"Heal the Future"

19 January 2024

2 mins 33s

Foreseen consequences.

For the first 30", this is the bleakest Sick Kids ad in recent memory. A teenager, Jordan, suffers a cardiac arrest at school, is rushed to the emergency room, and flatlines. Was this tragedy inevitable? Perhaps not, if he'd received an earlier diagnosis.

To make sense of something, it's often best to go back to the start. Director Henry Scholfield does just that brilliantly, showing Jordan’s life in reverse and the moments he struggled to catch his breath. It's difficult to watch him gasp as a baby, unable to process why play is such hard work.

The turning point is when a doctor notices something in baby Jordan's scans. In this timeline, thanks to what the Sick Kids Foundation call Precision Child Health, he has an implantable cardioverter defibrillator in his chest. What was fatal in those first 30" is now scary but manageable.

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