"We don't have a clue what's going to happen, all we know is that the lawyer and her team are going to fight for us," said the father, whose identity is also being withheld. "You stand up for your child, but you get treated like a criminal. We're not crack heads." Bottles of hand sanitizer, gloves and surgical masks sit near the entrance of the two-bedroom home the family rents in downtown Hamilton. Seated at an office chair discoloured from years of cigarettes smoke, the boy's father waited for his oldest child, a daughter, to return from school yesterday. He knows he's not a perfect parent. Both he and his former wife, who died of brain cancer seven years ago, battled addiction, and their two children have fetal alcohol syndrome. He has collected disability insurance for nearly 10 years, is epileptic and a chain-smoker. He also loves his children deeply. He is aware that his son's chances of survival are slim without chemotherapy, but he has watched the chemicals meant to heal him ravage the boy's stunted body. A judge previously ruled that the boy is not capable of understanding that halting chemotherapy treatment is a likely death sentence. But the father insists that his son has an unfailing spirituality learned from his Micmac stepmother, and that the doctors' medicines harm the boy's young body more than the cancer.