» Learn more about the Champions of Care Program

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