Heather leads a full life centered on volunteer work, creative hobbies and, above all else, her three young children. In June 2025, a massive heart attack triggered by spontaneous coronary artery dissection placed her in critical condition and put her ability to return home to them in doubt. She was only 42. She still feels the weight of those days when she recalls how, twice that summer, her children had to be told “that they might no longer have a mummy.”

On June 2, Heather collapsed at home after telling her husband she felt a weight on her chest. Within minutes, her husband had called 911. Their friend and neighbor, Dustin, who is a firefighter trained in CPR also rushed over to help. Emergency responders filled the house and stabilized her before transporting her to the nearest hospital. There, teams worked quickly to prepare her for transfer to Hamilton General Hospital, a regional centre equipped for the most critical cardiac cases.

At the General’s emergency department, specialists stood ready. Heather’s condition remained unstable. Her mother, Betty, recalls, “When she arrived it was touch and go.” The clinical teams assessed her immediately and determined she needed advanced life support beyond what most hospitals can provide. Physicians placed her on an ECMO machine, a donor-funded technology that temporarily takes over the work of the heart and lungs. “The ECMO machine made the difference,” says Heather. She was ultimately put on the machine twice, a rare intervention, during her time at the General. “I technically died twice. But because of the amazing tools they had here, they were able to bring me back and keep me going.”

Heather speaks with deep appreciation for the team who cared for her, including her surgeon, Dr. Whitlock, her lead physician, Dr. Ainsworth, and the many nurses and therapists who guided her recovery. “If there was anything that I needed, they were there,” she says. “I don’t remember a lot about my time in the ICU but my family loved that team.”

Today Heather continues to regain strength and independence. She credits her survival to skilled clinicians, advanced technology, and her own determination to return to her children. She shares a message for anyone considering support for hospital care: “Donate. Help people like me. It does work. Make sure the hospitals have the equipment that they need so they can do their good work.”

Bobby arrived in the world one and a half months early, weighing just four pounds after an emergency C-section. Doctors discovered that a placental detachment late in the pregnancy had left him without the nutrition he needed, and he faced breathing difficulties from his very first hours. After two weeks at his local hospital, his care team made the decision to transfer him to Hamilton for the specialized, intensive support only a regional referral centre can provide.

The care team also made sure the family never felt left behind. They patiently explained every procedure, walked them through Bobby’s G-tube feeding, and even taught them how to bathe him safely amid his tubes and monitors. Today, Bobby is under the care of one of the hospital’s leading pediatric neurologists as his family awaits further answers about his diagnosis. Anjum describes his progress simply: “he’s growing stronger.”

Bobby continues to achieve new milestones at home, surrounded by a family and a hospital community that never stopped believing in his progress. Donors like Anjum help ensure that the next family who arrives at McMaster Children’s Hospital finds that same reassurance, expertise, and hope waiting for them.

For years, Surinder put her own needs aside to care for others. She left her job a decade ago to look after her elderly mother, and later welcomed her daughter and granddaughter into her home too, juggling caregiving for three generations at once. Then, last September, a sharp pain below her ribs sent her to the emergency room. A CT scan revealed a mass on her ovary. The diagnosis was peritoneal carcinoma.

What followed was a whirlwind of surgery, recovery setbacks, and a growing need for specialized cancer care. That search eventually led Surinder to Juravinski Hospital and Cancer Centre (JHCC), the only facility in south-central Ontario equipped to treat all types of cancer, serving a region of more than three million people. Each year, the hospital manages nearly 630,000 patient visits, a testament to the trust patients across the region place in its care.

Having completed six chemotherapy sessions, Surinder is already noticing changes. She can take deep breaths again. She can walk with ease. “I know I’m on the mend, which feels great,” she said.

Her story reflects what makes JHCC a trusted regional referral centre: expert clinicians, coordinated care across every department, and programs that support the whole patient. With continued support from donors, that standard of care will only continue to rise for patients across the region for years to come.

“I buy green bananas again.”

At nearly 80 years old, Doug measures progress in ordinary moments that carry extraordinary meaning. He credits his confidence in being around long enough for bananas to ripen to his care team at Juravinski Hospital and Cancer Centre (JHCC).

