Toronto General Hospital

Toronto General Hospital

Toronto General Hospital is one of Ontario oldest hospitals. It dates back to 1819 when the Loyal and Patriotic Society of Upper Canada organized a trust fund to support the construction of a hospital in the provincial capital, the Town of York.

Construction began in 1820 and the General Hospital of the Town of York was opened for patients in June 1829 at Simcoe and King Streets. As Toronto General, it expanded to Gerrard and Sumach in 1856 and then to College Street in 1913. The College Street location has since become the MaRS building, while Toronto General has spread out south along University Avenue.

TGH performed the world’s first successful single lung transplant in 1983, followed by the first double-lung transplant in 1986. In 1950, the first external heart pacemaker was used in an open-heart resuscitation.

In 1922, insulin was developed and saw its first clinical use in the treatment of diabetes on a young patient at Toronto General Hospital

The Toronto General Hospital, as a part of the University Health Network, has grown out of a series of mergers between a few hospitals. For instance, in 1986, the Toronto Western Hospital merged with the Toronto General Hospital becoming, respectively, the Toronto Western Division and the Toronto General Division of The Toronto Hospital. On January 1, 1998, the Toronto Hospital was amalgamated with the Ontario Cancer Institute/Princess Margaret Hospital, and in April 1999, the name was officially changed to the University Health Network.

In 2011, the University Health Network integrated with the Toronto Rehab Institute which has allowed to better serve the patients by bringing together acute hospital care with the rehabilitation care that so frequently follows a hospital stay.

Altogether, the Toronto General Hospital may be regarded as the development of the modern institution, and the citizens of Toronto have ample reason to be proud of it.

The hospital is located in the Discovery District of Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada and it is affiliated to the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine. The Hospital for Sick Children,the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and the Mount Sinai Hospital are located nearby.

The emergency department of the TGH treats about 30 thousand persons each year. The hospital also houses the major transplantation service for Ontario, performing heart, lung, liver, kidney, pancreas and small intestine, amongst others. In fact, the world’s first single and double lung transplants were performed at TGH in 1983 and 1986 respectively, as well as the world’s first valve-sparing aortic root replacement by Dr. Tirone David in 1992.

The hospital teaches resident physicians, nurses, and technicians, and conducts research through the Toronto General Research Institute.

The hospital is served by Queen’s Park subway station.

General Hospital Atrium. Me. Bell’s public service was recognized in 1989 when he was awarded the Order of Canada for his community service.On March 15, 1983, following major renovations, the wing was reopened and renamed in honour of Thomas J. Bell. This recognized his exceptional service to Toronto General Hospital over the course of his 16-year term as Chair of the Board of Trustees, and his outstanding leadership of the hospital’s renewal program campaign. Photo: © Megan Jorgensen (Elena).

Portico. General Hospital. The Portico Thomas J. Bell Wing. Thomas J. Bel, Q.C., M.C., C.D., B.Comm, M.D. (Hon). Chair, Board of Trustees, Toronto General Hospital (1966 – 1982). This majestic portico is the original entranceway to the Thomas J. Bell Wing. The building first opened on April 24, 1930, as the Private Patients’ Pavilion, and fast became known as a place of innovation and new technology. Photo: © Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

The Toronto General Hospital, as a part of the University Health Network, has grown out of a series of mergers between Toronto hospitals.

On March 15, 1983, following major renovations, the wing was reopened and renamed in honour of Thomas J. Bell. This recognized his exceptional service to Toronto General Hospital over the course of his 16-year term as Chair of the Board of Trustees, and his outstanding leadership of the hospital’s renewal program campaign.

Toronto Western Hospital. Krembil Neuroscience Center.

Toronto Western Hospital. In 1986, the Toronto Western Hospital merged with the Toronto General Hospital becoming, respectively, the Toronto Western Division and the Toronto General Division of The Toronto Hospital. On January 1, 1998, the Toronto Hospital was amalgamated with the Ontario Cancer Institute/Princess Margaret Hospital, and in April 1999, the name was officially changed to the University Health Network.

Toronto General Hospital. Emergency Room.

In 1855 a new home for the hospital was built on the north side of Gerrard Street, east of Parliament, using a design by architect William Hay.

In 2011, the University Health Network integrated with the Toronto Rehab Institute which has allowed to better serve the patients by bringing together acute hospital care with the rehabilitation care that so frequently follows a hospital stay.

The General hospital is located in the Discovery District of Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada and it is affiliated to the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine. The Hospital for Sick Children, the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and the Mount Sinai Hospital are located nearby.

