Tiffany Scholl, featured in the magazine a year ago: and with her baby Mars just days after his birth in July.
Sunnybrook Magazine, which celebrates its fifth anniversary with this edition, is only possible because of our inspiring patients and their stories of perseverance and strength.
The magazine has had the privilege of profiling many of these patients over the past five years. To commemorate the anniversary, we're looking back at five of the most dramatic stories we've featured, updating readers on how each patient is doing today – as a testament to the impact they've had on both their own families and the staff at Sunnybrook.
Tiffany Scholl
Fall 2014 issue
Tiffany Scholl has come a long way since going through the darkest time in her life. In June 2013, Tiffany awoke from a coma to learn that her baby girl, Clementine, had died. Just a few days previously the Toronto hairdresser underwent an emergency cesarean at Sunnybrook after she suffered a massive stroke.
Just two years ago, doctors at Sunnybrook, one of Ontario's regional stroke centres, saved her life from a brain hemorrhage that left her unconscious two-thirds of the way into her first pregnancy.
But on July 14 of this year, Tiffany and her husband Mario de Lima became proud parents of a healthy baby boy. At seven pounds, six ounces, Mars
Clemente de Lima – named partly in honour of the daughter the couple lost – was born by cesarean section. "He is so cute, and we are having so much fun," Tiffany says. Doctors were especially cautious when Tiffany learned she was expecting again in late 2014, because her stroke was linked to two pregnancy complications: HELLP syndrome, which causes thinning of the blood, and eclampsia, a life-threatening pregnancy complication that causes some pregnant women to develop seizures and/or fall into a coma.
After the clot caused a hemorrhage within the left side of Tiffany's brain, she, indeed, had a seizure before becoming unconscious. After Tiffany's surgery, she had problems with memory, speaking and comprehension, and right arm and leg paralysis. She spent four months in rehab, including two months at Sunnybrook to relearn walking and talking.
It took a multidisciplinary approach by Sunnybrook, also a leader in post-stroke psychiatric symptoms, to help Tiffany recover and get her back to her outgoing, positive self.
She still has some memory problems and tends to lose her train of thought, and the right side of her body "is 40 per cent of what a normal body feels." But not long after her recovery, she was going on walks and runs, and back to participating in sports.
"A person who would meet her now would never know she had a stroke … doctors are amazed at how quickly she recovered," says Mario.
"One of the first questions I had for doctors while I was recovering was, 'How long do I have to wait to have a baby?'" she says.
"I was so close to having a baby – I got to hold her in my arms," she adds about daughter Clementine, who only survived 10 days. "They told me I had to wait about a year and a half" to have another baby, Tiffany says. She became pregnant about a month and a half after getting the medical green light.
Tiffany is even thinking of going back to school: "Spending six months in the hospitals, I just love the nurses, and I thought becoming one would be so much fun."
Nicole Moore
Fall 2012 issue
Nicole Moore nearly lost her life in a shark attack in Mexico in January 2011, but the nurse, athlete and mother of two has come out of that near brush with death with a renewed zest for life and a determination to encourage others to persevere through life's challenges.
Nicole became a patient in Sunnybrook's Trauma Unit a week after a shark tore away part of her left leg, and after the same shark, or possibly another, latched on to her left arm while she was vacationing in Cancun.
She underwent surgery in Cancun, but was flown to Toronto and had two lengthy emergency surgeries at Sunnybrook after plastic surgeons found her wounds were contaminated. The procedures saved her life, but her arm was amputated above the elbow, and she was left with part of her leg missing. She remained in hospital for two months before going to St. John's Rehab, now part of Sunnybrook, to rebuild her life.
Over the next four years, Nicole returned several times to Sunnybrook to undergo reconstructive leg surgeries, the last in February 2015. She hopes to eventually use an arm prosthetic.
"I'm now more appreciative of life and have more patience, and my children are remarkably sensitive to life and the preciousness of it," says Nicole, now 42. Her daughters are now 10 and 11 years old.
In 2013, Nicole returned to nursing at an Orangeville, Ont., hospital in a supervisory role because of her injuries.
She has also become a professional motivational speaker, and her story is the subject of a new book, due out in October, titled Shark Assault: An Amazing Story of Survival, written by Peter Jennings and Nicole Moore and published by Dundurn Press.
Every summer since her recovery, Nicole has been among hundreds of participants tackling the Warrior Dash – a 5.5-kilometre obstacle course that takes participants through wooded lakes, mud-filled back roads and daring heights at an Ontario resort. "I do it for myself and to show people no matter what obstacles are in the way, you can find a way to overcome it," she says.
Not one to let a shark have the last word, Nicole has also returned to scuba diving, maintaining "a deep passion and respect for the ocean and the life within it – a healthy fear, you could say, but respect nonetheless."
Stan Rosenberger
Spring 2013 issue
You could say avid motorcyclist Stan Rosenberger left cancer in the dust after he underwent a seamless prostatectomy at Sunnybrook within days of being diagnosed with prostate cancer at age 48 in mid-2011.
Over the last four years, the Bradford, Ont., resident has taken on a new job, gone on long motorcycle rides with his buddies and purchased a second "hog" motorcycle. In July 2013, just a few weeks after his story was first profiled in Sunnybrook Magazine, Stan went on a five-day hike from Skagway, Ala., back into Canada with his daughter, Alisha, and her husband.
