 Basile Papaevangelou and his daughter Christina co-founded Upopolis after Christina survived a life-threatening illness and her close friend Katy died of cancer. (Greg Henkenhaf/Toronto Sun/Sun Media)
|
When they rushed Basile Papaevangelou's daughter into the intensive care unit at McMaster Children's Hospital, he thought he was losing her.
Just 15, Christina had just been diagnosed with Toxic Shock Syndrome and the team feverishly working on her did not look optimistic.
"It was absolutely terrifying," the Oakville father recalls more than seven years later. "She went in almost dead and came out alive."
Fortunately, she recovered, but both father and daughter were forever changed.
"It gave me a new outlook and ingrained in me the importance of giving back," says Christina, now 23.
"To me, that building saved her life," adds her dad, a successful businessman and company director. "I had to do something. I had made donations in the past, but it was more than signing a cheque."
What that "something" would be took shape a short time later after they were shaken by another brush with life-threatening illness -- this time it was Christina's close friend, Katy McDonald, who was diagnosed with cancer.
CUT OFF
The Burlington teen spent months in Toronto at Sick Kids cut off from Christina and her other friends and often mentioned to her mom, Glyn Ganong, that she wished she had her own laptop, especially when she became bedridden and too sick to visit the lounge and use the computers there.
When Katy tragically lost her battle in 2004, Papaevangelou and his grief-stricken daughter knew what they had to do -- in her honour, why not set up a charitable foundation that would provide free laptops to sick kids in hospital?
They were soon told it wasn't that simple: children's hospitals can't offer open wireless access to the Internet because there are fears of cyberpredators and concerns the kids would be accessing inappropriate material.
"Those two explanations lit my fire," recalls Papaevangelou, who co-founded Kids Health Links Foundation with Christina in 2004.
He took Joe Natale, one of the head honchos at Telus Corp., out for lunch.
"Can we do something?" he asked him.
"Absolutely," Natale responded.
"In life, some decisions are hard and some decisions are easy. This is one of the easiest decisions I've ever made," recalls Natale, president of Telus Consumer Solutions, which volunteered to develop and host Upopolis. "To deny a child who is in hospital not feeling well the ability to stay connected to their world is unthinkable."
So with donated computers from Toshiba Canada, Upopolis was born.
With input from parents, patients and McMaster's child life specialists, they set about creating a safe, online social network. A focus group of 12 kids told them their first priority was being able to e-mail and chat with friends and family.
"To our surprise," Christina recalls, "their other top concern was falling behind at school. That was a huge added stress, which we had to address as well."
Papaevangelou recalls a McMaster patient with Crohn's disease who was in her final year in high school and had to get her assignments in. So the site includes Microsoft Office so patients can still work on their essays and Powerpoint projects and send homework back and forth. He's especially excited about a future version of Upopolis that will allow a portable webcam to set up virtual classrooms for patients so they can follow their teachers right from their hospital bed.
'VERY OPEN'
"We're very open to adding features and enhancements to the portal," says Christina, now a Telus project co-ordinator. "It's really about whatever patients want."
Upopolis first launched at McMaster in December 2007 and soon became a huge hit. Other health centres came calling and it's now up and running at children's hospitals in Vancouver, Halifax and Ottawa. It officially arrives at Sick Kids on Dec. 9.
"I don't think we ever expected the excitement," Christina says. "We hope to bring Upopolis to all children's hospitals in Canada by the end of next year. It's a challenge, but we're going to do it."
Child life specialists are especially keen on its educational component.
"One of the really neat features is that children and youth can look at information about their care," explains Alida Bowman, McMaster's program manager for pediatrics. "What's an MRI, what will it look like, what will it sound like?"
Upopolis has a library of age-appropriate information about children's diseases and procedures. It also allows the kids to connect with other hospitalized children across Canada who might be suffering from the same illness.
The network is safe and secure because only children registered with the hospital can use it and only the contacts they've invited can communicate with them through Upopolis. And while it allows them to use Google, it blocks access to sites that aren't considered appropriate.
"The security of it really appeals to us, it's not a Facebook kind of thing," says Toni Crowell, child life manager at the Hospital for Sick Children. "I think overall it's going to be a great therapeutic resource."
TRANSPLANT
Manmit Bassi certainly thinks so. Only 13, the heart transplant patient already knows too much about the boredom and isolation that comes with spending a long time in the hospital cut off from her usual world.
But for her latest stay at B.C. Children's Hospital, she was thrilled when they gave her a laptop that allows her to stay in touch with her friends and family thanks to Upopolis.
"There are computer games -- I love computer games! -- and I can upload pictures and e-mail friends and family and meet other patients like me," an excited Manmit explains from her bed in respiratory isolation. "You don't get bored. I think all kids in the hospital should have it."
And that's the plan, thanks to an Oakville father and daughter transformed by their brush with life and death.
"I think Katy would be so proud to have been the inspiration for this," Christina says. "My dad often says it was a tragedy but we're definitely making a difference because of her and she'd be so thrilled."