Robert McEven Atrium. The hospital teaches resident physicians, nurses, and technicians, and conducts research through the Toronto General Research Institute.

llen and Martin Prosserman. Centre for Neuromuscular Diseases, Goodlife Fitness Cardiovascular Rehabilitation Centre, Ted Rogers Heart Function Centre, Thomas I. (Toby) Hull Heart Rhythm Centre, Esther and Harold Halperin Health Research Centre. Robert R. McEwen Atrium

The hospital started as a small shed in the old town and was used as a military hospital during the War of 1812, after which it was founded as a permanent institution – York General Hospital – in 1829, at John and King Streets (now home to Bell Lightbox).

Toronto General Hospital is the home of the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre, which is the largest open heart centre in Canada and is ranked 1st in Canada and in the top 10 in North America for academic productivity. Many clinical firsts in cardiovascular care were performed at TGH.

Multi-organ transplantation. The University Health Network, performed many Liver Transplants

The Three Resurrections of Jessica Churchill

The Three Resurrections of Jessica Churchill

By Kelly Robson (excerpt)

September 11, 2001

Jessica waited alone for the school bus. The street was deserted. When the bus pulled up the driver was chattering before she’d even climbed in.

“Can you believe it? Isn’t it horrible?” The driver’s eyes were puffy, mascara swiped to a gray stain under her eyes.

“Yeah,” Jessica agreed automatically.

“When first I saw the news I Thought it was so early, nobody would be at work. But it was nine in the morning in New York. Those towers were full of people.” The driver wiped her nose.

The bus was nearly empty. Two little kids sat behind the driver, hugging their backpacks. The radio blared. Horror in New York. Attack on Washington. Jessica dropped into the shotgun seat and let the noise wash over her for a few minutes as they twisted slowly through the empty streets. The she moved to the back of the bus.

When she’d gotten dressed that morning her jeans had slipped off her hips. Something about that was important. She tried to concentrate, but the thoughts flitted from her grasp, darting away before she could pin them down.

She focused on the sensation within her, the buck and heave under her ribs and in front of her spine.

“What are you fixing right now?” she asked.

An ongoing challenge is the sequestration of the fecal and digestive matter that leaked into your abdominal cavity.

“What about the stuff you mentioned yesterday? The intestine and the … whatever it was.”

A ressurection... Photo by Elena

Once we have repaired your digestive tract and restored gut motility we will begin reconstructive efforts on your reproductive organs.

“You like big words, don’t you?”

We assure you the terminology is accurate.

There it was. That was the thing that had been bothering her, niggling at the back of her mind, trying to break through the fog.

“How do you know those words? How can you even speak English?”

We aren’t communicating in language. The meaning is conveyed by socio-linguistic impulses interpreted by the brain’s speech processing loci. Because of the specifics of our biology, verbal communication is an irrelevant medium.

“You are not talking, you are just making me hallucinate,” Jessica said.

That is essentially correct.

How could the terminology be accurate, then? She didn’t know those words – cervic and whatever – so how could she hallucinate them?

“Were you watching the news when the towers collapsed?” the driver asked as she pulled into the high school parking lot. Jessica ignored her and slowly stepped off the bus.

The aliens were trying to baffle her with big words and science talk. For three days she’d had them inside her, their voice behind her eyes, their fingers deep in her guts, and she’d trusted them. Hadn’t even thought twice. She had no choice.

If they could make her hallucinate, what else were they doing to her?

The hallways were quiet, the classrooms deserted except for one room at the end of the hall with 40 kids packed in. The teacher had wheeled in an AV cart. Some of the kinds hadn’t even taken off their coats.

Jessica stood in the doorway. The news flashed clips of smoking towers collapsing into ash clouds. The bottom third of the screen was overlaid with scrolling, flashing text, the sound layered with frantic voiceovers. People were jumping from the towers, hanging in the air like dancers. The clips replayed over and over again, The teacher passed around a box of Kleenex.

Jessica turned her back on the class and climbed upstairs, joints creaking, jeans threatening to slide off with every step. She hitched them up. The biology lab was empty. She leaned on the cork board and scanned the parasite diagrams. Ring worm. Tape worm. Liver fluke. Black wasp.

Some parasites can change their host’s biology, the poster said, or even change their host’ behavior.

Jessica took a push pin from the board and shoved it into her thumb. It didn’t hurt. When she ripped it out a thin stream of blood trickled from the skin, followed by an ooze of clear amber from deep within the gash.

What are you doing?

Checkers

Checkers

The rules that rule the pieces in checkers

This exciting board game requires a unique mix of brains and an imaginative brawn. You are the mastermind behind a war in which everything good and decent is at stake. Here are the rules that govern the battlefield. In the best of matches, the rules metamorphose from simple variations into the physics of a new world…

Learning to play checkers is child’s play, but devising strategies to be a good player takes skill and lots of practice. The winner, of course, is the first one to capture all of an opponent’s men or to block them so that they can’t move. To test your mettle, follow these instructions:

Opponent face each other across the board, which has eight rows of eight squares each, alternately white and black. One player takes the white pieces, or men, and puts them on the black squares in the three horizontal rows nearest him. The opponent places the black checkers on the black squares in the three rows facing him.

