Cushioning the blow for heart patients
Royal Victoria Hospital volunteer’s pillow project aids cardiac recovery
You could call Barbara Brock someone with a lot of heart.
The longtime Royal Victoria Hospital volunteer and auxiliary member was working on the wards at the Pine Ave. hospital 15 years back when she noticed that patients who had undergone open- heart surgery were using bunched- up towels against their chests as they did physiotherapy exercises to help with their recovery.
Volunteers would sometimes bring in stuffed animals for them, but the patients, mainly men, did not warm to the furry creatures. “I went home and thought about it,” Brock recalled, “and said, ‘ Wouldn’t it be nice if each of them got a red heart- shaped pillow?’ ”
And so the Helping Heart Pillow Project was born.
“I called someone I knew and said I wanted to start a heart pillow project — and needed somebody who makes pillows.”
The friend put her in touch with a manufacturer of dog beds, who made the pillows according to the specifications of then- chief of cardiac surgery at the Royal Victoria; the program, launched in 2001, was successful from the outset and Brock has worked to have the helping heart pillow project implemented in other hospitals.
Thank- you notes and donations are received by the auxiliaries, “and the patients go home with the pillow as their badge of courage,” she said.
In 2005, when former United States president Bill Clinton underwent open- heart bypass surgery, Brock sent him one of the heart- shaped pillows: In his note of appreciation, he said he was touched by her “thoughtfulness and generosity.”
She was honoured by the Canadian Association of Health Care Auxiliaries with the CARE Award for the project.
“It’s a wonderful project,” said Nancy Rubin, director of the auxiliary at the Jewish General Hospital, where the pillow project is also in place. “The pillows have a lot of benefits for post- cardiacsurgery projects.”
Brock likes to describe herself as “an idea person. That’s my role,” she said. “I have the idea for you — and now it’s up to you to develop it. I step away.”
One of her more recent ideas had to do with using obsolete incubators, no longer useful to patients, as fundraising tools for new incubators and other muchneeded equipment. The old incubators are converted to serve as oversized piggy banks and people who pass them in hospital lobbies or wherever they’re set up are encouraged to donate spare change. Fundraising aside, a goal is also to raise awareness of the work done by neonatal intensivecare units.
Brock’s three sons, like her, were born at the Royal Victoria: All were small at birth and all spent time in incubators. One was two- months premature and weighed just three pounds when he was born. “He was in the premature nursery for a long time, so I know how important it is to have state- of- the- art incubators,” she said.
The fundraising incubator in the lobby of the Jewish General has collected $ 20,000 since it was put into place in November of 2013, Rubin noted.
A new auxiliary fund, the Tiny Miracle Fund, was born out of the incubator project, and to date it has raised $ 250,000 through various fundraising projects. Rubin explained that the auxiliary has committed $ 500,000 to the hospital’s new neonatal intensive- care unit, set to open in 2016, for incubators and other life- sustaining equipment.
Brock said she intends to propose the incubator project to other hospitals in the spring. “Good ideas are meant to be shared.
“I try to give back what I have received all my life — good things,” she said. “And I think that helps me to accomplish things.”
It was a life that helped to give her a measure of self- confidence, she said, and taught her valuable skills — the importance of punctuality, for one, and the value of thinking before speaking. “Words spoken do not disappear.”
Her hospital work has highlighted for her the importance of checking on people who are sick. “When somebody is ill, a personal telephone call is like medicine in the healing process,” she said.
Brock turned to volunteer work once her boys were grown and “it was payback time,” she said. “I spent all my life with a man who was clever and he taught me how to use my brain, remembering things — and it is still working for me at my age.”
Her husband, an engineer and the international president of the Mensa organization during the 1980s, was among the founders of Jean Drapeau’s Civic Party of Montreal and a city councillor for many years. He died at 73 of acute myeloid leukemia — and then seven years later, in 2004, Brock’s middle son, Bill, learned he had the same disease.
A stem- cell transplant from one of his brothers helped him to survive and the Montreal lawyer has become a major fundraiser for blood cancer research and education at the Université de Montréal and Hôpital Maisonneuve- Rosemont. In February, to mark the 10th anniversary of his recovery, the university and the hospital announced the establishment of the Maryse and William Brock Chair in Applied Research in Stem Cell Transplants.
Through various initiatives, including cycling across Europe and publishing a coffee- table book featuring stories of blood cancer survivors, Bill Brock has raised $ 2 million of the $ 3 million required for the chair. You could call Bill Brock someone with a lot of heart, too.
I try to give back what I have received all my life — good things. And I think that helps me to accomplish things.