Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Community, Pediatrics
A club sponsored by the Parenting Center at Kravis Children’s Hospital at Mount Sinai has inspired a love for running in about 70 patients ages 5 to 12. From April to June, the Mount Sinai Mighty Milers met on Wednesdays in Central Park to chat, stretch, and run on the half-mile East Meadow loop. Along the way, they were chaperoned by 20 volunteers, including medical students, residents, attendings, nurses, social workers, and support staff.
“Wednesday afternoon quickly became the highlight of the week for everyone involved,” says Keith J. Benkov, MD, Associate Professor of Pediatrics, and Gastroenterology, who was an organizer, along with Abby T. Klock, MS, Child Life Specialist; Katie Connolly, Program Coordinator, and Mariel Benjamin, LCSW, both of the Parenting Center; and Michael N. Yaker, MD, Assistant Clinical Professor of Pediatrics, and founding partner of Westside Pediatrics. The program will return in October. For more information, contact sinaimightymilers@mssm.edu.
Pictured above, Delilah Rodriguez (with a purple friend) and Ezra Rzetelny; George Hendy getting a high five from Michael N. Yaker, MD; and runners at the starting line.
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Breast Cancer, Community, Patient Stories
Ami Rogé with her physician, Stephen C. Malamud, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine (Hematology and Medical Oncology).
About 200 cancer survivors, their families and friends, and Mount Sinai faculty and staff, recently attended the 20th annual luncheon celebrating National Cancer Survivors Day®. At the event, held on Sunday, June 11, in The Mount Sinai Hospital’s Annenberg West Lobby, attendees enjoyed a performance by Ami Rogé, a concert pianist and breast cancer survivor who was treated at Mount Sinai Downtown-Chelsea Center. Steven J. Burakoff, MD, Dean for Cancer Innovation, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, discussed the state of cancer care. “Given our increasing success treating cancer, there are now more than 15.5 million cancer survivors in the United States,” he said. “We must focus more of our efforts on helping our patients cope as cancer survivors.”
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Community
Faculty and staff from the Milton and Carroll Petrie Department of Urology, along with their families and friends, enjoyed a healthy and rigorous hike in the Hudson Valley last spring, climbing and rock scrambling 1,260 feet above sea level at Breakneck Ridge near Cold Spring, N.Y. All of the hikers successfully reached the summit, as well as Raja, the family dog that belongs to Ash Tewari, MBBS, MCh, the Kyung Hyun Kim, MD, Chair of the Department of Urology (in yellow, holding Raja), and his wife, Mamta (far right).
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Community, Pediatrics
WATCH: Lorraine Rodriguez, MSN, BSN, RN, FNP, discusses her special connection with Make-A-Wish.
Two members of the Mount Sinai Health System, Lorraine Rodriguez, MSN, BSN, RN, FNP, and Samantha Vasquez, LMSW, were chosen last spring to promote World Wish Day® on behalf of the Make-A-Wish ® Foundation, an international organization that has granted the wishes of more than 400,000 seriously ill children. In the past few years, Ms. Rodriguez, a nurse practitioner with the Mount Sinai Epilepsy Center, and Ms. Vasquez, a social worker within the Pediatric Hematology-Oncology Division of The Mount Sinai Hospital, have referred more than 80 children to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. The organization’s stated goal is to grant one wish to every eligible child.
WATCH: Samantha Vasquez, LMSW, explains the healing power of wishes.
World Wish Day is an annual event that honors medical professionals, donors, volunteers, and sponsors, as well as the children and their families whose lives are touched by the granted wishes. Wishes have included visits with sports or musical celebrities, serving as a firefighter for a day, or receiving a toy playhouse.
Ms. Rodriguez was honored by being featured on a Make-A-Wish billboard in Times Square and by ringing the Nasdaq Stock Market bell at the start of business, tributes that she says brought tears to her eyes. Her patients’ wishes help them heal, Ms. Rodriguez adds. “When the children come for follow-up visits you see they’re smiling, jumping, having hope. You can sense that sparkle in their eyes. They’re happy.”
Ms. Vasquez was featured in an advertisement for Make-A-Wish that appeared in TIME magazine. “It is not easy for kids to undergo a severe treatment like chemotherapy,” she says. “When I talk to them about their wishes, they smile. It is rewarding to be able to witness that joy and hope.”
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Community, Featured, Patient Stories, Pediatrics
Aiden Schaefer, far right, and his brother, Mason, snuggle with Professor Bunsen Honeydew, Kravis Children’s Hospital’s new full-time employee.
Two-year-old Aiden Schaefer was battling leukemia, with long hospital stays, uncomfortable medical procedures, and time spent away from his twin brother, Mason, when a gentle young service dog, Professor Bunsen Honeydew, began keeping him company as part of a new program at Kravis Children’s Hospital at Mount Sinai. Denise Schaefer says her son Aiden “fell in love instantly” with the friendly golden doodle. Aiden’s experience “was not about the medicine or the doctors, it was about seeing Professor.”
Thanks to an innovative program, Paws & Play, supported by PetSmart Charities® at Kravis Children’s Hospital, the highly trained facility dog is now a full-time employee at Mount Sinai. Kravis launched the program—the first of its kind in New York State—with a grant from PetSmart Charities. Under the direction of handlers Ali Spike, MS, Certified Child Life Specialist, Toshiko Nonaka, MS, Certified Child Life Specialist, and Morgan Stojanowski,
Follow Professor Bunsen Honeydew’s adventures on Instagram.
Child Life Program Assistant Director, Professor works with patients in the Blau Center for Children’s Cancer and Blood Disease, the Alice Gottesman Bayer Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, and inpatient units.
Working in conjunction with the doctors and nurses who care for the physical well-being of patients, Professor provides emotional support. He helps to ease the pain or anxiety that accompanies medical procedures, and long hospitalizations and treatments, while improving the socialization, motivation, and overall temperament of pediatric patients.
“At Kravis, we are surrounded by excellence, great love, and care for families,” says Diane C. Rode, MPS, Child Life Program Director. “This is a magnificent opportunity for us to continue humanizing the health care we provide.”
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Community
From left: Amanda Burden, Training and Outreach Supervisor, SAVI, volunteer Latoya Bennett, and Silva Sergenian, MA, Sexual Assault Forensic Examiner Program and Volunteer Coordinator.
At an informational table in Guggenheim Pavilion, Mount Sinai’s Sexual Assault and Violence Intervention Program (SAVI) in April educated visitors about the community outreach and educational programming it provides. For more than 30 years, SAVI has offered free, confidential therapy and advocacy to survivors of sexual assault and intimate partner violence (IPV). Recent funding from the New York State Department of Health has expanded SAVI’s capacity to offer free workshops at community centers, schools, higher educational institutions, corporations, and organizations to increase awareness and strengthen best practices concerning prevention of sexual assault and IPV. SAVI has more than 150 active volunteers on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, who support survivors’ medical and police reporting options in the emergency room. The gender-inclusive volunteer program is currently recruiting through the end of September. Those interested should email savi@mssm.edu.
