Backstreet Boy thanks Canada for its support
Source: http://www.chathamthisweek.com
It's always exciting to have a major celebrity come to town. It's an added bonus if that celebrity also brings a generous donation.
That about sums up a Valentine's Day visit by Backstreet Boy band member Howie D. Dorough to the Public General Campus of the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance. Howie flew in from Chicago, a day before the Backstreet Boys performed at the Pontiac Silverdome, to personally deliver a $27,500 cheque to be used to help develop a palliative care family room in the acute medical unit on the fourth floor of the PGH campus. The room will be available to people who have a family member with a life-threatening illness to live out the end stages of their life in privacy and comfort.
The money came from the Dorough Lupus Foundation, a non-profit independent organization founded in 1999 by Howie D. and his family in memory of their sister Caroline who died of the chronic auto-immune disease Lupus in September 1998.
The donation for a palliative care family room is the first Canadian donation provided from the Dorough Lupus Foundation, thanks in large part to the efforts of Liz Fields, a former Health Alliance employee who applied for the funding.
It was the Dorough family's experience with Caroline's death that moved them to fund a palliative care family room. She had lived with Lupus for 13 years but developed complications that prevented her lungs from pumping enough oxygen to the heart.
Howie D. was called to a North Carolina hospital room as his sister's condition became hopeless and, unfortunately, arrived one-hour too late to say good-bye to Caroline. He and his family remember having to go through the grief and shock of Caroline�s death with nothing more than a curtain separating them from other patients in staff in the area.
Ironically, Caroline's death came at a time when Howie D. and the other members of Backstreet Boys were celebrating a major milestone in their career, having received the MTV Award for Artist of the Year.
Until his sister's death, Howie D. admits he wasn't too familiar with just how deadly Lupus can be. "I never thought it was a disease that would take her life."
But it didn't take him long to become familiar with Lupus after his family's tragedy, and he soon discovered there are a lot of popular entertainers who suffer from Lupus but have not gone public with it for fear of discrimination. By the next year, Howie D. and his family had created the Dorough Lupus Foundation.
When asked what kind of impact his family's foundation had on his life, Howie D. said, "The foundation, for me, is just a way of giving back to the community out there." He added that with the other charity work the Backstreet Boys do -- each band member supports a charity including healthy hearts, diabetes, saving the oceans and the environment -- "this one in particular means a lot to me because it has affected our family."
Howie D. hopes the foundation can create awareness about Lupus as well as raise funds to help find a cure so other families won't have to go through what his family did.
"I don't look at Caroline's death in vain at all," said Howie D. "I think if it had to happen to any family, I look at (it as if) God maybe (meant) this for a reason; for who I am and what I can possibly do to bring out awareness of the disease."
The Health Alliance had known about the donation for several weeks, and were planning to receive a cheque from Howie D.'s sister Angie Herring until he offered to deliver the cheque himself. He said the foundation receives a lot of support from Canada, and it is his goal to use funds in the country it was generated in.
"It's meant a lot for me to come up to Canada and show appreciation to my Canadian fans," said Howie D.
The donation will furnish a palliative care family room much like a bedroom that would be found in a home, complete with an ensuite bathroom, as well as a specially designed bed and recliner style chairs, and a music centre.
The room "will be specifically geared to the needs of the dying patient and their family," said Jacquie Logan-Stephens, co-ordinator of palliative care services. "The care provided in this environment will be truly family-centred. The family will be invited to remain with their loved one and participate in as much of the patient's care as they are comfortable in doing."
Health Alliance president and CEO Bernie Blais thanked Howie D. and Herring for thinking of Chatham-Kent. He also told them, "If Caroline were here today, she'd be very proud of both of you, not only because you're here to provide a generous donation for our community, but also because you're increasing awareness of Lupus in Canada, and I think that's probably the most important initiative."
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