Dannychoyhasdied

Crusader dies Loving father fought system for CPP disability benefits
By LICIA CORBELLA -- Calgary Sun http://www.sunmedia.ca/CalgarySun/columnist.html
Danny Choy has died.
The 32-year-old father of three young children passed away peacefully Tuesday night in his Coventry Hills home in northeast Calgary with his family by his side.
He had been to the hospital earlier that day. Doctors took a sample of his cancer-filled blood and were amazed.
"His white blood cell count was 350," his brother, Victor, 36, said from Danny's bright and sunny family room.
"The doctors said they had never seen anyone live past 250, never mind walk around and smile," said Victor, with tears rolling down his cheeks. "But that's Danny."
"Danny just wanted to hang in there long enough to get back here, to his home, to see his kids one last time," added Kelvin Choy, 38, another one of Danny's three brothers.
"He was such a positive person, so happy-go-lucky. His life was devoted to making his kids happy, to filling them with his love. Family first. That was Danny."
Indeed it was.
I first met Danny last Friday, spent a total of about one-and-a-half hours with him, talked to him on the phone at most half a dozen times and yet I feel a profound sense of loss at his passing. He was just so utterly decent, so uncomplaining, so eloquent and yet so very, very sick.
He took me step by step through his illness and through his ordeal with the Canada Pension Plan disability fund.
He talked about how he went from being a fit and healthy hard-working electrician to getting winded going up the stairs. How he had a headache he couldn't shake, how his body was covered in bruises and how he knew something was seriously wrong when enormous amounts of blood started pouring from his gums -- the result of a blood clot in his brain, needing an outlet to drain.
I listened to him talk about the two bone marrow transplants he received from his brother Kelvin, how this past November his friends and family held a party for him after it was believed his leukemia was in remission and how just one short month later -- the worst news of all -- he was told that his cancer was no longer just in his blood but in a mass near his heart, in his liver -- everywhere.
He was given nine weeks to live. That was two weeks ago. Who would have thought that was a generous estimate?
Susan and I sat in their cheery, gleaming kitchen weeping as Danny talked calmly about his "blessed" life, smiling every time his youngest son, 18-month-old William, jubilantly shouted out another word: Ice, cup, down and especially, Daddy.
Danny became known to me and to this city after Deb Simioli in the Sun's circulation department phoned to tell me about the unfair treatment her friends, Danny and Susan, were undergoing at the hands of the federal government.
"He's dying but they won't give him any money. He's paid his taxes all his life but they won't help these people out," lamented Deb. "I thought that's why we pay taxes."
Well, me too. Danny and his devastated wife Susan thought that also.
But it is increasingly looking like all of these programs we pay into our entire working lives and that our parents paid into their entire lives are not there for us when we need them.
Danny died never having seen one solitary cent from the CPP disability fund. He also died vowing to change the system.
After his story appeared for the first time on Saturday, Feb. 3, he received his first ever phone call from someone who administers the disability program of CPP two days later.
Afraid of a media storm, the civil servant told Danny that $7,000 would be deposited into his bank account by Friday.
It was an enormous relief for him and his wife Susan.
Danny, a self-employed electrician, was his family's sole breadwinner. He had been unable to work since he was diagnosed with acute adult lymphoblastic leukemia on Nov. 9, 1999.
He has three utterly gorgeous and well-mannered children -- Zachary, 9, Zoe, 7, and William.
Now, I don't pretend to understand the workings of the government's collective brain but how, pray tell, did the folks who call themselves public servants expect a family with three young kids to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads without a paycheque coming in for 15 months?
Danny, a talented musician and artist who carved a totem pole of his family, made a point of saying he was not asking for a handout. He just wanted HIS money back. The money he has so faithfully paid into the system.
Danny had applied repeatedly to CPP for some kind of support and was repeatedly denied.
Had it not been for supportive family members, Danny said they would have lost everything, the dream home he and Susan put so much "sweat equity" into.
Danny consumed the last months of his life by spending quality time with all of his family members. Special day trips to Banff with his brothers, weekend excursions with Susan, whom he married in 1991, and the children.
Danny Choy did not have a lot of money. He was treated like a nobody by his government. He died with a lien against his house, placed there by Revenue Canada, because they were unable to pay their income taxes.
But make no mistake. Danny Choy was exactly the type of person that this country needs more of. He was very well loved. He knew what was important. He died a very rich man.
He wrote books for each of his children, filled with stories of themselves and of himself.
Yes, family came first for Danny. He talked of how "time is so precious" how he planned to spend every second "drinking in" his wonderful family.
And yet he sacrificed some of that precious time trying to make a difference for others -- talking about an uncaring system, pouring over documents and letters so heartless they make your stomach turn.
Let's not allow that time he sacrificed to be in vain.