McMaster Children’s Hospital has done ‘wonders’ for Champ for Charity Mark Melo and his kids
By Jeff Hicks
AYR —
Cherry cheesecake and chocolate chip cookies.
Any version of creamy, dreamy mashed potatoes.
Izzy, 12, just loves cooking and baking with her dad Mark Melo, one of Mandy Bujold’s 18 Champions for Charity preparing for their fund-raising boxing debut on April 12th in Cambridge during The Brawl at Tapestry Hall.
“She’s very much a food connoisseur,” Melo said of “Izzy” — named Isaura after Melo’s grandma back on Santa Maria Island in the Azores of Portugal.
“Whether it’s cake, cookies, chicken or sides. We’ll figure out anything.”
Ten years ago, the southeast Galt-raised Melo could only hope to create such culinary mischief with Izzy. He was driving back from McMaster Children’s Hospital in Hamilton when his wife Heather phoned in a panic.
Two-year-old Izzy, after having her tonsils and adenoids out as planned to help with serious allergies and asthma, was struggling.
“Izzy just went into Code Blue,” Heather told him from the hospital.
Izzy’s vitals were shaky. Her under-developed lungs needed help. Mac doctors moved her back into intensive care.
Melo — today president of iN4Structure Limited, which builds watermain and sewer pipes for housing and industrial developments across Waterloo Region and beyond — turned his car around and hurried back to McMaster.
“It was scary,” Melo recalled.
Scarier than when son Isaac had his tonsils and adenoids out at age 7 to ease the Triple-A hockey player’s struggles with intense dust mite allergies and asthma.
Scarier than when teenage Melo went to McMaster to have a hole in his heart repaired. The first attempt failed. Melo had to go to Sick Kids in Toronto for open heart surgery.
Melo shrugged it all off at the time. He was invincible, after all. He was 15.
“I remember being so nonchalant about it,” he recalled.
But his parents, Manuel and Maria, were worried. They had emigrated to Canada so Mark and sister Michelle could have a better life.
Manuel worked construction every day despite carrying around shrapnel from fighting in Portugal’s African Colonies. Maria was renowned for sewing zippers into the pant legs of National Hockey League stars like Eric Lindros.
Suddenly, Mark’s better life was uncertain.
But the second surgery went well. By 28, doctors at Mac declared him fully recovered.
They couldn’t even find any scars on his heart.
Now, looking for a health-lifestyle jumpstart as 50 nears, he is the top Champions for Charity fundraiser at $34,550 with 102 donations and his company is sponsoring the Brawl at Tapestry Hall reception. Total donations for the event have topped $272,000 for McMaster Children’s Foundation.
On Fight Night, Isaac will be 17. Izzy will be 12.
Izzy’s scary stay at Mac lasted about a week before she recovered under remarkable care.
“In her first two years, she didn’t speak a lot. She ate peckishly,” Melo recalled of her post-surgery surge of personality. “Ever since that happened —Boom!”
Prior to McMaster, Izzy was reticent. Her parents heard little out of her.
But afterwards, she bloomed. She became a social butterfly.
This is the last quiet day you’re going to have, doctors told Izzy’s parents before she she was released.
A decade later, Izzy’s endearing chattiness is something the Melos are deeply grateful to McMaster for. The hole in Melo’s heart is perfectly patched. Isaac is an invincible teen, like his father before him.
McMaster Children’s Hospital has been a house of healing for the Melo generations.
Mark will step proudly into the boxing ring to represent all three of them.
On the right side his back. he has a butterfly tattoo for Izzy. On the left side, Isaac’s name is in permanent ink.
Three two-minute rounds. Three thriving Melos.
“They’ve done wonders for my family and my kids’ health,” Melo said of McMaster staff. “If I’ve got to go three rounds to raise money for Mac, that’s the least I can do. The staff there fight every single day. I’m just going to fight on April 12th.”
To support Mark, click here.
