Home for the holidays: How care at WRHN sparked hope, and illuminated a cancer fundraiser
Patient Story
Jonathan Uyede had spent weeks in and out of Waterloo Regional Health Network (WRHN) for intensive chemotherapy after a cancer diagnosis stunned his young family in November 2023.
As the calendar turned to December that year, Jonathan’s wife, Beth, and daughters, Nyah and Sloane, were preparing for the possibility that they’d have to spend Christmas Day in a hospital room.
Then, staff at WRHN’s Cancer Centre offered a holiday miracle.
“They had been telling us they weren’t sure if he could come home for the holidays, but he was discharged right before Christmas,” Beth says.
It was the best gift we could have gotten.
Weeks earlier, Jonathan, a healthy and active 44-year-old, suddenly found himself breathless and fatigued. Even climbing a short flight of stairs left him struggling for air.
When his neck began to swell, Beth became alarmed.
An emergency room visit to WRHN revealed a fast-growing mass near his heart and lungs. More tests were ordered, but the doctors knew: this was an aggressive cancer. And it needed to be treated fast.
Jonathan was admitted for emergency chemotherapy.
In the Uyede home, Nyah and Sloane were shocked. Nyah, the oldest of the girls at 11, grasped for ways to help.
“I didn’t know what would happen, what treatments he would need, if he was going to survive,” Nyah said.
I just knew I had to do something.
Nyah created “Fight Cancer with These 4 C’s Fundraiser,” selling handmade Christmas cards, hot cocoa, candy canes and apple cider at a stand at her dad’s veterinary clinic.
With some help from her mom and the clinic team, news soon spread and donations poured in from neighbours near and far. Her dad’s former water-polo teammates rallied around her. People she had never met felt moved to help.
With each card sold, each mug of cocoa poured, Nyah’s little table of holiday warmth grew into a beacon of hope and light. She raised $7,000 — enough to fund a new chemo chair at WRHN Cancer Centre.
The chair, purchased by WRHN Foundation and delivered last year, now bears Nyah’s name as a symbol of hope, compassion, and community strength.
“I don’t think of it as something I did,” Nyah says.
It was about all the people who wanted to help.
Two years later, the Uyede family is grateful for how far they’ve come.
Jonathan’s latest scans and check-ups have been clear, and he’s returned to his passions of taking care of animals and hiking and skiing with his daughters.
As another holiday season approaches, the family will look back on Christmas of 2023 and remember how Jonathan’s care team at WRHN worked their magic.
They made sure he was there to read his daughters “The Night Before Christmas” on Christmas Eve. They made sure he could accompany his family on a Christmas morning hike – both annual traditions in the Uyede household.
For Beth and the girls, no wrapped gift could have meant more.
“Having him home, that’s all we needed,” Beth says.
We’re forever thankful to the Cancer Centre and our community for brightening our spirits, and helping us get through the darkest months of our lives.
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