The couple pledged to one another that if they became financially able, they would give back to the country that had provided them with a safe refuge. The Nanjis have made good on their promise.

Respected and admired within and beyond their Ismaili community, the Nanji family’s legacy of philanthropy is remarkable. They have donated millions of dollars to causes that are close to their hearts. Sunnybrook is one of the fortunate recipients.

Mr. Nanji is president and CEO of Belle-Pak, one of Canada’s Top 50 Best Managed companies. He has also been recognized as one of Canada’s Top 25 Immigrants, was awarded Male Entrepreneur of the year by the Indo-Canada Chamber of Commerce and won the Positive Aging Award in 2015.

The Nanjis’ generosity is likely to touch the lives of many patients who visit Sunnybrook.

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“My passion is to help youth who struggle with serious mood disorders that make everyday life a challenge”

– Pyarali Nanji

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Their most recent donation means that more patients will be rapidly diagnosed by some of the most advanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines available. Once installation is complete, Sunnybrook will have four state-of-the-art MRIs, one fully paid for by the Nanji family.

“MRI impacts patients throughout the hospital every day,” says Dr. Masoom Haider, chief of Sunnybrook’s Department of Medical Imaging. “We use MRI to detect life-threatening conditions. We use it to guide precision treatments, like cancer surgery and radiation. And its importance only continues to grow as we conduct research that pioneers new uses for MRI.”

The Nanjis’ involvement with Sunnybrook stretches beyond their gifts. They strive to better understand the hospital’s needs by making regular visits and talking to doctors, researchers and hospital staff.

It’s a dynamic established more than a decade ago, when they first learned of a growing need to support adolescents living with mood disorders. Their donation toward brain sciences acknowledged an area of health care that, at the time, wasn’t getting much philanthropic support. Other donors soon came forward, helping turn Sunnybrook’s youth psychiatry division into the largest in Canada.

“My passion is to help youth who struggle with serious mood disorders that make everyday life a challenge,” Mr. Nanji says.

The Nanji Family Foundation continued to support Sunnybrook, contributing to the expansion and renovation of the emergency department and creation of the Nanji Emergency Response Centre, which serves patients with acute needs and provides dedicated space for emergency psychiatric patients.

The foundation next made a major investment in two critical areas: the Nanji Ambulatory Centre, which occupies 30,000 square feet and is the location of Sunnybrook’s out-patient clinics for dermatology, ophthalmology and vision sciences, plastic surgery and rheumatology, and the four-floor expansion of Sunnybrook’s main wing. This helped to complete the world-class Women & Babies Program facility.

Many life-saving and patient-care improvements at Sunnybrook over the past 12 years can be traced back to the promise Mr. Nanji made to himself as he arrived at his new home in 1972.

“Giving back to a community that has given so much to us is just the right thing to do,” Mr. Nanji says.

Photography courtesy of North York General Foundation

The post Sharing the wealth of their new life appeared first on Your Health Matters.

Prince Amponsah: “Sharing my story helps me. That’s why I do it. It gives people pause when I’m positive.” (Photograph by Tim Fraser)

One of the first signs of trouble was an ominous “whoosh” sounding throughout the apartment, then the smell of smoke, then eye-searing heat.

This is nearly all Prince Amponsah remembers about his survival of a devastating November 2012 apartment fire – one that scorched 68 per cent of his body, damaged his lungs and led to the amputation of his lower arms.

Prince focuses now on the support of family and friends, and his connection to the Sunnybrook team that saved his life, shepherding him through a three-week-long coma, more than 40 surgeries, two years of intensive rehabilitation and finally reintegration into a society built for people with four working limbs.

He is among the more than 250 people admitted each year to the Ross Tilley Burn Centre, and the many who continue their care at St. John’s Rehab – home to Ontario’s only burn rehab program – to rebuild their lives. Surgeons, nurses, physiatrists, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, respiratory therapists, speech language pathologists, dietitians, pharmacists and social workers form a dedicated team that guides patients through a recovery that can seem elusive to those who have lost most of their skin.

“The people around me are so strong. It gives me no excuse to give up,” Prince says. “Sunnybrook is very uplifting. It’s an interesting combination of seriousness and fun.”

Prince’s family moved from Ghana to Canada when he was a baby. Following the death of his father, when Prince was 12, his mother remarried. His mother and sister always joked with him as a child that he was too cheery.

They lived in Mississauga, Ont., where Prince became friends with Pawel Tosiek, who, years later, would be the roommate to drag him from the fire at their four-bedroom walk-up in Toronto’s west end.

In the months leading up to the blaze, he and Tosiek were enjoying living with two other friends close to downtown restaurants and the theatres where Prince dreamed of one day performing. He had already acted at the Shaw Festival and was looking for film roles.

The month before the fire, there was another blaze a few blocks away; it seemed like something that happened to other people. “It was close enough, but not close enough to be harmful,” Prince says. “When you see a fire truck, you don’t think who’s in harm’s way. Now when I see one, I want to high-five the firefighters: ‘Keep going, thank you for your work.’”

