Home, Jon Friel understands more clearly than ever, is not the house he owns on an acre of land just outside Port Perry; it hasn’t been since November. Nor is it the two-bedroom apartment at Ronald McDonald House where his wife beds down each night after kissing him goodnight. The Friels will spend Father’s Day like any family with young kids might. They’ll paint pictures, play with toys, read books. There’ll be tears but there’ll also be laughter. The big difference is they’ll be at Sick Kids Hospital, which little Harper has called home since November when she was diagnosed with brain cancer. Home now, as it has been for months, is 200 square feet or so on the eighth floor of Sick Kids Hospital in the hematology/oncology unit. In this room, the 35-year-old eats his meals, usually with plastic cutlery from a cardboard takeout box, welcomes visitors and gets a fitful sleep on a hard vinyl mattress. This is where Jon now lives. His heart is here because his ailing daughter, Harper, is here also. He rarely leaves. Harper, 4, was diagnosed with brain cancer in November. She had a tumour the size of a golf ball removed during six hours of emergency surgery the day after she arrived at the hospital. She has undergone five rounds of chemotherapy. A sixth was cancelled out of fear it might kill her. Harper’s stomach was so damaged by the medicine that she is on a feeding tube that threads into her nose, past her throat and through her stomach, pumping formula directly to her intestines. She is weak but improving; doctors still can’t get as much nutrition into her body as they’d like. She won’t be able to leave the hospital until they can. “You feel very powerless,” says Jon. So Father’s Day will be like every other day. Jon will spend it here, in a space smaller than most hotel rooms, with Harper, her two younger sisters and his wife, Sonja; a family together, sharing space with medical monitors and a procession of attentive nurses. The Whitby firefighter will wake up about 7 a.m., shower and then slip downstairs to the food court to pick up breakfast. Then, sometime after 9, Sonja, also strong-willed and resolute, will bring their two other daughters, 2-year-old Elle and baby Charlotte, over from Ronald McDonald House, which is a home away from home for seriously ill children and their families. Harper has been in the hospital so long that not only have she and Elle had birthday parties here but the family has also celebrated an actual birth day. Charlotte was born on Dec. 14, the day before Harper began her first round of chemotherapy. Just six hours after Charlotte arrived, 32-year-old Sonja returned to Harper’s room, babe in arms. She navigated the tunnel under University Ave. from Mt. Sinai Hospital’s labour and delivery unit, back to Sick Kids. Jon Friel spends every night at Harper’s bedside at Sick Kids hospital. (RICK MADONIK / TORONTO STAR) Source
