A chance encounter can change a life, or it can change countless lives. When Linda Powers first needed a physiotherapist, it was to help with her knee issues from years of intense cycling. She went on to become a physiotherapist herself, one who teaches people to walk again — among other things — after a stroke.

Linda is now semi-retired after working out of The Ottawa Hospital for 28 years, with 22 of those years specializing in neurology physiotherapy. She dedicated her career to helping make the connections between mind and body that allow patients to regain independence and motion following life-changing neurological events, like stroke.

Find out who set Linda on her course in life, why she fell in love with physiotherapy, and how important community support is for the patients she works with.

Q: Can you tell us a bit about your early years?

A: I was actually born at the Civic Campus of The Ottawa Hospital. At a young age, my parents moved us to Gatineau, which was interesting because we were an English family in a very French community. In those days, there weren’t many options for women or young girls in sports, but I found my love of exercise through cycling and through dance — not competitive, because we couldn’t afford that, but through cheerleading.

*Linda as a Rough Riders cheerleader in 1984*

Q: What did you want to be when you grew up?

A: A model! Or a flight attendant. My father worked for Air Canada, and I remember thinking that was the coolest job ever, to be flying everywhere for free. Later on, I thought I might go into computer science. I didn’t even know physiotherapy was a thing back then!

Q: When did you realize you wanted to become a physiotherapist?

A: In elementary school, I didn’t realize I was smart. I remember being in Grade 8 and trying to choose my path for high school, we had to choose secretarial or science. I was afraid of science, and all my friends were choosing secretarial, so I did too. But I had the most incredible guidance counsellor on the planet who called my parents and said, “your daughter is throwing away an intelligent mind. Please convince her to go into science.” Of course, I did. I literally would not be where I am today if it hadn’t been for that one woman — Mary Lou McGuire.

After studying science in CEGEP, I went into biology at the University of Ottawa, where I specialized in exercise physiology because I loved exercise and because the physiology part is incredible and it still to this day interests me.

My first experience with physio happened because I had knee problems, which it turns out came from being flat footed and very active! I remember to this day sitting on the table, getting my knee treated, and talking to the physiotherapist about the field. I remember thinking, “Wow, what an amazing job. You’re getting paid for something you love!”

I’m extremely lucky I came across physiotherapy, because even though work can be busy and stressful, I still have moments every day where I feel lucky to have the ability to give this gift to somebody.

Q: How did you wind up in neurology physiotherapy?

A: During my physiotherapy degree, I started looking at all the different fields I could work in. I had three out of six placements in neuro, and I loved helping people regain some mobility. When you graduate, you don’t usually get to immediately work in your field of choice. So, I started in an orthopaedic clinic, but I didn’t stay there long. I quickly moved to a clinic with home care, where I could work with neuro patients and patients with cardiorespiratory issues. After just a year and a half, I got hired at The Ottawa Hospital, where I floated around for a bit working pretty much every unit, before settling in neuro. I spent 22 years in neuro before retiring in 2023, and now I work casual, taking as many shifts as I can on the neurology unit.

Q: How does your unit differ from rehab physio?

A: In many physio fields, you’re working with one body part. With orthopaedic physiotherapy it might be a finger or a knee, and with cardiorespiratory physiotherapy you’re working with the breathing system. With neuro, you’re dealing with multiple systems, overall mobility, and anything the brain and spinal cord control. We basically become brain experts. For me, it was the most challenging, the most interesting, and the most rewarding.

“It’s a rush of endorphins, like finishing a race.”
— Linda Powers

The largest diagnosis in neuro is stroke, and with stroke, we’re trying to get the patient to walking as an end point. We start with moving in bed, learning to sit, holding balance, and eventually walking.

You apply treatments and you see effects, and it’s just incredible. It’s a rush of endorphins, like finishing a race.

Q: You worked on Sophie Leblond Robert’s case; what made it challenging or unique?

A: Sophie had a brain stem stroke, where there was a massive clot in her posterior artery, which comes up through the spine. It’s a serious location, because it can shut off a lot of your automatic functions, like heart rate or blood pressure control, or it can break the connection between your brain and body, which means you can wind up with locked-in syndrome. You generally only have your thoughts and the ability to move your eyes.

Because of the extreme nature of Sophie’s stroke, she had locked-in syndrome.

“Linda, we had another miracle come in!”
— Linda’s colleagues

Our interventional radiologists removed much of the clot using endovascular therapy (EVT) — a minimally invasive procedure. I’m always in awe of our interventional radiologists and how they save people. I call it the miracle of EVT. Other therapists will joke, “Linda, we had another miracle come in!”

