Today, Giana Bancsy is a high school sophomore who loves to swim, spend time with friends and play the violin in her school orchestra. She’s learning to sew with help from her grandmother and, by all accounts, she’s a happy, healthy teen.
But she’s a teen with some significant inside knowledge.
Ask Giana about the importance of the human spine, and she’ll share specifics that the typical teen knows nothing about. That’s because Giana has been in the specialized care of Shriners Children’s Chicago since she was a toddler.
Born with relatively rare dual abnormalities to her spine, Giana’s treatment for scoliosis and kyphosis involved casting, traction and numerous surgical procedures, which add up to months of hospital stays from the time she was 2½. While Giana has already experienced more invasive procedures than most people do in a lifetime, she doesn’t consider any of it to be a negative experience, says her mom, Sarah Bancsy.
“When Giana had to do a presentation for school, I encouraged her to use her experiences as a subject, but it’s not a big deal for her,” Bancsy says. “She doesn’t look at the experience in a negative way and that’s because of the way Shriners cared for her. Their focus is to make a scary experience into a positive, even fun, one for kids.”
Even though Bancsy has been by Giana’s side through the years of treatments, she says there was a time she had never heard of Shriners Children’s. Now, she says she recommends every parent choose Shriners for their child’s spine care, even for the mildest cases of scoliosis.
“I would choose Shriners any day of the week. Anyone with a spine problem, even slight, I tell them the experts at Shriners know what they are talking about. No doubt,” she says.
100 years of care at Shriners Children’s Chicago
Established as a charitable response to two pandemics, Shriners Children’s has been providing specialized pediatric care for a century. “The first pandemic was tuberculosis and then polio. Back in the day, we had a ward of children in iron lungs,” says Purnendu Gupta, M.D., Pediatric Spine Surgeon and Chief of Staff at Shriners Children’s Chicago. “Children affected by polio and TB had orthopedic issues, so that’s what we would take care of.”
The healthcare system with 21 locations expanded over the years. In 1983, Shriners Chicago added pediatric spinal cord injury rehabilitation, which is now nationally recognized. Also in the 1980s, Shriners Children’s launched a craniofacial and cleft palate reconstruction program.
“We have fantastic specialists in various areas, including spine,” Dr. Gupta says. “What’s unique about Shriners Children’s Chicago is we use a multidisciplinary team approach.”
Through what he calls a “legacy practice,” Dr. Gupta describes specialist spinal surgical care that involves several providers working together leveraging their specific knowledge and skills. Most recently, the spine team has grown to include John Ghazi, M.D., who brings specialist expertise gained through his residency at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School at Rutgers and a fellowship at Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children. “This is a well-known pediatric orthopedic surgical fellowship and we’re really looking forward to him joining us. He brings new training from TSRH,” explains Dr. Gupta.
Care for more simple cases, too
Parents benefit from knowing their children are in the very best hands, especially when it comes to complex disorders, with specialized experience handling the most difficult cases — including care for children who travel across the globe for care. It means the spine team at Shriners Children’s Chicago has the expertise to care for every type of pediatric spinal need.
“International care is a growing aspect of our care and as a spine surgeon, this gives me diverse experience. I learn so much from it and that learning never ends. These difficult and complex conditions coming from overseas give me perspective on what I’m doing here and now. And it makes me a better human being and a better surgeon,” Dr. Gupta says.
As a key part of the team that cared for Giana, Dr. Gupta recognizes the value of open communication and collaboration with his patients and their families — a foundation for Sarah Bancsy’s esteem for her family’s experience with Shriners Children’s Chicago. “The team always made Giana feel special and important, a decision maker,” she says. “They always talked to her, not just to me.”
Like all families at Shriners Children’s, the Bancsy family benefitted from continual wraparound care, which Dr. Gupta says is the part of the ongoing mission.
“The amount of dedication and thought they put into the care of your child is unbelievable,” Bancsy says. “Giana is very unique and I remember (Dr. Gupta) would carry her films all around the country to get opinions. He always has been honest with me and told me exactly what to expect and both the best-case scenario and the worst-case scenario. I knew I could trust what he said and that’s important to have with your daughter’s doctor, especially when you are putting her life in his hands. Operations on the spine are a pretty big deal.”
When your child’s treatment spans years — the vast majority of their life — the day-to-day care is important, too, says Bancsy, recognizing the whole team’s care throughout the years. “Linda, the nurse, has been with us since the very first day. It was hard on me because I had another daughter at home, but I never left the hospital. It was hard on our family,” she says. “But Linda would bring me coffee in the morning. She’d send texts to ask what I’d like in the morning — that’s pretty unheard of. They played an important role in protecting me, looking out for me and caring for me, and I wasn’t even the patient. I can’t say enough good things about them.”
As Giana looks back over her experience, she says the years went by fast, even though her treatments were hard on her at the time. “People there always worked to make it better for me,” she says. Her mom agrees. “They are amazing.”
Shriners Children’s provides excellent care and services to children up to age 18 for families with insurance and families without insurance. Learn more about Shriners Children’s Chicago at shrinerschicago.org. To request an appointment call 773-385-KIDS(5437).
