Stollery video shows lighter side of neurosurgery unit
It's three-year-old Oliver Bosma’s first music video and already it’s a hit.
The video shows Bosma, along with dozens of other past and current patients of Edmonton's Stollery Children’s Hospital, dancing and lip-syncing in the halls of the building.
The video, which has already received thousands of page views, was produced by the Neurosurgery Kids Fund to show people another side of a trip to the hospital and to raise awareness about brain and spinal surgeries.
Those children who are well enough leap out of hospital beds, wearing striped pajamas, and dance with staff and parents to a song by singer-songwriter Michael Franti, who visited the Stollery.
“I was a little nervous - I am not a dancer, I am not coordinated at all," said Jessica Bosma, Oliver’s mother.
"But everyone just had such a good time, the first dance, it was a little nerve-wracking, and then ... it was so much fun,”.
Oliver was diagnosed with a brain tumour in August 2013, when he was 21 months old.
A day after the diagnosis, he underwent emergency life-saving surgery at the Stollery. Now, a year later, he’s cancer-free.
His story, and the stories of other children who have undergone brain and spinal surgery, were the inspiration behind the video.
“So many times during the day people will say, 'oh I could never do your job.' But our job is great, we love our job,” said Oliver's nurse Wendy Beaudoin, who is featured in the video.
“We have all these great kids who do all these spectacular things with their lives.”
Jessica Bosma said people often only see one side of a hospital visit. She said after spending so much time at the hospital, staff at the neurosurgery unit are like a second family.
“When you’re faced with a diagnosis like Oliver’s, any medical diagnosis, you don’t see the fun side. You don’t see the doctors and nurses joking or dancing around. So, it's really cool to see this side of them as well,” said she said.
“It's important to see how happy and upbeat and exciting it can be - that there is a lighter side to the darkness.”