Read Sophie’s Story

After her surgery, Sophie just had an incredible recovery. When I first met Sophie, she had barely any movement in her limbs and a hard time moving her eyes. If she moved her eyes a certain way, she’d get very dizzy, and there would be a lot of nausea. With her initial mobility assessment, she couldn’t even hold her balance sitting at the edge of the bed. But fast forward, and she started making gains really quickly. She wound up taking her first steps within just a few months, on October 1! People don’t often recover from locked-in syndrome — Sophie was a true exception

Q: How does community support ultimately help patients like Sophie?

A: Without community support, we wouldn’t be able to do the research that develops things like EVT, which saved Sophie. At the beginning of my career, EVT wasn’t a thing for stroke. They used it to get clots out of coronary arteries, but using it for strokes was a game changer.

Community donations also help support research into hyperacute medical care, which has shaped how we identify a patient coming to the ER with a possible stroke. Community support even goes towards the technology our doctors use and can help allied health by improving staffing levels and helping purchase the equipment we use in physio, such as walkers or special chairs for our neurological patients.

Q: Where would we find you when you’re not at work?

A: You might find me on my bike or walking my dog, Leroy — he’s a shih tzu, lhasa apso, poodle mix. I get out hiking with him every day. I also have a son, Matthew, who’s 25 and studying engineering at Carleton University. I raised him alone, so we have a very special bond. I love spending time with him whenever we can carve out time for each other. I’m now an empty nester and partially retired. Give me a bike and a dog park and some good friends, and I’ll be happy.

Dr. Dar Dowlatshahi is a stroke neurologist and scientist at The Ottawa Hospital and the scientific director of the Ottawa Stroke Program.

If Dr. Dar Dowlatshahi looks familiar, maybe it’s because you’ve received care from the accomplished stroke neurologist here at The Ottawa Hospital, or maybe you’ve seen him playing a tourist in his own city, or maybe you watched Med Students back in the day — the documentary on medical students at McMaster University that featured Dr. Dar, as he’s known to patients, as one of its subjects. If he’s not familiar to you yet, get ready to meet one of the research powerhouses shaking things up at The Ottawa Hospital.

Dr. Dar grew up in Iran, lived briefly in France, and then moved to Canada in 1979 with his family. He moved around quite a bit during his youth, eventually settling in southern Ontario, which is where he earned three degrees — a Bachelor of Science, a PhD in Neuroscience, and an MD, all at McMaster in Hamilton — before completing a stroke fellowship in Calgary.

Today, Dr. Dar is a stroke neurologist and scientist at The Ottawa Hospital and the scientific director of the Ottawa Stroke Program.

Read on to learn which exciting developments in stroke neurology would have seemed like “science fiction” just two decades ago — and how Dr. Dar stays busy when he’s not working.

Q: How did you decide to pursue neurology?

A: When I started university at McMaster, I was studying the sciences, but I didn’t know exactly what I was doing and where I was going. Early in my undergrad, I took a psychology course and fell in love with the brain portion of the work. I went on to do a PhD in neuroscience, followed by med school. But even then, I had no intention of being a psychiatrist or neurologist.

I tried everything from general surgery to cardiology, but the surgeons kept telling me I should be a neurologist. It was always the one thing that was very easy for me; where I could walk into the situation and feel like I already understood it.

Q: What do you love about stroke neurology in particular?

A: What I like about neurology is the action. Often, people don’t see neurology as an action field, they see it as an intellectual field. But when you watch all those action movies, with these guys making decisions and saving lives, that really does happen in the world of stroke.

Dr. Dar Dowlatshahi is a neurologist and researcher at The Ottawa Hospital.

“With stroke, with the snap of the fingers, the brain can be gone. And you’re the person who can, during that snap of the fingers, save that brain.”
— Dr. Dar Dowlatshahi

You have to make these decisions, which can have massive implications, all within seconds. With stroke, with the snap of the fingers, the brain can be gone. And you’re the person who can, during that snap of the fingers, save that brain.

When someone has a stroke, it can change their life — and the lives of everyone around them. But there’s a system in place to bring them to the Civic Campus, the only hospital in the region that can reverse this, where a group of highly trained specialists arrive to make the decision to give you a drug or treatment that can stop the changes that are happening.

I don’t know how many of these patients realize how different the outcome could have been. But being right here in Ottawa means they’re back home the next weekend with a bit of a story to tell, but otherwise carry on as though nothing ever happened. You get to be a part of that.

Q: How has the field of stroke research and care changed since you started out?