Then came that awful night in November.

Prince had lost consciousness by the time he arrived at Sunnybrook. His sister took charge, waiting for a prognosis before alerting their mother and siblings who were in Ghana at the time. She gave consent to amputate – first to the wrist on the left arm, and next above the elbow, toward the shoulder on the right arm.

Tosiek, who had run back into the engulfed apartment to save Prince when he realized he was still inside, remembers his friend’s injuries in horrifying detail. Choking through the darkness and intense heat, he encountered Prince – alive, but trapped. “Prince had dragged himself to the top of the stairs,” he says. “His legs were on fire. He was stuck on a beam.”

He carried Prince’s limp body down several flights of stairs. The early morning light illuminated a gory sight: “His fingers were grey, like boiled sausages. It was like a nightmare we couldn’t wake up from.”

Sunnybrook doctors placed Prince in an induced coma. “Noticeably absent from the doctor’s prognosis was an assurance that Prince would live,” Tosiek says.

When he regained consciousness three weeks later, they had to break the news of what the fire had done to his body.

“I kept asking for a pen and paper. I never really took in what they were saying [about his injuries]. I was trying to maintain a cloud of positivity,” Prince says. “One day, I was strong enough to lift my head. A shiver went through my body. I wondered where my hands had gone. Where did they go? They took part of me. There was definitely some grieving.”

Grieving limb loss and experiencing “phantom limb” sensations are some of the early and unique challenges amputees face, says Dr. Amanda Mayo, physiatrist and amputee specialist at Sunnybrook’s St. John’s Rehab and a member of Prince’s care team.

Prince’s injuries were especially complex, she says. In addition to the double amputation, much of the skin from his thighs was grafted to reconstruct his arms, torso, cheeks and lips. The part of his scalp where his hair had once been was reconstructed with skin from his back.

The depth of the burns and subsequent grafting made the range of motion in his shoulders particularly difficult. Good range of motion is essential for prosthetic use so patients can function independently.

Prince spent nine months in hospital, with the latter six months spent participating in therapy seven days per week as an inpatient at St. John’s Rehab. He would then need an additional 18 months of rehabilitation as an outpatient, two to three times each week. Rehab was a slow but steady road to regaining many of the basic abilities he had lost through his injuries. His strength training consisted of squats and lunges, as well as muscle work on the leg press, treadmill and stationary bike. Regaining balance meant many hours on the Bosu (a rubber balance ball) lifting his leg to the side and front in ballet-like positions to maximize core strength. His skin and scar tissue also required continued treatment.

This rehabilitative work at St. John’s Rehab helped to make him as independent as possible. “I figured out how to hold my toothbrush between the end of my stumps when I finally achieved enough range of motion,” Prince says. “I place the toothpaste between my knees and twist the lid off again with my stumps and squeeze it out. I fortunately have enough control, strength and range to do this thanks to all of the exercises I learned from therapy.”

Prince was also outfitted with a left arm prosthesis; his right arm being too short to make him a candidate for two. The prosthesis is myoelectric – using muscle signals to operate a battery powered hand. It’s heavy and as expensive as a luxury car. His friends, including Tosiek, helped raise over $30,000 to buy it, and although he’s grateful to have it, Prince is keen to use something lighter and more agile. He is now being fitted with another prosthesis that uses a simpler harness and hook design and is adaptable for different tools in hopes of optimizing function.

“Prince is a very adaptable individual,” Dr. Mayo says. “He has been phenomenal with his spirit. Many patients would give up and isolate themselves. Prince has been the opposite of that. This could have gone in a totally different direction if he had a different attitude.”

Prince and St. John’s Rehab physiatrist Dr. Amanda Mayo. (Photograph by Doug Nicholson)

Prince smiles a lot. He encourages people to ask him about his injuries, and when people instinctively reach to shake his hand, Prince chuckles: “I can only hug now.”

To the man on the street who once cried at his appearance, Prince says he is grateful and was comforted by the man’s empathy. He says losing so much of his skin gave him an unexpected sort of freedom. “I don’t worry about the small things,” he says. “Sometimes I hear people complaining about work or whatever, and I wish they wouldn’t let things get to them so easily.”

He recalls the days when he worried about how he looked in shorts. Today he says he is delighted to be able to walk.

Now 30, Prince is excited to be acting again. “I didn’t think I would act again. It’s a very superficial industry. Are there roles for me? But I’m getting back into it. Well, why not?”

Prince has just finished a run in a play called Contempt at Toronto’s Storefront Theatre and is preparing for a new production this summer. He also wants to pursue a degree in social work. Meanwhile, surgeries and exercise will continue indefinitely. He’s regaining muscle mass and his sense of purpose.

“Sharing my story helps me. That’s why I do it. If you hide it, it gives power to what happened. It gives people pause when I’m positive,” says Prince. “I would just hope that whatever others are going through, that they see me and know that they can get through it. Or maybe they can’t, but it’s worth a try.”

The post After nearly losing his life in a house fire, this actor has returned to the stage appeared first on Your Health Matters.

