Abel is seventy years of age and in palliative care at The Salvation Army Toronto Grace Health Centre (TGHC). Already suffering from diabetes and chronic kidney disease, Abel was admitted to the University Health Network’s Toronto Western Hospital (TWH) in January 2018 where he was diagnosed with metastatic cholangiocarcinoma, a cancer of the bile ducts. Further investigations by the health care team at TWH revealed that the cancer had spread to Abel’s liver and bones, particularly affecting the spine. He was not considered a candidate for surgery or chemotherapy, and so Abel was admitted to the TGHC in February 2018.
If you shopped for groceries in Kensington Market back in the 1980s or ’90s, you most likely purchased fruit and vegetables from Abel. After arriving in Canada from Portugal in the early 1970s, Abel began working in the grocery business. Shortly after, he purchased a fruit market on Augusta Avenue with his nephew. They would remain partners for twenty-five years, until his nephew took ill and passed away.
Abel recalled how hard they worked in those early years. Every other morning he was at the Ontario Food Terminal, arriving there at 5:00 a.m. to purchase fruit and vegetables before quickly returning to the store to open it at 7:00 a.m. The day consisted of preparing the produce for display: discarding over-ripe produce, washing the rest, and then shelving it, making sure everything was fresh. He also prepared produce for delivery to local restaurants — doing all this while serving customers. In the summer, the days were even longer, and Abel would not finish work until after 9:00 p.m.
After his nephew passed away the hard work was too much for Abel. In 2004 he sold the business; he remained a businessman, however, becoming a landlord after buying a building across from his old fruit market — a building that he still owns today.
After Abel was diagnosed at TWH, there was a family meeting, with nephews and nieces, to discuss his illness and what it would mean if he should return home. Abel never married and has lived with his older sister since his arrival to Canada. He decided, because of the advanced state of his cancer, it would be better to enter the palliative care unit at the TGHC. He made this decision because he did not want to burden his eighty-five-year-old sister with the responsibility of caregiving. “She has taken care of me since I came to Canada,” he said, “washing, cooking, cleaning — she treated me like her son. Also,” he added, “I would find it difficult to negotiate the stairs back home because of the pain in my legs.”
Abel is aware that there are other people at TGHC who are benefitting from its end-of-life care. On occasion he’s met with and chatted with some of his own countrymen on the palliative care unit. He’s watched them, and others, succumb to their illnesses. Abel is a proud man and an independent man, someone who ran his own businesses for over forty years; needless to say, he finds it hard to accept that he is now in an end-of-life care program, and that his independence is slowly diminishing.
Despite that, Abel is very comfortable here at the Grace. “I have no reason to complain,” he says, and then adds … “It’s beautiful.”
Abel is still independent and able to perform a lot of the activities of daily living himself. He emphasizes that he does not want to give the nurses too much work. Having tried recreational therapy, he’s decided that he prefers to watch his Portuguese programs on television. He has wonderful family support from his nephews and nieces, who visit him daily. He happily tells me that most days his niece brings him food and fruit.
Abel hopes to get better, but says, “If God wants to give me more time, he is the one now that is looking after me.” He does have a request: if he is not at the Grace when the annual report is completed, he would like a copy sent to his home.
We sadly share that Abel passed away prior to the publication of the Annual Report.