{"id":2890,"date":"2013-03-14T10:27:22","date_gmt":"2013-03-14T15:27:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/?p=2890"},"modified":"2017-11-19T19:24:18","modified_gmt":"2017-11-20T00:24:18","slug":"dining-with-cancer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/?p=2890","title":{"rendered":"Dining with cancer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Luke Rochefort saw his life come to a sudden halt.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The 28-year-old owner of Ottawa\u2019s St. Louis Bar and Grill was diagnosed with testicular cancer in 2010, but the bad news didn\u2019t end there.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe found out shortly he had [cancer] in his lungs, in his abdomen, and then it spread to his brain and was basically given zero chance,\u201d said a close friend, Mike Bouris.<\/p>\n

But as some like to say, doctors lie.\u00a0 Rochefort\u2019s next-to-nothing chance of survival was easily proved wrong after treatments by a relatively new piece of medical technology called CyberKnife.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has had quite a miraculous recovery,\u201d said a colleague Jonathan Hatchell.\u00a0 \u201cHe is now back \u2013 working \u2013 and he looks like prior to him getting sick with cancer.\u201d<\/p>\n

ASSEMBLING A TEAM<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wanting to give back to what saved his life, Rochefort assembled a team of restaurant owners, including Bouris, approached the Ottawa Regional Cancer Foundation (ORCF) in October.<\/p>\n

With the help of the foundation\u2019s community and corporate development manager Jennifer Graves, the team drafted the country\u2019s first-of-its-kind fundraiser called Dine-a-Rama.\u00a0 The team would network in the restaurant community, canvassing with an idea to try and fundraise for the ORCF by donating 25 per cent of sales on a given day.<\/p>\n

At each stop, Rochefort would tell his tale of survival and the participants for the fundraiser grew.\u00a0 Almost every restaurant approached agreed to the fundraiser, quite \u201cunbelievable\u201d as Bouris described it.\u00a0 Before they knew it, more than 100 restaurants were listed as participants.<\/p>\n

\u201cReally, it was something that, you know, we really couldn\u2019t not do,\u201d said Hatchell, who is the vice-president of Royal Oak Pubs.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Although the city froze on Jan. 23 with wind-chilling temperatures that dropped to -41 degrees, it didn\u2019t stop the giving spirit.<\/p>\n

Staff at the Royal Oak Pubs were faced with what Hatchell called \u201csome internal competition\u2026to say that their pub has raised the most.\u201d\u00a0 With 12 Ottawa locations, its Wellington pub (pictured) brought in $640 out of the $4,600 raised by Royal Oak.<\/p>\n

Bouris\u2019 restaurant, Chances R, held a silent auction for donated suites at the Scotiabank Place, managed to pull in an impressive $5,000.<\/p>\n

Still waiting on about 20 restaurants to hand over proceeds, the ORCF has received over $80,000 from Dine-a-Rama events coordinator Erin McGuire say that\u2019s not far from the event\u2019s $100,000 goal.<\/p>\n

KNIFING THE ILLNESS<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cyberknife technology was only introduced to Canada three years ago.<\/p>\n

It is a robotic radio-surgery system, allowing doctors to perform radiation therapy with precision and effectiveness of surgery, but with few of the side effects.<\/p>\n

Now, there are still only three Canadian hospitals that have the $3.9-million technology to treat their cancer patients: the Juravinski Cancer Centre in Hamilton, the Ottawa Hospital and Notre Dame Hospital in Montreal.\u00a0 The Ottawa Hospital treated its first patient using CyberKnife technology in September 2010.<\/p>\n

CyberKnife supporters, such as the Ottawa Regional Cancer Foundation, claim that the \u00a0treatment offers patients \u201cno invasive surgery\u2026no difficult recovery time, no hospital stay and no chances of infection.\u201d\u00a0 But there are still too many unknowns about Cyberknife\u2019s unique radiation therapy, so the provincial government just won\u2019t buy in, and fund the idea.<\/p>\n

At this stage, according to Ottawa Hospital Foundation officials, \u201cCyberKnife at the Ottawa Hospital is fully funded by the community through the foundation.\u201d.<\/p>\n

The clinical trials and research being conducted at the Ottawa hospital currently receive no provincial funding, but the hospital says it pays for the technology\u2019s operations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the first year that I\u2019ve known of this CyberKnife Program and I mean, we\u2019ve been involved with the regional cancer for years,\u201d said Hatchell.<\/p>\n

BECOMING ONE WITH THE COMMUNITY<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, it\u2019s an expense, but the incentive is to be part of our community,\u201d said Ida Firestone, marketing director for Firestone Restaurant Groups.\u00a0 It was one of the lead sponsors and held one of the many press conferences dedicated to the Dine-a-Rama event.<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a>
Blue Cactus in the Market<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt is important, perhaps essential, for any individual or organization to be involved in the community,\u201d said Fran\u00e7ois Brouard, associate professor at the Sprott School of Business. \u201cThe philanthropic work and activities could be to enhance reputation, present a business as a socially responsible citizen, or to have really altruism behaviour.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even though some might see it that way, Hatchell says, \u201cit\u2019s just part of the circle.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Luke Rochefort saw his life come to a sudden halt. The 28-year-old owner of Ottawa\u2019s St. Louis Bar and Grill<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[157,105,155,156,154],"class_list":["post-2890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-cancer","tag-clifford-lam","tag-cyberknife","tag-luke-rochefort","tag-ottawa-regional-cancer-foundation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2890"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4467,"href":"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2890\/revisions\/4467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}