His treatment plan evolved over time as specialists tracked his condition and responded with new approaches. Radiation therapy first reduced his cancer and kept it controlled for more than a year. When his PSA began rising again, hormone therapy lowered his testosterone levels and held the disease in check for several years. After that treatment lost effectiveness, an advanced medication stabilized things for another stretch. Each step extended his time and allowed his team to reassess and plan the next strategy using the latest evidence and tools.

“I’m a prime example of the things that are happening with those donations,” says Doug. He sees the impact reaching far beyond the hospital walls and into the lives waiting for him at home. “It does go beyond the patient themselves. It goes to their family as well.” For Doug, that impact shows up in birthday parties, basketball games, and ordinary afternoons spent together.

JHCC serves thousands of patients across the region each year, combining compassionate care with scientific discovery. For Doug, that combination has meant more time with the people he loves and real confidence in what lies ahead: “We never know what the future holds but Juravinski Hospital and Cancer Centre has given me one.”

For Susan, a retired social worker and art therapist from the Owen Sound area, the drive to Hamilton is just over three hours each way. It is a journey she has made many times over the past few years, and one she considers among the most worthwhile of her life.

Susan was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in December 2021. After initial treatment in Kitchener, she was referred to Juravinski Hospital and Cancer Centre (JHCC) for a stem cell transplant in June 2022. As one of only three centres in Ontario providing all forms of stem cell transplants, patients from across the region – including more than 130 from Grey County like Susan – journey to JHCC for specialized cancer care.

Susan and Bryan are deeply grateful to Dr. Radford and the medical team at JHCC who continue to monitor her progress. They give thanks to her anonymous stem cell and lymphocyte donor, and to the donors whose generosity supports specialized facilities and programs at JHCC. A donor herself, she understands the impact that giving can have on patients facing complex health challenges.

“The expertise of Juravinski Hospital and Cancer Centre is really second to none,” she says.

For patients across a vast region, donor support helps ensure exceptional care reaches everyone who needs it, no matter the distance.

Ray Mond ‘Mondo,’ a retired Dofasco worker of 45 years, describes himself as “pretty laid back” and “happy go lucky” – a man who loves road trips with his wife Jackie, long stretches of Cuban sun, and any excuse to channel his inner Elvis. When a backyard barbecue accident in June 2024 left him with third-degree burns to 30 percent of his body, that positive outlook helped to carry him through.

Mondo drove himself the ten blocks to Hamilton General Hospital (HGH). Within two minutes, staff had him in triage. Within twenty minutes, anesthesia has him pain-free and joking with his doctor. He had no idea yet how serious his injuries were. As they wheeled him toward the burn unit, he called back to the team: “You guys are great. When I get out of here we’re gonna have to have you over for a barbecue.” He woke up ten days later.

When Jennifer walked into Juravinski Hospital and Cancer Centre (JHCC) for the first time, she felt out of place. She had just received her breast cancer diagnosis and, until that moment, had thought of the Centre as somewhere that other people went.

That was January 2025. Today, Jennifer stands as a passionate advocate for the hospital, a speaker at her curling club’s annual Takeout Cancer Bon Spiel, and living proof of why donor support matters.

Jennifer’s story began the year she turned 50. Her family doctor referred her to the JHCC’s breast assessment centre for her biennial mammogram. The CIBC Breast Assessment Centre is a state-of-the-art facility that consolidates expertise in breast cancer screening and assessment under one roof. Rather than travelling to different clinics, Jennifer was able to get her mammogram, biopsy, blood work and other testing done quickly in one place. “I would never go anywhere else,” says Jennifer.

That first mammogram revealed something that needed a closer look. On December 9th, Jennifer received a call confirming she had breast cancer, an invasive ductal carcinoma roughly the size of a grape. Her surgeon, Dr. Peter Lovrics, told her it had been caught before she would have ever felt it. Had it gone undetected longer, the outcome could have been far worse.

The Bon Spiel, now in its fifth year, was founded by curling club members Sue and Phil Redden following Phil’s own cancer journey. This year, Jennifer took the stage as the event’s speaker and shared her story publicly for the first time. The event raised $72,000 in 2026 alone, bringing the five-year total to $221,000.