A: It’s changed completely. When I was in my first year of med school, we did clinical work where I was in the room when a stroke happened. There was nothing that could be done at the time, but today, with that same patient, we’d have been able to reverse the stroke.

“The action that’s taken today when a person has a stroke would have been science fiction in my first year of medical school.”
— Dr. Dar Dowlatshahi

I saw the first round of breakthroughs in the first five to 10 years of my career. These were advancements in our knowledge of how to use clot-busting medications.

Then, I was part of the team here at The Ottawa Hospital who brought the next set of breakthroughs, which was thrombectomies to remove clots from the brain. It’s now standard care.

Dr. Robert Fahed navigates a catheter through a model of the circulatory system to replicate how a thrombectomy is performed.

A third round of breakthroughs came with imaging software that gave us the technology to better understand what was happening to people in the first few hours after a stroke.

The action that’s taken today when a person has a stroke would have been science fiction in my first year of medical school.

Q: As a scientist at The Ottawa Hospital, you’re working on an important trial for the treatment of a very dangerous type of stroke. Can you tell us more about that?

A: The breakthroughs I described before are all for ischemic stroke. Unfortunately, for the other major type of stroke, intracerebral hemorrhage, we’ve not had the same level of discovery and advancement in the last 20 years.

This trial, called FASTEST, is for intracerebral hemorrhage, or ICH. About 40% of people who experience an ICH will die within the first month, and of those who survive, about 80% are disabled. It’s by far the worst stroke.

The Ottawa Hospital is the national lead on this trial, which is looking at a medication that’s a clotting factor, or protein, that’s already in your blood stream, and the drug is a concentrated form of it.

When any blood vessel tears, your own clotting factors try to fix the tear. Your vessel first releases something to sort of raise a flag to say, “the trouble is here.” The factors circulating the body looking for trouble see the flags and congregate at the site and form a clot, which is essentially a plug.

In this trial, we’re trying to get these clotting factors to go into superhuman mode. It gets injected into the blood stream, it courses through your veins, it gets to the target, and then immediately starts to form a clot to stop the bleeding.

Q: What is some of the other exciting research happening here at The Ottawa Hospital?

A: In stroke alone, we’re doing work on new catheters to pull clots out of the brain, we’re working on imaging to advance our ability to find treatable patients, and we’re bringing in new scientists to develop new clot-busting medications. We’re also looking at the connection between cancer and stroke and ways to prevent stroke. When it comes to stroke research, you name it, we’ve been in that space.

Q: As a neurologist, why do you work at The Ottawa Hospital?

“We’re a medium-sized city, but we’re on par with these famous international institutions.”
— Dr. Dar Dowlatshahi

A: When I started out in 2010, The Ottawa Hospital was doing stroke research, but it had room to grow. I had advanced training and the hospital had an interest in developing programs my areas of interest — cerebral hemorrhage and acute stroke therapies. Today, there’s a strong network of academic stroke physicians across Canada, and many of us have decided to call Ottawa home. We’re rich in stroke research culture. We’re a medium-sized city, but we’re on par with these famous international institutions.

We have this modesty we don’t need to have here. This is the capital; we should be the best. I wanted to be right where the heart — or should I say brain — of the country is.

Q: What would we find you up to when you’re not at work?

A: I’ve been playing in bands since I was 16. Music was my plan A, while medicine and academia were plan B. I went into medicine, but during the pandemic, a lot of people were holed up and went back to their old hobbies and things they wished they were still doing. Some colleagues and I started a band called Phenotype ─ I drum ─ and it’s just a lot of fun. It’s the opposite of what I do during the day, no one’s life is on the line.

I also enjoy going out and about the Ottawa area with my two boys and my wife. There’s a lot of really cool stuff when you live in a capital town. Rideau River Cruises, touring the Parliament Buildings, Beaver Tails in the market — all that stuff that you would only expect tourists to do, you’ll see me there.

Striking a chord with stroke research

Meet Dr. Ronda Lun — recipient of a rare honourable mention for the 2022 Worton Researcher in Training Award

Why do some people recover from their strokes while others don’t? Dr. Ronda Lun is answering questions like this one through her boundary-pushing stroke research. Author of over 34 papers, a recipient of the highest honour for emerging researchers from the American Academy of Neurology, and now, an honourable mention for the 2022 Worton Researcher in Training Award from The Ottawa Hospital, Dr. Lun combines clinical practice with practice-changing research every day.

Keep reading to learn about what motivated Dr. Lun to become a neurologist — and what drives her research.

Q: Can you tell us a bit about your childhood?

