We’ll never forget the humanity SickKids showed amid the turmoil of our daughter’s sudden death

Everything happened quickly: the CPR; the ambulance arriving. This, just two days before our seven-year-old daughter Aliyah died.

A trip to the dentist had uncovered an arteriovenous malformation (AVM), a hidden condition in which Aliyah’s veins and arteries were a tangled mess in her jaw. This caused uncontrolled bleeding.

The only thing we could control was sending Aliyah to The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids). It was the best decision we could have made.

From the moment we arrived, to the moment we left two-and-a-half days later, Aliyah received world-class care. Doctors and nurses in the emergency department restarted her heart multiple times. Vascular surgeons, plastic surgeons, anaesthesiologists, and dentists got Aliyah through a six-hour surgery that repaired the AVM — though could not undo the damage caused by blood loss — and bought time. Critical care nurses, respiratory therapists and doctors tweaked medications, ventilator settings, and fluid levels almost minute-to-minute to give her brain a chance to recover. Social workers and grief coordinators made sure that when we left the hospital without our daughter, we had the resources we needed to survive.

And transplant surgeons brought added meaning — to her too-short life and the efforts of the SickKids teams that kept her alive — by placing Aliyah’s beating heart in the chest of another child.

Equally as important and perhaps more powerful than the technical expertise of the SickKids teams, was the incredible dose of humanity extended to us, our families and Aliyah.

At no point through this harrowing experience did we want Aliyah to be without us. Everyone made sure of that. Emergency staff found a place for us to be with Aliyah. In the critical care unit, nurses curated “our spot” at her side, complete with blankets to keep us warm.

Late one evening, we stood by Aliyah’s bed awkwardly trying to get out of the way of one of the nurses, Denise Ho, who was rearranging Aliyah’s stuffed animals to hold her in place — a lovely replacement for pillows. We apologized for making her job harder. “Well, I have three patients,” Denise said. “Aliyah needs you both here and healthy.”

Many times over those days we cried uncontrollably in any quiet space we could find, overwhelmed by emotion and grief. Early one morning, a housekeeping staff member found one of us in the hallway doubled-over, sobbing. She stopped her work and sat down, her presence a comfort.

That humanity extended right to the end.

On that final morning, Dr. Lennox Huang and Dr. Andrew Helmers, Aliyah’s critical care doctors, told us that Aliyah’s brain activity had stopped. There were no euphemisms. No ambiguity. Just the clear fact that Aliyah had died, despite the machines breathing for her and drugs urging her heart to beat. A horrendous reality delivered with compassion, empathy, and patience.

Nothing could have prepared us for saying goodbye to our seven-year-old daughter, who was healthy and vibrant two days earlier. But the SickKids team was prepared and caring.

Carey Forget, another critical care nurse, lovingly washed Aliyah’s hair and found a quiet space where we could spend the day lying beside her. It made the very end, surely the saddest, most awful time of our lives, meaningful. It gave us control over those final hours. And we used them to create some beauty, somehow.

A short time earlier, when there was still a sliver of hope that Aliyah would recover, our Rabbi, Tina Grimberg, dropped by the hospital. At one point, she brought us from the small, peaceful chapel near the critical care unit to a gallery overlooking the SickKids Atrium. She asked us to look around, to take in the immensity of the building. To reflect on the wonders, big and small, being performed in its many rooms. And then she said, “Why do you think we build a place like this? George, Sari, this building, SickKids, is a monument to hope.”

We wholeheartedly agree. SickKids is a monument to hope. And to humanity.

To learn more about Aliyah and her story, please visit medium.com/aliyah-rotmans-community.  

To make a donation in her name to SickKids Foundation, please visit fundraise.sickkidsfoundation.com/aliyah.

Torstar, the Star’s parent company, is in a fundraising and educational partnership with The Hospital for Sick Children to help raise $1.5 billion for new facilities. This content was produced by SickKids as part of that partnership.