I'm not okay with disability hate being confused with science

By Louise Kinross I didn't want to write about this. But I couldn’t let these comments (scroll to the bottom of this page for the full passage) about people with Down syndrome in an academic journal produced at Oxford go unchallenged.We’re all familiar with Peter Singer, the philosopher at Princeton University who believes human value is earned by what you do intellectually and physically—not inherent.In 2009, Singer wrote a piece...

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'I come from a family of nurses'

By Louise Kinross Caroline Ivorra (left) is a registered nurse on Holland Bloorview’s brain injury rehab team. She works with children who are hospitalized as a result of brain trauma or illness. Both of her parents are nurses, and her mother Marion worked for years on our complex continuing care unit. Thanks to physiotherapist Kelly Brewer for suggesting Caroline for our series of candid interviews with clinicians and researchers.BLOOM: How...

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Moving from bedside to clinic broadens a nurse's perspective

By Louise KinrossNancy Campbell (left) has worked as a registered practical nurse at Holland Bloorview for 15 years. She was hired straight out of nursing school, and worked the first 12 years with children on our complex continuing care (CCC) unit. She then moved to outpatient services to work in our hypertonia, spina bifida and Rett syndrome clinics. Rohan Mahabir suggested Nancy for our candid interviews on what it means to work in children’s...

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'He's a pretty normal dad'

By Louise Kinross “When I was seven, I asked when I was going to get my chair,” says Elijah Wangeman, 14 (above left), in an unedited version of My Dad Matthew. The six-minute film is about Elijah’s life with his dad Matthew (right), who has cerebral palsy, uses a wheelchair and communicates by moving a pointer on his helmet to letters on a board. For Elijah, Matthew is “a pretty normal dad.” So as a child, Elijah says he imagined that he...

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Dress rehearsal

By Louise Kinross My son is taking part in an interactive play called What Dream It Was at the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre this weekend. He is the flying jokester (above), one of the creatures in a magical forest inspired by Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. He will be part of a shadow performance and lantern parade, assist at the potion-making station and sneak around to stick messages on people's backs (the jokester part).  This...

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With mind-reading device, 'locked-in' people say they're happy

By Louise Kinross Patients with no control over their bodies answered questions with a brain-computer interface that learned to read their mental “yes” or “no” in a groundbreaking study in PLOS Biology. The four paralyzed patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), who are described as being "locked-in," learned to answer personal questions like “You were born in Berlin” and open-ended questions like “Are you happy?” by thinking...

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'Passport' helps parents plan move from hospital to home

By Louise Kinross A parent who spent 16 months at her daughter’s bedside at Holland Bloorview has given a gift to other parents of inpatients. The Transition Passport is a binder that helps parents organize their child’s health information and plan for the extensive equipment and supports they may need to move back home. The idea came from Sadia Qureshi, whose daughter Zoya had been a healthy six-year-old until she woke one morning seizing....

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