For Jennifer, the message to donors is straightforward: “We need to realize how lucky we are to have this hospital in our backyard because if they weren’t there to do all the things that they did for me, I wouldn’t be here.”

It started with a shower in a marina during a boat trip along the Trent Canal. Two weeks later, Cynthia, a retired seniors’ care professional, was barely conscious and breathing with great difficulty. Recognizing that something was seriously wrong, her husband Ray brought her to Hamilton General Hospital’s (HGH) emergency department. The team there responded immediately. “Is she always this confused?” the triage nurse asked Ray. When he said no, she acted without hesitation, securing a wheelchair and bringing Cynthia straight into the emergency room.

Within days, Cynthia was diagnosed with Legionnaires’ disease, a type of severe lung infection, and placed in a medically induced coma. What followed was a four-and-a-half month stay in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) that tested the full depth of HGH’s specialized expertise. The team managed two medically induced comas, treated sepsis, navigated feeding tubes and tracheotomy tubes, and addressed a severe secondary lung infection that complicated her recovery at every turn. At one point, Ray was asked to prepare to make a very difficult decision about her care. “The doctors that we have seen afterward have all said they never expected Cynthia to come out of that alive,” Ray recalls.

She did.

HGH serves as a regional referral centre for critically ill and injured patients across south-central Ontario, offering advanced treatments and specialized expertise that many smaller centres cannot provide. As one of Canada’s largest academic teaching hospitals, it draws exceptional medical professionals and trains the next generation of health care leaders. For Cynthia, that depth of skill and commitment was present at every stage of her care.

“Cynthia is a walking miracle,” Ray says. Miracles like Cynthia’s depend on more than skill and dedication. They depend on the tools, spaces, and resources that donors make possible. When you give to Hamilton Health Sciences Foundation, you help ensure that HGH has the equipment, care environments, training, and research capacity to meet every patient at their most critical moment. Donors make the difference between a hospital that gets by and one that excels. For Cynthia, that excellence meant everything.

Hamilton Health Sciences (HHS) burn experts are the first in the world to use a novel biological treatment to save the face of a young woman who was severely burned in a London, Ontario house fire last December.

The treatment used exosomes – tiny particles released by cells that carry signals from one cell to another to help coordinate rapid healing and tissue repair and reduce inflammation. The particles are collected, typically from lab-grown cells, and injected into the injured areas to accelerate healing – much more so than the current standard of skin grafting, which can leave scarring and a patch-like appearance.

Exosomes have been studied for years as part of burn research, but not yet in humans. Clinical trials involving humans have used exosomes for other types of wound healing, with promising results.

Western University student Kaitlin Jeffrey, 18, of Toronto, received the innovative treatment and healed faster, and with better results, than another young student whose burns from that same fire were serious, but not as severe. The other student wasn’t a candidate for exosome treatment because their injuries did not require skin grafting.

“My vision for Kaitlin was to avoid skin graft surgery to her face and neck at any cost,” says Dr. Marc Jeschke, vice president of research and innovation at HHS, burn surgeon and researcher, and a global authority on burns, who performed Jeffrey’s surgery. Dr. Jeschke is also a professor of surgery at McMaster University, HHS’s key academic partner.

Dr. Jeschke is also the medical director of the regional burn program at HHS’ Hamilton General Hospital – one of Ontario’s two regional burn centres where the most seriously injured patients in the province are treated. Co-located on the Hamilton General Hospital campus is HHS’ Centre for Burn Research, where teams are leading medical advancements and research into burn treatment, including exosome therapy.

After getting the green light from Jeffrey and her parents, Jeschke sent an urgent application to Health Canada to try exosome therapy on compassionate grounds. Receiving no objection, Jeschke and his HHS team became the first in the world to perform this treatment on a burn patient. Jeffrey’s two treatments, which took place several days apart, used one trillion exosomes sourced from the United States.

“You can do the best graft on the planet, but you won’t return the skin to normal. And, for a young person, a skin graft to the face and neck can be absolutely devastating,” he says.

“It’s honestly a miracle,” Jeffrey says of results with respect to her face. “Being injured in the fire has also had deep impact on my mental health, and it’s something I’m continuing to deal with. But having such good results, particularly to my face, is helping me move forward.”

