A father who has been enduring the dread of watching his child die of cancer has lashed back at what he calls an insensitive bureaucracy that continues to leave parking tickets on his car outside a St. John's hospital.
"Having a child in this situation is a mix of sadness, of anger, of just frustration," said Robert Thornhill, whose three-year-old daughter, Erica, suffers from acute myeloid leukemia, and is being treated at the Janeway children's hospital.
Robert Thornhill shared this photograph on Facebook, depicting a sign he had left for parking officers to read outside the Health Sciences Centre. (CBC) Thornhill — who has shared around-the-clock shifts with his wife since last August as their daughter was treated in St. John's and Toronto — said he has asked for consideration from officials who issue parking tickets outside the Health Sciences Centre.
Earlier this week, after seeing the latest parking ticket on his windshield, Thornhill — who lives in Carbonear, but has been home for only a few hours at a time since last summer — decided he had enough.
He wrote a letter for the security officers to see, put it in his car window, and posted a photograph of it on Facebook. It was shared rapidly by at least 2,000 others, many of them strangers.
"My child is upstairs dying of cancer and you have to do is write me parking tickets. You must feel some good about yourself," Thornhill wrote in the note.
"I was just angry [and] frustrated. Really frustrated," Thornhill told CBC News on Thursday.
"It's not fair that people should have to deal with this, on top of losing a child."
Parking system not working: father
Eastern Health has made changes in its parking system at the Health Sciences Centre over the last two years, largely to help patients who had to rush out to feed meters. But Thornhill said the system still doesn't work for people with family members receiving ongoing care.
Thornhill said he had been given a placard he could put in his car, but it only prevented tickets from being left on nights and weekends. He noted that tickets are not even issued at those times anyway.
Thornhill estimates that he has racked up about $500 worth of tickets. He said the fines are not his priority.
"It's not important," he said. "It's just something that adds stress."
Thornhill's daughter underwent three rounds of chemotherapy in St. John's, followed by an even more intensive round of treatment at Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto.
However, the Thornhills learned last month that their daughter's cancer had returned, and were told earlier this month that there is no chance Erica will survive the disease.
"It's a parent's worst nightmare," he said.
He added few people appreciate how gruelling daily life is for parents dealing with a child with life-threatening illness.
"For most people, it's not a prolonged experience, and for most people, it's not the ending that we see," he said. "The ending is death. That's what it is — it's death. That's what we face."
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