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Khushi Patel stands in front of a child-size easel, deep in concentration.
Her black, shoulder-length hair is pulled into braided pigtails. She wears her favourite sunglasses - Scooby-Doo with pink rims and purple shades - even though she's indoors. And she is painting a flower using fat, goopy brush strokes.
Four months ago, this would have been an ordinary scene. Now it's something remarkable.
"She is using her right hand," explains her mother, Binita Patel, a pharmacy assistant.
On March 7, just before her scheduled lunch break, Ms. Patel received a call. A police officer informed her that a vehicle had smashed into Ms. Patel's 64-year-old father as he crossed a major intersection near his home in North York.
The driver had also hit five-year-old Khushi.
Ms. Patel was rushed in a police cruiser to the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, where she learned that her father, Patel Manubhai, had escaped with a broken leg. But Khushi lay on the hospital bed, tubes poking from her nose. She had sustained major neck and head injuries.
"My mind was blank," recalls Ms. Patel. "I thought she would never walk or talk again."
Emergency doctors are all too familiar with patients like Khushi. About a third of people brought into Canadian trauma wards with head injuries every year are children and teens, according to the most recent estimates from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Traumatic head injuries are the leading cause of death for Canadians 19 and under; the top two causes are falls and motor vehicle accidents.
Khushi emerged from intensive care 10 days after the accident. When Ms. Patel lifted Khushi's right hand and let it go, it dropped like a weight onto the hospital bed. Her right side was paralyzed.
When Khushi began her rehabilitation at Bloorview, she wore a halo to support her neck.
Physiotherapists worked on her balance, while occupational therapists worked on her normally dominant right hand. They also began training her left hand to hold things like a pencil - or a paintbrush.
Then, something promising happened: Khushi's right side began to gain strength. On a recent afternoon in June, Khushi pulled Ms. Patel around Bloorview's playroom with only a slight limp on her right side. She played Go Fish with nurses, using her right hand to draw cards.
Her mother laughs as she explains how she has to train Khushi, now 6, not to rely on her left hand so much.
Khushi left the rehab unit on June 27, but will continue to receive occupational therapy as an out-patient.
In September, she will begin Grade 1. Her teacher has promised not to give her too many writing assignments as her right hand heals.
Two steel rods in Khushi's neck mean she will never have full range of motion. But doctors say her chance for a full recovery is excellent. It will just take time.
"I always dream that she [will] be like normal," says Ms. Patel. "I always hope."
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STORIES FROM 3-WEST
At Bloorview Kids Rehab,
young brain injury survivors
begin their rehabilitation.
It's a road marked with hope,
struggles and small triumphs.Tomorrow
Ashley Ortizo, 13, shares what it's like to forget a friend's name.
Friday
Alysson Ordinario, 10, begins
the toughest phase of rehab:
life at home.
