#b#Girl Scout Silver Award#/b#
Tanvi Gandhi and Supraja Sowmiyanarayanan, members of Girl Scout Troop 70050, recently completed their Silver Award. They beautified a garden at Dutch Neck Elementary School by planting daffodils, pansies, vinca, moonbeam, and marigolds. “We came up with the project as Dutch Neck was looking for someone to beautify the facade of the school, after Maurice Hawk PTA beautified their facade for Halloween,” says Gandhi. “We did not have volunteers help us with our project, but we taught a first grade Girl Scout troop how to care for the flowers as a sustainability aspect.”
Sowmiyanarayanan, a Plainsboro resident, attended Community Middle School and is a rising freshman at High School North. Gandhi, a West Windsor resident, attended Grover Middle School and is a rising freshman at High School South.
“This project was a great learning experience. I learned that you need a lot of patience when working with a group of people because they don’t always have as much free time as me and my partner,” says Gandhi. “I also learned that trying to get people to see from my point of view is a hard task.”
“This project was a lot of fun. I developed some of the skills like time management, speaking up, and taking charge,” says Sowmiyanarayanan. “I became more involved with my community and learned how to finish things on time.”
Their leaders are Neetu Pal and Trupti Gandhi. Their mentor was Prachi Dwivedi, the chair of Dutch Neck School Green Committee. Their adviser was Trupti Gandhi and their coach was Andal Sowmiyanarayanan. Visit https://greenupcrew.wordpress.com for more information about the project.
#b#Over the Edge#/b#
Charlotte Singh of West Windsor participated in American Cancer Society’s Over The Edge event in Jersey City. She raised more than $1,500 and rappelled down a 480-foot building. Although she had rappelled close to 25 years ago as part of a Landmark Education program, this was a very different experience — one in which participants raise money for cancer research in order to be allowed to rappel.
Her goal was to honor her best friend since she was five years old, who called her five days after Christmas in 2013 to share the news that she was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was picked up on her annual mammogram.
Raised on Long Island, Singh moved to New Jersey to begin her career in medical communication and education for the pharmaceutical industry. “After obtaining my MD I decided I didn’t want to pursue a career in clinical medicine seeing patients,” she says. She is the vice president and group medical director at a privately held medical communication company and part of the senior management team. Singh also appears in plays and musicals at Kelsey Theater.
Her husband of 16 years, Atul, runs the sales for IT security at a large technology company. Their son Devin, 9; and daughter Maya, 6, attend WW-P schools. The family has lived in West Windsor for three years.
Singh was part of her friend’s two-year journey with its ups and downs. “Luckily, with my medical background, I was able to help her navigate her way through it by convincing her to come back to New York where all the good doctors are, having my aunt’s cousin perform the surgery (she’s a board-certified breast surgeon trained under Dr. Susan Love), helping her understand the various treatment options, and little things like ensuring that the front-desk staff remembered to give her a prescription for a follow-up mammogram,” says Singh. “What was really scary about the ordeal is, for a cancer like breast cancer that’s so well known, if one does not have a patient advocate, a lot of details can fall through the cracks.”
“Fortunately for her, the cancer was stage 1 (contained locally in the breast and not having spread into the lymph nodes), her surgeon got good margins, but the cancer was invasive and had a marker indicating an aggressive form, so after the surgery she had to undergo chemo and radiation and will be on Tamoxifen for the next 10 years. Now her hair has grown back, and she looks really chic. She still has low energy and has to pace herself and take naps. And she has to be hypervigilant because of the aggressive type of cancer she had (and the higher chance it could come back) and being on Tamoxifen. We’re grateful that she’s alive and kicking.”
Most participants in the Over The Edge event wore white ribbons in memory of cancer victims, but Singh was fortunate to wear one in honor of a living person. “The biggest difference was the height and the time and effort it took to get myself down. Aside from having anxiety-inducing thoughts about the event a few weeks before, the only three times I got scared was when I was being suited-up in the harness on the ground floor of the building we were rappelling off of, climbing the remaining two flights of stairs (after having taken the elevator to the top — oh my heart is beating so fast because I’m climbing stairs), and swinging my legs over the edge of the skyscraper and looking down for the first time and realizing how darn high I was. The building we rappelled off of in Jersey City is the highest Over The Edge uses in North America — 480 feet, 34 stories.”
