Best care in the country!
Four years after Nick had a catastrophic snowboarding accident, he’s graduating on-time from high school with honours and on his way to McMaster University to study Life Sciences.
On February 23, 2005, 13-year-old Nick shattered his C5 vertebrae while on a school ski trip. He was instantly paralyzed and underwent seven hours of reconstructive surgery. When he arrived at Bloorview, he barely had any movement below the neck. After close to nine months as an inpatient, with his dad sleeping in a cot beside him and his mom visiting him during the day, Nick had restored most of his movement and was able to walk with a walker, write and play videogames—lots of videogames.
Now more than three years after his discharge from Bloorview, Nick, 18, walks with one cane indoors, two outside and uses a wheelchair for longer distances. He continues to go to physiotherapy at a clinic close to home. In the summer, Nick looks forward to returning to his job at Toronto Western’s Krembil Neuroscience Centre as a summer research intern.
“If it wasn’t for the excellent care Nick got at Bloorview, who knows where he’d be today and to think he’s going to university on-time in September—amazing!” says Nick’s mom Diane, who now works at Bloorview Kids Foundation.
Nick’s father Gerald, an advertising executive in Toronto, says “Nick had the best care in the country at Bloorview and that’s what got him back up on his feet. I know, because I lived there with him and saw the day in day out attention he got.”
More recently, Nick and his dad have started a paintball league where they organize and play games on weekends in a field close to home.
Nick says, “Bloorview provided me with the special care and attention I needed in the beginning of my recovery. It’ll always have a special place in my heart.”