A: I was born in China, and my parents and I immigrated to Canada when I was eight. I lived in Calgary until I moved to Ottawa to do my medical residency at The Ottawa Hospital.

My dad was a neurosurgeon when we were in China, so I was always fascinated by neuroscience and the brain, and I always looked up to my dad.

Then when I was around 10, I started playing piano and really fell in love with classical music.

Q: Can you tell us a bit about your childhood?

A: I was born in China, and my parents and I immigrated to Canada when I was eight. I lived in Calgary until I moved to Ottawa to do my medical residency at The Ottawa Hospital.

My dad was a neurosurgeon when we were in China, so I was always fascinated by neuroscience and the brain, and I always looked up to my dad.

Then when I was around 10, I started playing piano and really fell in love with classical music.

Q: How did you decide to study neuroscience?

A: Neuroscience and piano were my two big interests growing up, and I had a very hard time deciding what I wanted to pursue at the end of high school.

To be honest, I didn’t see my dad very much when I was younger, because he was so busy with work. But when he would come home, he would tell us stories about patients he helped, and how grateful families were that he was able to help them in some way. I really admired how generous and kind he was — and how caring he was for his patients. That was something I wanted to emulate.

I wound up doing my undergrad with a major in neuroscience and a minor in piano. But I actually didn’t finish my undergrad degree, because I ended up going to medical school before the end.

Q: Why did you choose to do your residency at The Ottawa Hospital?

A: As a final year medical student, we do electives at various universities, and I came to Ottawa for one. I remember being blown away by how nice and how willing to teach everyone was. My first day on stroke service with Dr. Michel Shamy, one of the stroke neurologists here at The Ottawa Hospital, he took me to a patient’s bedside and he walked me through how to do an acute stroke assessment, step by step. I felt so important, and I felt like people valued my education and wanted me to succeed, which I think really kind of set The Ottawa Hospital apart from other institutions I had rotated through. It’s such a supportive environment; I knew I wanted to come here for more training.

It’s such a supportive environment; I knew I wanted to come here for more training.

Dr. Ronda Lun

I didn’t really realize my full academic potential until I started my residency at The Ottawa Hospital, and I feel like coming to Ottawa was the best decision I ever made.

Q: How did you get into more research?

A: When I started my residency, I had no experience at all in clinical research. I had just done a little bit of lab research as an undergrad. As a resident, I was open to exploring all opportunities, so I started talking with some of the staff here at The Ottawa Hospital, and I ended up finding an area of research that I’m really quite passionate about — intracerebral hemorrhage. That was when I realized, despite all the clinical things we do on a day-to-day basis, there is still so much we don’t know about this disease, and still so much we could learn. At first, I was just focused on how to do that research. But then I found the more research I did, the more I realized I didn’t have the necessary statistical skills or epidemiology tools I needed to push stroke research even further. That’s what got me really interested in epidemiology and made me want to pursue a master’s degree during my training.

Q: How does your stroke research intersect with cancer research?

A: The medical community has known cancer can cause a hypercoagulable state for a long time — cancer increases your chance of forming blood clots. But the majority of research done around cancer and blood clots has actually been on venous clots, and stroke is an arterial type of clot, so it’s different. We don’t know very much about who gets a stroke after a cancer diagnosis — or which types of cancer are the most at risk. I thought it was the perfect topic to dive into with my master’s thesis.

We found a couple interesting things from my research. We found that during the first year following a new cancer diagnosis, your risk for stroke is three times higher than someone in the general population.

As neurologists, this is quite exciting, because it represents a window of opportunity where we can try to prevent a stroke from happening after a cancer diagnosis. And when patients have a stroke that we can’t find a source for, we can start thinking about whether there’s an underlying cancer that’s undiagnosed.

That’s what I think is the most exciting part about some of these findings; we can really make a difference in these people’s lives.

Q: What motivates your work?

A: My clinical work is what drives me to better my research — the two go hand in hand. I would never have dreamed this is where I would be in five years when I first started my residency.

It’s super exciting to know the research I’m doing is making an impact, and I also get to see patients on a day-to-day basis who inspire me to find answers.

It’s extremely humbling to think about how much progress we have yet to make in the field of stroke treatment, especially in these understudied areas such as cancer-associated stroke.

Q: Where might we find you outside the lab?

A: It’s hard to keep up with music, especially when you’re doing a residency and research, but I do love attending concerts and musical festivals. I also love keeping active: running and hiking and going to the gym. It’s nice to have a balance of work during the week and fun on the weekends.