Rand and File: In both checkers and chess, the rows across are known as ranks; the columns as files. In checkers, only the black squares are used.

The opponents take turns – white goes first, then black – moving a man forward diagonally toward the opponent’s side. Only the black squares are used. With each turn, a player moves one man to an adjacent empty square. When one player’s man comes up against an enemy checker and there is an empty space behind it, the player jumps over the enemy, landing on the unoccupied square. The captured checker is removed from the board.

One man can jump two or more enemy pieces consecutively, by moving diagonally left or right after the first jump, as long as there are empty spaces to land on between each jump. A checker that makes it to any square in the opponent’ first row becomes a king. The checker gets crowned by a man of the same color that is not in play. The king can move, and jump, forward and backward.

Solitaire

Solitaire

Klondike is the most common form of solitaire in the United States – so common in fact, that it is often known simply as “solitaire.” In reality, there are many varieties of solitaire, which, as the name implies, refers to any card game played by one person.

To play Klondike, deal one card face up from a standard deck. Then deal six additional cards face down, to form a row to the right of the first card. Next a card is dealt face up on top of the second card in the row, and five more cards are dealt face down on top of the remaining piles to the right. This pattern continues until 28 cards have been used and there are seven of columns of cards, ranging from one card (in the left column) to seven cards (in the right column). The reminder on the desk is placed face down on the table.

Cards are then shifted from one column to another to form descending sets (from King to 2) that alternate by color (red-black or black-red). For a example, if the red 8 is the last in the row, it can be placed on top of a black 9 if this card is the last in the row in another row. Then the card beneath the 8 can be flipped over. If a red 10 were to appear, then the 9 and 8 could be placed on top of the 10, allowing the player to flip over more cards.

A lonely lady.Photo by Elena

Aces are immediately removed from the layout when they appear, and are used as starting points to build ascending sets. These sets are based on suit, rather than then the black-red pattern already described. If the Ace of diamonds appears and if the two of diamonds appears, it will be placed on top of the Ace, and then the 3 of diamonds, and so on. The game is won if all four of these Aces piles are built into Ace-through-King sequences.

If one of the seven columns ever becomes empty because all of its cards have been shifted, a King (and anything stacked beneath it) can be moved to the column to fill the empty space. Once there are no cards that can be moved, cards are taken three at a time from the reminder of the deck, and played off on any of the columns if possible. If you can play the top card, you can play the next one as well. The cards that can’t be played are set aside, face up. When the entire deck has been played through three times, the game is over.

A variation on the game, which many people use to make it easier, involves flipping the discard pile over and going through the cards a second time, or even a third time before calling it a loss.

Spades

Spades

Spades can be played by three people, but four is ideal. The goal is to score as many points as possible by collecting “tricks”.

To begin, the entire 52-card deck is dealt evenly to each of the players. If there are four players, each will have 13 cards. The first round is begun by whoever has the 2 of clubs, which is laid in the center of the table. The player to his or her left then must lay down any card of the same suit. The next player does likewise, and the next, till each has laid a card. The highest card wins the trick. (Aces are played high in spades; 2 is the lowest).

If a player doesn’t have a card in the suit that is being played, he or she may trump the trick by playing a spade. However, if any of the following players in that round also has no cards in the original suit, he or she may “trump the trump” with a higher spade. (No one may open with a spade until spades have been “broken” – that is, played as a trump.)

The winner of the book plays the next card, and the round continues till all 13 books have been played.

Scoring is what makes spades challenging. Each trick is worth 10 points. After a hand is dealt, players must make a bid on how many tricks they expect to get based on the strength of the cards that were dealt.

Fashion and Style. Photo by Elena

Because each player in a four-person game has 13 cards, there are 13 possible tricks (130 points). A player who found among his or her 13 cards a couple of Kings, some Queens, and several spades of any value, would rightly feel justified in making a high bid because those cards are all likely to make a trick. The catch: If a player has a strong hand and so bids, say, 6 tricks, that player must make at least those 6. If not, he or she will instead lose 60 points (-10 points for each trick bid).

On the other hand, if the player makes over the amount bid, say 7 tricks instead of the 6 bid, he or she receives only a single point for each extra trick – in this case 61 points. Another catch: if a player receives more than 10 of those extra single points, he or she loses 100 points. This is called sandbagging.

A player who is behind by more than 100 points may bid “blind six” a bid of six made before the cards are even dealt. If the six are made, the players receives 100 points; if not, the player loses 100 points.

Players can play as many hands as they like to a preset score. About 500 points is a good goal for a satisfying evening