Lived experience 'helps me go to the darker places with families'

By Louise Kinross Holland Bloorview social worker Val Lusted has spent almost 20 years working with youth with brain injuries caused by illness or trauma, and those hospitalized for rehab after bone surgeries or spinal-cord injury. Of course, that also meant working with parents who were under extraordinary stress and emotional upheaval. Val has always been a dear friend of mine, and I recall several times when, at my urging, she stepped out...

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Meet Karmzah, a heroine with cerebral palsy and super powers

By Louise KinrossFarida Bedwei is a Ghanaian software engineer who's launching a new comic book with a super hero who has a disability. Farida, who has cerebral palsy, loved comics as a child, but never saw any characters who looked like her. So she created Karmzah, a no-nonsense warrior whose crutches give her the power to fight, run, flip and fly. Karmzah will be available online on the Afrocomix app in the Google Play store at the...

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Her son's stroke puts a Nunavut doctor on the other side of care

By Louise Kinross Family doctor Madeleine Cole works at a 25-bed hospital in Iqaluit doing emergency medicine and delivering babies. She also flies in to remote Nunavut villages to run clinics for the largely Inuit population. But last year, Madeleine found herself on the receiving end of medicine. During an idyllic day of swimming at a Quebec cottage, her 11-year-old son Jayko (above) became seriously ill and was later diagnosed with a...

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'My Beijing' is about the adventures of a girl and her grandfather

By Louise Kinross My Beijing: Four Stories of Everyday Wonder is a gorgeous watercolour children's book by Nie Jun that was released in September. According to Kirkus Reviews: "A young Chinese girl and her grandpa navigate life's challenges and joys in a small neighbourhood of Beijing. In this graphic-short story collection, the author introduces readers to Yu'er, a girl with an unspecified physical disability that limits her mobility, and her...

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My daughter is not an animal at the zoo

By Christina HerbersWe saw pandas! We saw lemurs! We saw bears and zebras and hippos. We were just a family visiting the zoo. And then we heard it: “Mom, I don’t like her face.” And, “Dad, what is that face?” And we saw you shooing your kids away from us, as if we were somehow contagious. And oh, the staring! Yep, this still happens to us. In fact, it happened on our summer family trip to the Calgary zoo. On a brighter note, there was an older...

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Weight 'talks' leave autistic youth feeling blamed, shamed

By Louise KinrossObesity in children is one of the most serious public health challenges according to the World Health Organization. Children with autism are more likely to have higher weights because they’re often less active, can have unusual eating patterns, and may take medication that causes significant weight gain. The literature encourages doctors to talk to children about the risk of unhealthy weight, but to date there’s been no...

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How vulnerable brains find workarounds is this scientist's passion

Photo and interview by Louise KinrossDr. Tomáš Paus is fascinated by brains—not individual brains, but the study of hundreds of thousands of them. As a neuroscientist, he studies how our genes, and our physical and social environments growing up, influence our brains. Why do some children’s brains find workarounds to compensate for early adversity—such as premature birth—while others don’t? And in children with brain-based disabilities like...

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U of T course makes room for kids who grow 'sideways'

Photo by the University of Toronto By Louise KinrossA couple of years ago I connected with Anne McGuire, an assistant professor in the Equity Studies Program at the University of Toronto, after she co-wrote a critique of the Hospital for Sick Children's SickKids VS ad from a disability perspective. Since then I learned that Anne teaches a class called Disability and the Child. It draws on history, psychology, neuroscience, policy studies...

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