Jeffrey and her family are extremely grateful to Dr. Jeschke and the entire burn centre team.

With further research, Jeschke hopes the world-first treatment will become the new standard of care for burn patients in Canada and beyond.

“Like Dr. Jeschke, my family and I would love to see exosome therapy become the standard of care for patients like myself in Canada, so that when horrific things happen, it doesn’t change people’s lives forever,” says Jeffrey.

Kaitlyn’s story is just one example of what’s possible when groundbreaking research meets donor support. Help fund the next breakthrough.

Scott Marsh played six instruments. He made strangers feel like lifelong friends. He was “physically incapable” of being mean to others according to his dad and brother. He listened. He cracked jokes through chemotherapy and walked his dog between gasping breaths because, as his partner Jessica Murphy put it, “that’s just who he is.”

When Scott was diagnosed with stage 3 esophageal cancer in early 2024, his journey brought him repeatedly to C3, the inpatient oncology unit at Juravinski Hospital and Cancer Centre. What his family found there helped shape both his final months and the way they would choose to celebrate his life.

Oncology Nursing Day honours the irreplaceable contributions of oncology nurses across Canada. This year’s theme, focused on collaboration and innovation, speaks directly to what Scott’s family experienced on C3: a team that pulled together across disciplines, across shifts, and across the invisible line between clinical duty and human connection.

As with many oncology patients, Scott’s condition was complex and required highly specialized care. When his circumstances placed him in the emergency department, the family knew immediately where he needed to be. “Please get us a room in C3,” Jessica Murphy would say. “He has very specific care and if you could just get us to C3 I know everything will be fine.”

That trust was earned visit by visit. Nurses brought fold-out beds when family stayed overnight. They took Scott’s wish to live as ‘normal’ a life as possible to heart, letting the family transform Scott’s room into something that felt like home, with photographs on the walls, lamps, a Nintendo Switch, and home movies. “The nurses have such a great family-centered approach to care,” says Jessica Marsh, Scott’s sister-in-law. “They really empowered Scott and empowered us.”

L to R: Scott and his family at his 35th birthday, members of the C3 nursing team, Scott’s family presenting the funds raised by SkiddleyFest

“It was painfully obvious that these people were doing the absolute best they can, sometimes under difficult situations, to make Scott’s time as good as possible and give him the best chance,” says Scott’s father, Rob. “We always felt that everybody was trying to go the extra mile for him.”

Even when Scott’s prognosis changed for the worse, he was unwavering in his determination to seize every day, to find joy where he could, and fight for time and quality of life. “Our only job was to try and facilitate that,” says Scott’s brother, Tom. “And C3 understood the assignment.”

When Scott turned 35 on May 17^th of last year, the family wanted to give him a birthday party. Social workers found a room. The nurses worked out a medication schedule that would let Scott attend. His day nurse travelled back and forth from C3 to the birthday room to administer his pain medication so he would not have to leave. Sixty people showed up to celebrate Scott. Family, friends and fellow musicians gathered, chatted, sang, played guitar and celebrated. Scott called it the best party he had ever had.

Sadly, Scott passed away in early July 2025. In the months that followed, his friends and family channeled their grief into action. “Scott brought people so much happiness and joy and generosity,” says his mother, Gay. Carrying that generosity forward felt like the right way to honour him.

Scott was a fixture in Hamilton’s music scene, and so naturally, the tribute took the form of a music festival. SkiddleyFest came together in just seven weeks, drawing hundreds of people, each with a personal connection to Scott. This gathering was a chance for his friends to share their love, their music and their loss. Together, they raised more than $15,000 to support the highest priority needs on the C3 unit, helping empower that beloved team to continue delivering exceptional care. Plans for a second SkiddleyFest are already underway.

Journeys like Scott’s are carried by oncology nurses whose specialized knowledge and training, clinical judgment, skill and compassion guide patients and families through the most complex and vulnerable stages of care. They are dedicated to addressing each patient’s oncological needs while caring for the whole person, not just the disease. On Oncology Nursing Day, we recognize these nurses for the care they deliver, and for the humanity they bring to it by helping patients like Scott live fully, even in the hardest moments.