“It was a thrilling experience and I had fun along the way,” she says, “taking in the scenery and skyline, waving to painters working in the building, noticing proprietary info left casually on the window sill of a pharma company that occupies the building,” says Singh. “I was also able to capture it all on the GoPro I won, ironically, at a work-related conference.”
#b#Hooping It Up#/b#
Plainsboro Library’s “Hoop It Up” summer basketball program is led by Sharon Mitchell, the community services librarian. During July boys and girls ages 6 to 12 learned the basics of the game.
“Boys always think that basketball is a boys’ game,” says Mitchell. “They learn that the game is about skill rather than gender.” She introduces them all to defense tactics, ball handling, and the importance of the pivot foot.
Participants played a short scrimmage at the end of the program, which helped hone the skills to play a longer game. Mitchell makes sure that the teams are evenly matched. “The smallest person should feel just as big as the tallest person,” she says.
Teenage volunteers, who assist during both weeks, get a workout in confidence building. “They are each assigned a team to coach, and they come to realize they are actually helping the team’s performance,” says Mitchell.
She talks about the shy, introverted volunteer who did not talk above a whisper on the first day of the program last year. By the end of the second week he was in full command, blowing his whistle and taking responsibility for his team’s actions. “Teamwork and communication is what it’s all about,” says Mitchell.
This year an anonymous donor provided funds for the library to purchase new basketballs, ball bags, and medals for the players.
#b#A Miracle, Thanks to a WW Surgeon#/b#
When Timmy McDonnell was struck by a drunk driver while walking on Easton Avenue in New Brunswick last October he suffered a severe head injury. The accident occurred near Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, one of only three Level I trauma centers in the state. The center has a trauma surgeon and team available in the hospital 24 hours a day, seven days a week to treat patients with traumatic injuries.
The trauma neurosurgeon on duty was Dr. Rachana Tyagi, a West Windsor resident and an assistant professor of surgery at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. “He almost died many times,” she says. “He was probably the sickest patient in the hospital for a while.” Tyagi removed part of his skull so she could remove the blood clot on his brain and relieve pressure from the swelling.
“This is why operating at 5 o’clock in the morning is worth it,” Tyagi says. “Everything just happened like clockwork and everybody did everything that they were supposed to do and this is what happens when the whole system works. His support system combined with the pre-trauma team, trauma, neurosurgical, and nursing care, helped him defy the odds.”
McDonnell, a Holmdel resident, was in a coma for 21 days. Following the 25-day hospital stay at RWJ, he spent 88 days as an inpatient with the physical rehabilitation program at Kessler’s Rehabilitation Center. He continues as an outpatient at Kessler.
His parents call Tyagi their angel. “The only way to explain her is that she came from heaven,” says his father Tim McDonnell. “She did her best. She tried to calm us. She was honest with us and said ‘I don’t think he’s gonna make it, but I’m not going to give up. I’m going to do every thing I can.’ She had faith and hope.”
Tyagi places a great deal of the miracle of McDonnell’s recovery on his family and friends. “He has an amazing support system and they have never given up. They have just been the best family to work with,” Tyagi said. “I think that makes a difference and that is why is he doing so much better. But, he is a miracle.”
#b#In College#/b#
Susquehanna University: Sarah Bush of West Windsor recently studied in Tokyo, Japan, as part of the university’s Global Opportunities program. The program connects students with various aspects of Japanese culture, society, education, and history through interaction with their Japanese peers. Program activities took place in Tokyo and at Senshu University, the second oldest private university in Japan.
Bush, an early childhood education major in the Class of 2016, graduated from High School North in 2012. She is the daughter of Don and Lisa Bush.
University of the Sciences: Students on the dean’s list include Plainsboro resident Vinita Yadav, a biology student; Victoria Lee, a doctor of occupational therapy student; Rasagnya Kota, a doctor of pharmacy student; Grant Lee, a doctor of pharmacy student; Neil Shah, a doctor of pharmacy student; Christine Xu, a doctor of pharmacy student; and Nora Osman, a doctor of physical therapy student. West Windsor residents on the dean’s list include Erica Simi, a doctor of occupational therapy student; and Bijan Matthews, a doctor of physical therapy student.
