Soldiering on in Sam’s shoes

Sam Bruno was a man on fire. The charismatic and persuasive 55-year-old Greater Sudbury resident was filled with life, love and laughter. After meeting Sam for the first time about three years ago, it came as a shock to learn he was a terminal cancer patient. He wore his disease well. He was a warrior on a mission of health advocacy that became an all-consuming passion.

Last week Sam Bruno was able to finally put away his worldly armour.

To learn and to make meaningful change, every battle needs to have a post-mortem. And Sam’s death, a result of colorectal cancer, would be in vain if we didn’t take notice that his absence now requires us to realign our troops and prepare a new plan of attack.

Sam’s battle was to bring PET scanning technology to Sudbury. At first he wanted people to know about and have access to PET scanning technology and have the service paid for by OHIP. Once he achieved this, he raised the bar again and asked for a PET scanner unit to actually be placed in Sudbury — a unit that could serve the entire northeastern Ontario region.

(PET scanning is a nuclear medicine diagnostic imaging exam. It can provide information on both the location and the extent of the metabolic activity of abnormal tissues such as cancer, and it has the potential to identify the areas of metabolic activity not always found through MRI or CT scans.)

To say Sam was frustrated in his efforts to get people in positions of meaningful influence to listen to his cause, is an understatement. His letters, phone calls and visits to local media outlets like Northern Life were frequent. He was on a mission that he believed would make a real difference to his community, even if his good work would not pay off in time for him. He knew it was too late for him, and yet, he still persevered.

“At a time when Sam should have been making himself a priority, he devoted himself to his community by creating a purpose and a meaning to his life,” wrote Brenda Tessaro in a recent letter to Northern Life.

“His purpose was the pursuit of a PET scanner for all northern Ontarians so others would not have to endure what he did.”

That same hope is echoed by Nickel Belt MPP France Gélinas who, along with Sam, championed a PET scanner petition that has accumulated more than 20,000 names. Not long before he died, Gélinas said Sam was still questioning her efforts. “(He) always asked me ‘So where is it at? Who did you talk to?’” she recalled in an interview with a Northern Life reporter. Now, in the wake of his death, Gélinas says momentum is growing – in terms of donations and political will – to bring a PET scanning unit to Sudbury.

This would, no doubt, be welcome news to Sam’s ears – the dying advocate who wrote in a letter to the editor last year that his “faith in Sudbury’s political climate has been shaken.” He questioned the efforts of Liberal MPP Rick Bartolucci and Greater Sudbury Mayor John Rodriguez, saying that “both of these appointed officials are bottlenecking our efforts.

Not sure why, but perhaps our noise has royally peeved them off. Someone must remind them that success has nothing to do with what you gain politically in life. It is what you do for others that is important.”

As Sam’s struggle against his disease ramped up, he took inspiration from those around him. And when he couldn’t find it among our community’s leaders, he soaked it up from his fellow cancer warriors. His last letter to Northern Life detailed an encounter he had with a “strong soldier.”

He wrote, “This frail, cancer-stricken individual weighed less than 100 pounds and was crouched in her wheelchair. She told a few of us around her that she left home without her pain medication. This day of all days was a day she would really need them to help foster her resistance. Those of us seated close by immediately stood up to pull pills from our pockets, purses and pill boxes. It was surreal.”

It is this immediate outpouring of compassion and help that Sam quested for us all as a community to embrace. And it pained him to see people turn away from the opportunity to make a difference.

“I have experienced the outpouring of compassion and love from many good people,” he wrote.

“I am extremely saddened by the foolishness of others. There are officials out there who actually believe they can decree and impose policy, causing pain and suffering, all for their own personal agendas, while being totally oblivious to the hardships they inflict.”

Now that Sam Bruno has moved on from this world, it is incumbent upon us to take up his torch and keep alive the fire that he remarkably started. All it takes is a phone call to an elected official, a donation to the hospital’s PET scanner fund or helping others to understand what the battle is all about. Small efforts with big results. That’s exactly what Sam would do.

Wendy Bird is managing editor of Northern Life.