Patient Stories | Mount Sinai Today

Creating a “Circle of CARE”

May 13, 2019 | Community, Patient Stories

Navjot Kauer, RN, left, and Wendy Chow with patient Mohammed Choudhury.

On a recent Friday afternoon, patient Mohammed Choudhury was delighted to see Navjot Kaur, RN, and Wendy Chow, a recent nursing school graduate and volunteer in the Care and Respect for Everyone (CARE) program, walk into his room on the sixth floor of the Klingenstein Clinical Center. CARE is a Mount Sinai volunteer program that helps promote mobility and physical activity in patients to improve patient outcomes.

The two assisted Mr. Choudhury as he walked down the corridor, making certain he did not lose his balance.

Before becoming a Mount Sinai clinical unit nurse, Ms. Kaur had been a CARE volunteer when she was a nursing student, and she was wearing an “I’m a proud CARE Volunteer Alum!” button on her uniform.

Today, she is one of several CARE alumni who mentor nursing students or recent graduates interested in becoming a CARE volunteer, an effort that not only enhances the overall program for patients but strengthens the pathway for these volunteers to become Mount Sinai staff.

Ms. Kaur says CARE has helped her form stronger bonds with patients. “Talking to people and providing comfort is very important,” she says. “Some people don’t have visitors, so this also helps change their mood.”

Established in 2012 in the Emergency Department, the CARE program now has more than 100 volunteers throughout The Mount Sinai Hospital.

“They do an excellent job,” Mr. Choudhury said after his walk.

The Mount Sinai Hospital Welcomes New Facility Dog

May 13, 2019 | Community, Featured, Patient Stories

Emergency Department technician Suzi Steele, left, stopped to greet Moby and his handler, Jaclyn Damiano, in the lobby of the Icahn Medical Institute on East 98th Street.

The Mount Sinai Hospital recently welcomed Moby as its newest four-legged employee in the Child Life and Creative Arts Therapy Department. The young, sweet-natured golden doodle now serves as the hospital’s third facility dog—along with Professor Bunsen Honeydew and Amos—offering attention and affection to faculty, staff, and patients.

“Animals create a therapeutic environment for patients, parents, and staff ,” says Diane Rode, MPS, Director of the Child Life and Creative Arts Therapy Department. When one of the facility dogs is at a child’s bedside, she says, doctors and nurses often take a moment to sit down, too, and the atmosphere surrounding the patient becomes calmer and more harmonized.

Like Professor and Amos, Moby visits patients and their families. But his main emphasis is supporting faculty and staff, and helping clinical units de-stress during the course of a normally hectic week or during times of sadness. Ms. Rode says she has seen the dogs have a profound effect on grieving staff members.

To some degree, Moby’s schedule for the first year will be open-ended. But, accompanied by his handler, Jaclyn Damiano, MPS, a licensed Creative Arts Therapist, he does have structured time with certain units at The Mount Sinai Hospital and during visits to Mount Sinai Queens.

Ms. Rode credits the Mount Sinai Health System’s leadership for recognizing the value of facility dogs and says she is grateful for the support of David L. Reich, MD, President of The Mount Sinai Hospital and Mount Sinai Queens, and Jonathan Kyriacou, MPH, Vice President, Hospital Operations, who helped bring Moby to Mount Sinai.

Nurse at South Nassau Communities Hospital Helps Save Man in Long Island Movie Theater

May 10, 2019 | Featured, Patient Stories

Shyvonne Allen-Ibitoye, right, a registered nurse at South Nassau Communities Hospital, and DeShawn Mason, the man she helped to save

Shyvonne Allen-Ibitoye woke up Easter morning intent on going to church. But instead, the registered nurse at South Nassau Communities Hospital took her son to a movie. As the movie was playing, she realized a man sitting a few rows back was having a heart attack and immediately began helping to revive him and get him to the hospital for treatment. “When I saw him awake in the hospital, it warmed my heart to know that he was ok,” she says.

Read the full story from South Nassau Communities Hospital

A Rare Bladder Condition, and in Need of a Kidney Transplant: Little Lexi’s Extraordinary Medical Journey

Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Featured, Patient Stories, Your Health

Lexi Isler got a kiss from her father, Luther, before the kidney transplant surgery in January.

In 2009, when a prenatal ultrasound showed an abnormal kidney, Luther and Ashley Isler knew that their daughter, Lexi, would be born with a urinary problem. What they did not expect, however, was that Lexi would also be born without a bladder, a condition known as bladder agenesis that has only 20 known survivors worldwide.

Today, 8-year-old Lexi is among those remarkable survivors as she continues an extraordinary medical journey supported by her loving family and an interdisciplinary team of Mount Sinai physicians that has included pediatric urologists and nephrologists, and transplant surgeons, along with nurses and countless other caring staff over the years.

When Lexi was 2 years old, doctors at Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital confirmed by magnetic resonance imaging that urine had been backing up into her kidney—because she did not have a bladder. While she was in diapers, not having a bladder was not immediately obvious, but as she grew older, Lexi would need a way to both hold and pass urine. Meanwhile, her kidneys—damaged by her urinary outflow anatomy—had been steadily deteriorating and doctors realized that she would eventually need a kidney transplant.

Lexi’s urology and pediatric doctors formed a close team to strategize about her case from the earliest stages. “Long before a transplant, our team first had to think about how to make a bladder and how to get it to work,” says Jeffrey M. Saland, MD, Chief of Pediatric Nephrology and Hypertension at Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital and Medical Director of the Pediatric Kidney Transplant Service.

