Building vital partnerships

CYNTHIA RAMSAY

“I’d like to think that we’re still in the infancy of spinal research,” said Dr. Phil Switzer. “The hope that I would like to see for spinal research is that, after a patient’s had surgery like mine or has had spinal injury, they’re able to get out of a wheelchair and walk.”

Switzer, a radiologist, was speaking to the Jewish Independent about the upcoming Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University (CFHU) gala honoring him. He has both a professional and personal interest in the recent partnering of Hebrew University with the University of British Columbia and the Rick Hansen Foundation (RHF).

Switzer is national vice-president of CFHU and a clinical professor of radiology at UBC. He is also a partner of Greig Associates, which provides radiological services. About the HU-UBC partnership, he explained, “We had the idea of sharing information and ideas, be it professors or graduate students, between the two universities, Hebrew University and UBC. They’re both prominent universities, both ranked in the [top] 100 universities in the world.”

HU has been building partnerships through its Institute for Medical Research Israel-Canada (IMRIC), which works with scientists around the world. For example, in Vancouver, the 2008 CFHU dinner honoring Dr. Larry Goldenberg, professor and head of the department of urologic sciences at Vancouver General Hospital (VGH) and UBC, resulted in an endowment that will fund scientific collaboration with IMRIC in the field of prostate cancer.

Before the universities agreed to work together on spinal research, each institution visited the other to see what kind of work was being conducted.

“Bernie Bressler, who is very active on this committee,” said Switzer, “was going to Israel and had said he would check out what’s happening at Hebrew University. Bernie Bressler was vice-president of UBC, in charge of research, was involved with the Rick Hansen Foundation and has been involved with, and is quite aware of, the spinal research that’s going on here. We thought he was the most appropriate person to be evaluating what’s happening in Israel to see if there was a potential for the two to work together. He did go to Israel, went to Hebrew University, went to Prof. [Aharony] Lev-Tov’s lab, came back saying they’re doing great work there, it’s a good mix.”

The IMRIC’s Lev-Tov, who is heading the collaboration from the Israeli side, came to visit UBC as well, said Switzer, and “felt, from his perspective, that it was worthwhile, too.” Lev-Tov is also collaborating with Dr. Patrick Whelan of the University of Calgary’s Hotchkiss Brain Institute on research that they hope will provide ways of restoring lost motor function after spinal cord injury, said Dina Wachtel, executive director of CFHU Western Region.

Wachtel led a mission to Israel in October 2009, which included Switzer and his wife, Diane; Rick Hansen and Connie Savage of RHF; spinal surgeon Dr. Marcel Dvorak and his wife, Sue; Stephen Owen, vice-president of UBC; Bill Levine, who's on the board of governors at UBC, and his wife, Risa; Deborah Roitberg, CFHU board member and this year's gala convener; and Gary and Nanci Segal. (The Segals brought 19-year-old Ethiopian Tesfaye Anagaw to Vancouver last summer so he could have a crucial operation on his spine, which was done by Dvorak. See tesfayesjourney.blogspot.com for more information, including Gary Segal's recent visit to see Anagaw.)

Of Switzer, Wachtel said, “Phil has been an important and vital part of our CFHU Vancouver chapter for the last decade in so many ways. Not only serving as a board member, vice-president and president, his commitment and dedication to the work of Hebrew University serves as a role model for our volunteer leadership.... This coming June, Phil will be the only Canadian receiving an honorary fellowship at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem at a ceremony held on Mount Scopus during the board of governors [meeting].”

When Switzer was asked if he would be CHFU’s honoree, she continued, he had just started his recovery from spinal surgery and, therefore, suggested that the proceeds go toward enhancing spinal research and awareness.

“I was having trouble skating,” Switzer explained about what led to his surgery two years ago. “I play hockey and, all of a sudden, my hockey was going downhill. I was having trouble skiing, and I was falling over. I was peeing a lot and going to have prostate surgery, and I was skiing with a friend, Barry Tessler, who’s also a neurologist, who said, ‘Phil, things aren’t looking good. Let me examine you.’”

Tessler wanted to do an MRI. “I was going to get an MRI for my knees [anyway], because I was blaming everything ... I was getting too old to play hockey, my skis were too high performance and, anyways, I had an MRI that week, and there was this tumor in the middle of my spinal cord,” said Switzer.

