Scott Radley: Terry Whitehead’s toughest year

Terry Whitehead vividly remembers the moment his doctor told him it could be life threatening.'

It was early spring near the beginning of the COVID pandemic. He'd had some standard blood work done before heading north to see his ailing mother in hospital to be sure he wasn't going to spread anything to her. Before long, the lab called. Followed by his doctor. Get in here ASAP, they both said. And when he arrived ...

It was a frightful time," he says.

And the start of the roughest six months of his life. The story he tells of it is sobering.

A few months earlier, his mother had been diagnosed with dementia. Then she developed stomach issues. While in hospital, she fell and broke her hip. While recovering from the replacement surgery at a different hospital, she fell again, this time breaking her shoulder.

Doctors told Whitehead the chances of an 84-year-old surviving all this weren't great. So with fears about his own health already weighing on him - he declines to say what the medical condition was he was dealing with - he decided to make the drive to Sudbury to spend as much time with her as he could.

Which gave him plenty of hours, as he discovered, to think about his own situation.

When you're told that, a lot of things go through your mind," the Ward 14 councillor says.

Anyone who's been there understands. Anyone who hasn't could surely imagine.

I felt like the world was collapsing around me."

This is Terry Whitehead - the seemingly unrelenting councillor who's the favourite target of social media critics and the man some call any number of not-exactly-complimentary names - as raw as you'll hear him.

What he kept feeling was that he was letting everyone down. He just kept thinking he'd always been able to juggle lots of balls and deal with stress. Yet this was so much. It became tough to even comprehend what was going on.

He spent most of three weeks with his mom as her caregiver. Feeding her, sitting with her for hours and doing whatever she needed.

Two weeks in, his doctor called.

The diagnosis was wrong," he remembers hearing.

Some further tests had determined his condition was not as originally feared and could be treated. Life-threatening' was no longer part of the discussion. He could finally exhale.

Getting better took time. He'd miss some committee meetings. He dropped 20 pounds.

Yet his mom still needed him so he'd make the five-hour drive back and forth as often as he could to see her - seemingly always in blizzards, he quips - while doing what he could to keep up with his council work. Physically it was tough. The toll it took mentally and emotionally was no less difficult.

In the midst of all this, as if he needed another punch in the gut, a close friend died. If things weren't overwhelming at this point, they had to be getting close.

When you see responses from me the last while, I think that's because the filters are down," he says.

Whitehead stresses several times that he doesn't want sympathy. In fact, he was reluctant to even have this story told since he's loath to inject his personal life into the public square. He's not asking to be treated differently. Maybe just a little patience, he says.

The 62-year-old is doing better now. He feels stronger every day, he's putting on weight. In short, he's feeling more like himself. He's not 100 per cent, but getting close. The 16-year councillor got one more blow when a second close friend died recently. But his mom is hanging in and he is, too.

He's doing better than just hanging in, actually. The proof in evident in his kitchen.

He's not much of a singer, he insists. His family gives him grief when he belts out tunes while cooking. For months the vocal jukebox had been off. But three or four weeks ago, the music returned.

When I started singing again at breakfast (which would) drive my kids crazy, they weren't being driven crazy anymore," he says. Because it was old dad back."

Scott Radley is a Hamilton-based columnist at The Spectator. Reach him via email: sradley@thespec.com