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Nicholas Wert and his parents spent much of the fraught first year of his life with a nurse at Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, so it made perfect sense to celebrate his college graduation, a once-improbable milestone, in the same company.
Flanked by his mother and father, Nancy and Jim Wert, the 27-year-old stopped into CHEO on Tuesday afternoon en route to his Algonquin College graduation ceremony to see the nurse who cared for him nearly every day for months in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit after he and his twin brother Patrick were born 14 weeks premature.
“It was a powerful connection then, and it still is,” said Debora Hogan, now an outpatient clinic nurse at CHEO. Before Tuesday, it had been about 10 years since she last saw Nicholas. She’d been out of touch with the Werts until Nancy reached out a week ago to extend an invitation to Nicholas’s graduation. Hogan opted to meet with the family at the hospital before the ceremony.
“He inspires me … he’s inspired me since birth,” Hogan said.
On Tuesday, Nicholas spoke with pride about his passion for martial arts, travel and his hope to find a stable job after graduation. “I’m more of a hands-on type of guy” who enjoys working outside, and with people, he said. He’s planning his next move from the family farm near Avonmore, 25 kilometres northwest of Cornwall.
It’s the kind of life his parents were once unsure he’d ever be able to experience. Four months after his birth, doctors told them their son had suffered a brain injury on top of other health challenges. The cause wasn’t clear — it occurred during a round of intubation, necessary to help him breath — and the prognosis was equally murky.
The Werts were told Nicholas probably wouldn’t comprehend his parents as his mother and father, and to prepare for the possibility of his needing institutional care into adulthood.
While his life today isn’t without its challenges, it’s a fair cry from the future those doctors once presented. After finishing high school at a school in Brantford for people with visual impairments, he went on to upgrade his grades to satisfy Algonquin College admission requirements, completed a modified degree in Recreation and Leisure Services, and landed on the Dean’s Honour List.
“He’s blessed with patience, and he perseveres. He’s diligent,” Jim Wert said of his oldest son, one of four.
“Given where we were 27 years ago, I’d have bet you the farm and said I’m not so sure that we were going to climb that mountain, but he did.”
On the earliest days of that climb, Nancy Wert recalled how integral Hogan and the team at CHEO were when it came to coping with Nicholas’s then-devastating prognosis.
After receiving the news, she remembered Hogan came to find her in the parking lot — where the two sat in Nancy’s vehicle while she digested the latest in a seemingly unending series of health complications her twins were suffering.
“Deb was unbelievable with us as a family. It wasn’t very pretty all the time. There were so many ups and downs, emotionally a roller coaster,” Nancy said, explaining why she elected to ask Hogan to share in Nicholas’s most recent milestone.
Though Patrick, progressing well, was able to go home a few months after his birth, Nicholas spent nearly all of his first year at CHEO. But he, too, eventually got to return to the farm with his family, and embark on a life that’s seen him travel across the country to volunteer, complete work placements at local organizations, and live in residence at college.
Returning on the day of his graduation to the hospital where he fought for his life was a humbling and emotional experience, Nicholas said.
“We only did so much to help him, but he had to pull his own strength to survive,” Hogan said.
查看原文...
Flanked by his mother and father, Nancy and Jim Wert, the 27-year-old stopped into CHEO on Tuesday afternoon en route to his Algonquin College graduation ceremony to see the nurse who cared for him nearly every day for months in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit after he and his twin brother Patrick were born 14 weeks premature.
“It was a powerful connection then, and it still is,” said Debora Hogan, now an outpatient clinic nurse at CHEO. Before Tuesday, it had been about 10 years since she last saw Nicholas. She’d been out of touch with the Werts until Nancy reached out a week ago to extend an invitation to Nicholas’s graduation. Hogan opted to meet with the family at the hospital before the ceremony.
“He inspires me … he’s inspired me since birth,” Hogan said.
On Tuesday, Nicholas spoke with pride about his passion for martial arts, travel and his hope to find a stable job after graduation. “I’m more of a hands-on type of guy” who enjoys working outside, and with people, he said. He’s planning his next move from the family farm near Avonmore, 25 kilometres northwest of Cornwall.
It’s the kind of life his parents were once unsure he’d ever be able to experience. Four months after his birth, doctors told them their son had suffered a brain injury on top of other health challenges. The cause wasn’t clear — it occurred during a round of intubation, necessary to help him breath — and the prognosis was equally murky.
The Werts were told Nicholas probably wouldn’t comprehend his parents as his mother and father, and to prepare for the possibility of his needing institutional care into adulthood.
While his life today isn’t without its challenges, it’s a fair cry from the future those doctors once presented. After finishing high school at a school in Brantford for people with visual impairments, he went on to upgrade his grades to satisfy Algonquin College admission requirements, completed a modified degree in Recreation and Leisure Services, and landed on the Dean’s Honour List.
“He’s blessed with patience, and he perseveres. He’s diligent,” Jim Wert said of his oldest son, one of four.
“Given where we were 27 years ago, I’d have bet you the farm and said I’m not so sure that we were going to climb that mountain, but he did.”
On the earliest days of that climb, Nancy Wert recalled how integral Hogan and the team at CHEO were when it came to coping with Nicholas’s then-devastating prognosis.
After receiving the news, she remembered Hogan came to find her in the parking lot — where the two sat in Nancy’s vehicle while she digested the latest in a seemingly unending series of health complications her twins were suffering.
“Deb was unbelievable with us as a family. It wasn’t very pretty all the time. There were so many ups and downs, emotionally a roller coaster,” Nancy said, explaining why she elected to ask Hogan to share in Nicholas’s most recent milestone.
Though Patrick, progressing well, was able to go home a few months after his birth, Nicholas spent nearly all of his first year at CHEO. But he, too, eventually got to return to the farm with his family, and embark on a life that’s seen him travel across the country to volunteer, complete work placements at local organizations, and live in residence at college.
Returning on the day of his graduation to the hospital where he fought for his life was a humbling and emotional experience, Nicholas said.
“We only did so much to help him, but he had to pull his own strength to survive,” Hogan said.
查看原文...