Kerry Comiskey recounts the events of September 1, 2013, in an even tone, rationing out detail after detail, of the hours before a cauldron of boiling water spilled over the lower half of his body.

There was a game with neighbouring cottagers, the beloved family dog always nearby, a slow walk up a steep flight of stairs to the corn roast, an unlucky stumble and then panic. His wife, Teresa, recalls catching a glimpse of a half-naked man running into the forest, her mind imagining it was a “wild man,” rather than her husband of 37 years.

They both reach easily for plot points: someone cooling Kerry with water from a garden hose, the 911 call, the improbability of nurse, Pam Gullo, being among the crowd of Labour Day partygoers. Speaking about it nine months later, there are silences that seem weighted by whatever bafflement and gratitude follow from surviving an accident that leaves skin from almost 50 per cent of your body sloughing off.

“I remember the pain was so excruciating,” Kerry says. “I didn’t say much.

“My eyes kept going back. I am thinking, ‘I am not going to make it. I didn’t think I was going to go this way.’”

Kerry is one of hundreds of people treated each year at Sunnybrook’s Ross Tilley Burn Centre. Like many others, he arrived by helicopter as soon as doctors in cottage country determined that the critical state of their 61-year-old patient would be better managed at a world-class institution. Though an IV was implanted on Kerry’s hip, pulsing heavy drugs through his system, he was lucid enough for the dining room table-sized slab of stainless steel to make an impression. “That’s where they hose you down,” Kerry explains.

Kerry’s 4 a.m. admittance marked the beginning of a months-long recovery process that would reshape his understanding of suffering, compassion, team work and gratitude. “What impressed me about the burn unit was how everyone worked as a team,” he says. “It’s a family. When you leave, you feel a loss. I cried.”

Social worker Anne Hayward is among the team of experts who made up Kerry’s care team. Every case is unique and can draw on a range of resources, including burn surgeons, nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, social workers, dietitians, pharmacists, speech language pathologists and psychiatrists. Hayward set about supporting Kerry, according to the needs he made known.

“Kerry’s number one concern was making sure his family was okay,” she says. “Kerry is a normal guy, with a normal family, who had an accident,” says Hayward. “The challenge was to get [him] back to a newnormal life.”

The solution was an approach that championed ongoing communication. Hayward’s support of the Comiskey family was pivotal, Kerry says. “I’ll never forget her. I progressively got stronger through compassion, care and encouragement.”

One of Teresa and Kerry’s three grown children was particularly fearful of seeing her father in pain. Hayward was there for their first visit. “I wanted her to see: ‘He’s still your dad,’” Hayward says.

Equally important was the care teams’ reference to and confidence in Kerry’s eventual recovery. They spoke about him returning to visit his care team after he was discharged. “When you see someone vulnerable, in their gown, we know that they will be better – they’ll one day be back in their street clothes – but, they don’t know that,” she says.

After about five weeks as an in-patient at Sunnybrook, Kerry was well enough to be discharged, but still required significant support. “I knew I was getting better when there was less blood on the bed,” he says, recalling how he was first able to gauge his progress.

Kerry was moved to Sunnybrook’s St. John’s Rehab, where a team of health professionals helped him improve what functionality he was beginning to regain. Staff at St. John’s Rehab help patients relearn skills so basic they are seamless to most people: doing up buttons, bathing, preparing meals. They helped Kerry manage his scars, improve his range of motion and provided psychological support, as necessary. Just as it had been at the Burn Centre, an interdisciplinary approach to patients is taken.

Though she did not work directly with Kerry, occupational therapist Shahzia Adatia says the central goals of each custom-designed care team designated to individual patients and their families are consistent. “There are a lot of variables with how someone is going to cope with their injury,” Adatia says. “There are a lot of people involved. We have all the science; the patient guides the treatment.” All therapies are dedicated to managing scars, maintaining range of motion and strength, and addressing psychological needs, she says.

Early in his recovery, Kerry was so resolute about his comeback that he considered choice irrelevant. “I have a will to live. I have a lot to live for: Teresa, my family, watching my kids grow up and settle, my friends. I wouldn’t give up.”

Less than a year after the accident, many of Kerry’s trips to Sunnybrook are voluntary. During a recent scheduled visit, a dermatologist took a biopsy to test for a malignancy. While the procedure was by some standards routine, performing a surgical technique on a swath of fragile skin that has been grafted and is healing daunts even an indomitable-spirited outpatient. “It really tests you. It tests your relationships. I live every day now with a greater sense of gratitude,” says Kerry. “I am realizing how special it is when you have great relationships.”

Between regular checkups, Kerry says he likes to visit with the medical teams that saved his life. “I have a huge sense of being grateful for what they’ve done for me and my family. I’ll never be able to thank them enough: Dr. Marc Jeschke [director, Ross Tilley Burn Centre] and the teams at the burn centre and St. John’s Rehab gave me my life back,” he says. “Anyone who faces a situation, they’re in good hands at Sunnybrook.”

The post How a serious burn patient got the right care at every stage appeared first on Your Health Matters.