Let's do it together, Canada

This story is from a series of tweets written by Everleigh’s parents, Chris and Tanya, reproduced here with their permission. Thank you Chris and Tanya!

Children's hospitals like CHEO bring amazing amounts of hope to kids, making them into serious little troopers with nothing in the world that can stop them. They also bring hope to parents who are going through the most stressful time of their lives.

That's why if you're going to care about something on October 21, care about our future, care about the nurses, doctors, specialists, everyone who serves the public in this way.

Nearly five years ago we were blessed with the birth of our first child. As first-time parents to be, we were both nervous and excited.  All packed up and ready for the hospital, our baby room was all furnished and painted for our beautiful new arrival.

Everleigh was born late on a Sunday in December and we couldn’t have been happier. The wonderful people at the Montfort hospital were amazing, especially when we received the news that our hours old daughter had lymphangioma – a semi-permanent swelling under her right cheekbone. As a very young newborn, it pushed on her airway and was making her jaundice worse.

The morning after she was born (not even 12 hours old) she was put into an ambulance headed to CHEO. With swollen, tired, cried-out eyes we followed our new baby there. The next part is kind of a blur because of the shock we were still in and the lack of sleep from new parenthood.

Our little soul was whisked away in incredibly caring hands through rounds of tests, MRIs and attended to by teams of doctors (shoutout to Dr. Bromwich and Dr. Shenouda!) and nurses while in CHEO's neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). This was when my eyes really opened up to how children's hospitals work and the downright angels who work there day in and day out. The angels that work at CHEO were so caring and ready to give their all to every patient that comes through the doors.

We were lucky, in a sense, since our daughter was by far a milder case in the NICU. But the doctors and nurses never made us feel that we didn’t belong there or that our sadness and shock wasn’t warranted.

Our time in CHEO's NICU wasn't a fun one (obviously), but experiencing the sobering reality of an ICU dedicated to newborns where staff work every day to help babies and their parents through some of their worst days of their lives is simply astonishing.

Our worst fears were assuaged. Our nervousness in becoming parents was eased. We held the hands of angels while we planned and prepared to bring our beautiful girl home.

These are the many buried situations where politics meets reality. Where funding, support and thoughtfulness can bring us together, across party lines and government levels, where we can say "We did this together". We hope you will think about how your vote could affect hospitals like CHEO.

Let's do it together, Canada.

Chris and Tanya G.