PATIENTS AND PARENTS

‘We didn’t have to leave him’

Family says IWK staff made dealing with child’s illness easier.

August 2017 will be a month that is never forgotten by Jacqueline Jardine and Maurice Musial.

It was the month doctors found two open holes in the heart of their son, Kash Jardine.

Fear and worry overcame the couple as they waited for Kash to have open heart surgery at the IWK Health Centre in Halifax in November. But a lot of that fear was soothed by the medical professionals at the children’s hospital.

“It was amazing. They kept us updated through everything, through the whole process… they would come in every hour to tell us how Kash was doing,” Musial said.

“We couldn’t have asked for anything better. The whole staff was great.”

It wasn’t just updates on how the surgery was going that helped Jardine and Musial. Nurses also prepared the couple for what Kash would look like after surgery — hooked up to many machines, with tubes coming out of him and wires attached to him.

“Oh my God, I could cry right now (thinking about the stress relief we got from staff),” Jardine said.

“We didn’t have to leave him at all. We could stay right in the room. And there was a nurse by our side the whole time — they didn’t leave us alone.”

Kash, who turned 10 on May 6, was at the 34th annual IWK Telethon on Sunday at Centre 200 with his friend Samuel Khan, 10, and cousin Jackson Gerrow, 9. The three did the cheque presentation for their school, Bras d’Or Elementary. Students and staff raised $409 with teacher casual dress days and cool treat days.

Gerrow, from Georges River, and Khan, from Alder Point, both said they came to the event to show their support for the hospital and their friend. But Khan, like Kash, has firsthand experience with the IWK because he is a cancer survivor.

“I was there for almost a whole year. It was a pretty fun time there, but I was younger then,” he said.

Watching Kash laugh with his friends and complain to his parents about being hungry, it is easy to forget a year ago he couldn’t run or play like many of his friends.

“They had to stop his heart for six hours so they could operate,” said Jardine.

“Now he has a lot more energy. He rode his bike for the first time a month ago. He couldn’t do it before.”

The fundraiser raised more

than $6.5 million, a slight in- crease from 2017. Figures for

Cape Breton donations were unavailable at press time.

NIKKI SULLIVAN/CAPE BRETON POST Kash Jardine’s mother, Jacqueline Jardine, left, watches her son and his classmates do their cheque presentation with Sharon Cousins, a Sydney IWK Telethon committee member.

NIKKI SULLIVAN/CAPE BRETON POST Samuel Khan, 10, from left, Kash Jardine, 10, and Jackson Gerrow, 9, stand by a police car on display at the IWK Telethon on Sunday at Centre 200. Both Khan and Jardine have spent time in the IWK — Khan when he was battling cancer and Jardine when he...