When he saw the tumor on the monitor, Switzer said to himself, “Phil, I don’t think you’re going to be walking.” It looked benign, he added, but it was the location that caused his concern: “When I was a resident, which is a number of years ago, getting that out would have been very difficult. Things have improved since then and I had a great surgeon here.

“After they took the tumor out, I didn’t have much sensory or propioception from the waist down; sensory, meaning how you feel, and propioception means you don’t know where your feet are in space.”

Post-operatively, Switzer said, “I was very excited I could move my legs.... I would say, ‘Look, I can move my leg!’ And my leg would go jerking up in the air. There was no controlled movement, but there was motor; [though] no sensory – couldn’t feel anything from the waist down – and couldn’t know where my feet are in space.”

Switzer explained, “I was at VGH for a week and then at G.F. Strong [Rehabilitation Centre] for seven weeks. I was in a wheelchair and had a bit of difficulty at G.F. Strong. I wasn’t considered a good patient, just because, first of all, they wanted me to buy a wheelchair and I said no, I was going to walk out of there. They thought I had lost touch with reality. I was determined I was going to leave G.F. Strong of my own accord. I thought I would be leaving with a walker.... Fortunately, I was in very good shape before – and, I knew this was going to be a hard road ahead of me.”

G.F. Strong worked with him a lot, said Switzer, as did several friends. “Slowly, I was able to get up, stand using the parallel bars, take a step – that was quite a big movement after about two weeks, to take one step. I just progressed over a seven-week period so, by the end, I was actually able to walk out on my own steam, didn’t need the wheelchair, and have continued with rehabilitation using a trainer to just push the envelope of what potential I have.”

He still takes medications and has had some return to function, but not much, he said. “I still don’t feel much from the waist down,” he admitted.

In his time as a radiologist at Shaughnessy Hospital many years ago, Switzer did a lot of the radiology for initial spinal trauma diagnoses. He also worked at G.F. Strong, so he did have a previous interest in spinal issues. “But I didn’t do the research,” he clarified, “I did more of the clinical work.”

When it came to being a patient, Switzer said it wasn’t his medical knowledge and experience that helped him push the envelope of rehab. “It’s my nature to be continually pushing,” he said. “You know, in the hospital, they wanted to put a sign over my bed saying, ‘Slow down!’ because I just wasn’t happy going at the regular rate.”

As for his continuing healing, he said he’s back to skiing, playing golf and biking, but, “Every time I try something new, I’m very tired.... So the whole year, last year, the first year I skied, I’d come home and just be very tired.... When I first walked a bit, I would walk for an hour, then sleep for an hour.” He has since progressed, over four to five months, to being able to run on a treadmill.

He has long been back at Greig Associates full time, where watching him analyze X-rays makes it obvious that he loves his work. Switzer said he started his medical career as a surgeon, but had a bad back, and was drawn to radiology because “most problems with patients you use radiology to make the diagnosis.... So, when I was at Shaughnessy Hospital, I did interventional radiology, including angiography, biopsies, special procedures for spinal injuries. I liked that, and when we [Greig] went to the private office, when Shaughnessy closed, I started doing breast biopsies, because I like doing interventional work.”

Switzer’s other motivation for being involved with CFHU is his connection with Israel.

“I personally feel there’s a demonization of Israel going on right now,” he said. “I think it’s similar to what happened to the Jews pre-World War II; Jews were dehumanized, they were called vermin, there were caricatures of them as not being human, sub-human, and then, if you killed something that was sub-human, you weren’t really killing a fellow human being, you were killing a parasite that should be killed. I think they’re doing that to the state of Israel. They’re demonizing it – it’s an apartheid state, it’s a pariah state, they’re using all kinds of terminology – and they’re doing this, as I can see, in two main arenas: first in the UN [United Nations] and secondly, on campuses. My feeling is that it’s important that people in their own jurisdictions, be it their city, their province, work on their own institutions of higher education to get communication and cooperation [with] Israeli academic institutions. By getting people over there to Israel to see what’s going on, to see the reality, you realize that a lot of the things that are said about there are totally inappropriate.”

Switzer has family in Israel and he has been many times. It was when he was spending a year there that he became involved with Hebrew University. “I’ve always been a Zionist,” he said, “and felt helping educate people in Israel – because our main resource is our brains – working for a premier institution ... I thought was a good place to put my efforts.”

The sold-out CFHU dinner honoring Switzer will take place April 25 at the Vancouver Convention Centre. To donate to the spinal research campaign, call Wachtel at 604-257-5133 or visit cfhu.org.

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