Now 53, Stan has been married three decades to Cathy, a school principal in Vaughan, Ont. They also have a 25-year-old son, Michael.
Thankfully, Stan says, he now has "no health issues."
Stan was referred by his family physician to Dr. Robert Nam, head of genitourinary cancer care at Sunnybrook's Odette Cancer Centre, after a random prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test he was given, while his wife was getting blood work at their general practitioner's office, produced troubling results.
Dr. Nam ordered a biopsy, and Stan was diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer – even though he had no symptoms and wasn't feeling ill. He later learned he's genetically predisposed to prostate cancer, as two uncles on his mother's side had the disease.
Within days of Stan's diagnosis, Dr. Nam performed delicate nerve-sparing surgery to remove his prostate and surrounding tissues. "I was really grateful for Dr. Nam's approach – he did amazing surgery," Stan says. "He was able to save a lot of the nerves in the prostate, so I could still be sexually active, which is a huge thing."
About a year and a half after Stan's prostatectomy, the self-employed heating and air-conditioning contractor sold his business to two of his workers, then took on a job as a fuel safety inspector for the Technical Standards and Safety Authority (TSSA).
Adventure, he says, is still in his blood. He and a group of his motorcycling buddies are planning a special trip in about two years to Europe, where they'll have motorcycles waiting for them to go on a 10-day riding tour through the Swiss Alps and several countries.
Stan's advice to other men who may think they're too macho to have prostate problems? "Everybody's worried about that proverbial finger in your bum, but get checked, guys, and get the blood [PSA] test."
Myla Mendoza Lopez
Fall 2013 issue
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Myla Mendoza Lopez and her family experienced the trip of a lifetime – to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla. – in April 2015, about a month before her twin girls celebrated their second birthdays.
Myla, her husband, Joel, a lab technician, their twins and her 20-year-old daughter Christina from a previous marriage are living life to the fullest – more than two years after Myla survived a brain clot and swelling of the brain, just before her pregnancy due date.
"A week before that [stroke] happened, I saw the ob-gyn and everything was fine, but pre-eclampsia can happen at any time – it can kick in just like that," Myla, who turned 44 this year, now recalls. "Because of my age, I was high risk, and, secondly, I had a twin pregnancy – so two risk factors."
Myla went to bed with a headache the night her husband called 911. She was taken to a local hospital, where a doctor did a scan and doubted whether she could recover. She was rushed to Sunnybrook, where Dr. Leo da Costa quickly assembled a 14-member team, including obstetricians, neurologists, anesthetists and two teams of three for the twins, to deal with the delicate situation.
Myla first underwent a craniotomy (removal of a piece of the skull) to reduce pressure on her brain, and the obstetrics team then performed a cesarean section. Twins Jamie, weighing just under six pounds, and Samantha, at just under five pounds, were immediately ventilated and sent to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).
It took three days for Myla to wake up from the surgery. Her memory wasn't affected, and within three weeks she was able to return home, undergoing follow-up skull surgery in November 2013, with little downtime.
In May 2014, about a year after the twins were born, Myla went back to work as an administrative assistant at a Toronto hospital.
"My health is very good," the Vaughan resident says. "I've been taking the kids to swimming lessons every Sunday and I've been working out – on my treadmill, doing DVD workouts. I'm back to a normal life."
Delaney Janhunen
Fall 2013 issue
Gardening, reading, trying new recipes and catching more of the travel bug are on the to-do list these days of 44-year-old Delaney Janhunen, a mother of three who has faced breast cancer twice.
At just 36 years old, Delaney was first diagnosed with cancer in her right breast and in her liver. She underwent a mastectomy and had ongoing drug therapy, eliminating the cancer for about two and a half years.
In 2007, Delaney was diagnosed with cancer a second time, this time in the left breast. She learned from a friend about a clinical trial led by Sunnybrook's Dr. Sunil Verma at the Odette Cancer Centre. The international study tested a new treatment for breast cancer called T-DM1 – a combination of the targeted drug therapy Herceptin with the chemotherapy drug DM1.
The drug worked to kill Delaney's cancer cells, without harming her normal cells. She experienced minimal side-effects like hair loss and fatigue.
Since Delaney's participation in the T-DM1 randomized clinical trial, the results have been published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, and this hybrid drug therapy has been approved for use with these patients in Canada and the United States.
With no detectable cancer today, Delaney still gets a 30-minute infusion of T-DM1 every three weeks at a Kitchener, Ont., hospital.
But most of her time is spent working two days a week as an educational assistant in a junior kindergarten classroom, planning time with her husband of 18 years, Paul, and their children (15, 13 and 10 years old), as well as indulging in her hobbies.
"I'm feeling great, working a bit and running after the kids," says Delaney. "I don't cling to the fact that I've beaten cancer. I go one day at a time, each day knowing God will direct my future."
Her advice for others battling cancer: "Consider all your options and look at trials, which was a great option for me. You never know what's going to come down the pipeline."
This content was produced by The Globe and Mail's advertising department, in consultation with Sunnybrook. The Globe's editorial department was not involved in its creation.