When Lexi was 5 years old, Jeffrey A. Stock, MD, Associate Professor of Urology, and Pediatrics, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Chief of the Division of Pediatric Urology at Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital, performed the complex, six-hour surgery to create an artificial bladder.

“We removed part of her colon and connected the ends to create a bowel pouch that functioned as a bladder,” says Dr. Stock. “Then, we used her appendix to create a urethra to drain urine from the neobladder.” The neobladder can store, but not empty, urine so Lexi has learned to use a catheter in the bathroom to empty her new bladder. The neobladder procedure is rare. Dr. Stock, who specializes in the surgical reconstruction of genitourinary birth defects, has done only four such procedures in his 25 years of practice.

By January 2018, Lexi’s kidney function was so compromised that at one point, she was unresponsive for days. The situation remained critical all year with very little improvement, and in December 2018, the need for a kidney transplant could not be deferred. Fortunately for Lexi, when she was 3, her father had been identified as a match for her. “It was an easy decision,” says Mr. Isler. “I felt blessed that I was a match.”

Victoria Caselnova, RN, BSN, left, and Stacey Brooks, RN, BSN, with a smiling Lexi Isler on the day she was discharged from the hospital.

In January 2019, as Lexi was about to go into kidney failure, surgeons from the Recanati/Miller Transplantation Institute at Mount Sinai performed the transplant using her dad’s kidney. “We had all of our firepower available,” says Ron Shapiro, MD, Professor of Surgery, and Surgical Director of the Kidney and Pancreas Transplant Program, referring to the expert team of surgeons involved with the transplant and the bladder creation. A smiling Lexi was discharged after spending nine days in the hospital for the transplant surgery.

Still, says Dr. Saland, “This is a work in progress. Lexi remains at higher risk for urinary tract infections and we’ll need to make ongoing adjustments for drainage as well as in her anti-rejection medications. But at Mount Sinai, we believe we have all the expertise and resources we need to treat all aspects of Lexi’s condition.”

“I have the utmost respect for the doctors and nurses at Mount Sinai,” says Ms. Isler. “They all treated Lexi with so much respect and love. The nurses even came to her bedside when their shifts were over to paint with her.”

Despite periodic hospital stays, Lexi is happy and back at school, facing her health challenges with grace and an amazingly positive attitude for a girl her age, says Ms. Isler. Lexi recently found the courage to stand before her classmates and tell them about the condition she was born with and how it was treated. “Her classmates have been very supportive, and they don’t treat her like she’s different,” says Ms. Isler.

At home, the child who had been taking dance classes since the age of 2 has newfound energy and dances around the house with a lack of inhibition, Mr. Isler says. “With a lot of support, our goal is to enable Lexi to live a long, happy, and healthy life,” says Dr. Stock.

To learn more about organ donation, visit www.LiveOnNY.org.

Learn more about organ donation at LiveOnNY.org

White Coat Event Inspires Nursing Students

Mar 19, 2019 | Community, Patient Stories

The Phillips School of Nursing at Mount Sinai Beth Israel gave students white coats and a mission of compassionate care.

The Phillips School of Nursing at Mount Sinai Beth Israel recently held its second annual White Coat Ceremony for nursing students in the Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing program. The event, held on Tuesday, February 5, at Stern Auditorium, was designed to instill a commitment to providing compassionate care among the next generation of registered nurses.

The White Coat ceremony, long a rite of passage at medical schools, was introduced to nursing in 2014, said Elizabeth Cleek, PsyD, Chief Program Officer and Vice President of the Arnold P. Gold Foundation, a sponsor of the event. Dr. Cleek advised the students in the years ahead “to take that extra moment—despite the pressures, despite the new technologies that may hold some of the answers—to be fully present with the person or people in front of you.”

During the ceremony, each student was cloaked with a white coat provided by the School of Nursing and received a pin with a gold Mobius loop from the Gold Foundation that symbolizes the continuous bond of trust, respect, and communication that connects nurses with their patients.

“I leave you with this quote by Maya Angelou,” said the keynote speaker, Laly Joseph, DVM, DNP, APRN, Senior Associate Dean of the Phillips School of Nursing. “‘They may forget your name, but they will never forget how you made them feel.’”

Todd F. Ambrosia, DNP, APRN, FNAP, Dean of the Phillips School of Nursing, closed the ceremony by reminding students that “while nursing is rooted in knowledge and evidence-based practice, it is equally rooted in caring for the whole person, and not just an illness.” He also encouraged them “to always care for yourselves and for each other.”

A Celebratory Reunion for Pediatric Patients

Mar 19, 2019 | Community, Patient Stories, Pediatrics

Pediatric cardiology patients enjoyed popcorn, cotton candy, and face-painting at the 33rd Annual Valentine’s Reunion Party held on Wednesday, February 13, in the Annenberg West Lobby.

The carnival-themed event brought children and their families together with the doctors, nurses, and medical staff who previously administered vital care.

Organized by the Children’s Heart Center—located within Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital and part of an alliance with Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia—the festivities were also supported by the nonprofit organizations Project Sunshine, Harboring Hearts, and the Congenital Heart Defect Coalition.

“It is amazing to see the kids we take care of outside the clinical setting,” said Peter Pastuszko, MD, Co-Director of the Children’s Heart Center, and Chief of Pediatric Cardiac Surgery and Director of Pediatric Cardiovascular Services for the Mount Sinai Health System. “We may see some patients only once or twice after they are discharged. Parties like this are the best chance to see the results of our care and what we have been able to give them. It is incredibly rewarding.”