It’s super exciting to know the research I’m doing is making an impact, and I also get to see patients on a day-to-day basis who inspire me to find answers.

It’s extremely humbling to think about how much progress we have yet to make in the field of stroke treatment, especially in these understudied areas such as cancer-associated stroke.

Q: Where might we find you outside the lab?

Honouring our top researchers of 2022

Soccer skills and stem cell science

Meet Dr. Bernard Thébaud, recipient of the 2022 Chrétien Researcher of the Year Award.

Lighting up cancer research with firefly proteins

Meet Dr. Taha Azad, recipient of the 2022 Worton Researcher in Training Award.

A self-proclaimed nerd with a knack for nephrology

Meet Dr. Kevin Burns — the 2022 winner of the Grimes Career Achievement Award.

Life-altering stroke treatment and care from a “gym rat”

Meet The Ottawa Hospital’s Dr. Robert Fahed, one of only four interventional neurologists in Canada

Not all heroes wear capes — Dr. Robert Fahed plucks blood clots from the brains of stroke patients, saving lives and mitigating injury. The revolutionary process, called thrombectomy, is just a part of what Dr. Fahed brings to the fight against strokes and their disabling effects as an Interventional Neuroradiologist and Stroke Neurologist at The Ottawa Hospital, and Assistant Professor at the University of Ottawa. After training in France, Dr. Fahed was recruited by The Ottawa Hospital, and he’s become known for his practice-changing research and care for stroke patients — and others.

Read on to learn about the eyebrow-raising moment Dr. Fahed learned about thrombectomies and why he chooses to call Ottawa home.

Q: How did you wind up at The Ottawa Hospital?

A: I was born and raised in the suburbs of Paris, France. Both my parents immigrated from Syria before I was born because they wanted a better life for their kids. I’ve always felt like everything I’ve achieved was thanks to them.

I did my neurology residency in Paris, and then I did my master’s degree in Montreal, because I wanted to do research. I have family in Montreal, and I’ve always loved Canada, ever since I was a kid. Why Ottawa? It’s for three reasons: two personal, one professional.

Number one is that The Ottawa Hospital is known for its great research infrastructure and how they support researchers. Number two is that Ottawa is a peaceful, quiet, family-friendly city, and I wanted exactly that environment to raise my kids. Number three is I find it very stimulating to be constantly working in and speaking English. It stimulates my brain because it’s not my natural language. My brain is always functioning at a higher pace because of it, and I like that.

Q: Why did you choose to go into neurology?

A: My father is a neurologist, so I grew up in the field and always liked it. Seeing my father as a hero, it was always pretty clear that I wanted to become a doctor.

One of my first electives was in stroke neurology, and I saw these patients coming back from the dead, basically, after a stroke. That was an epiphany for me; it was what I wanted to do.

Then, when I was a first-year resident in France, I had already decided I wanted to be a neurologist, but the vast majority of neurologists don’t do endovascular procedures. A woman in her 50s showed up with a massive stroke, her right side was paralyzed, and she couldn’t speak.

I thought to myself, “Poor woman, she’s going to be paralyzed for the rest of her life.” Then one of my team members said, “Robert, there is something we can try. It’s experimental; it’s called thrombectomy. Bring her to that room.” I pushed her to the suite, she went in, the doors closed, and I went around to my patients. Half an hour later, I received a call that the procedure was done, and I went to pick her up. I saw a woman coming out of the room, and she was moving her right arm. She wasn’t paralyzed anymore!

I immediately though, “I don’t know what happened in that room, but I want to be the one doing it. I want to be the one bringing those people back to life.”

“I don’t know what happened in that room, but I want to be the one doing it. I want to be the one bringing those people back to life.”

— Dr. Robert Fahed

I immediately though, “I don’t know what happened in that room, but I want to be the one doing it. I want to be the one bringing those people back to life.”

This woman wanted to give us a gift for what we did for her. Her job was running a beauty salon, so she gave me a coupon, and she said, “This is for your …” and she couldn’t remember the name, but she pointed at my eyebrows.

I thought that was hilarious. She gave me a hug, she left, and I never saw her again. It just resonates, and every time I do a thrombectomy, I think about that woman.

Q: How would you describe your role at The Ottawa Hospital?

A: I have dual training: I’m a neurologist who deals with strokes, and I am an interventional neuroradiologist, which means I do endovascular neurology, which consists of navigating little catheters into the brain from the groin or wrist, using just a little puncture that leaves no scar. After treatment, you can’t tell you had a procedure, because the process is what we call minimally invasive.

There are only four neurologists who do interventional neurology in the whole country, and I’m one of them. It’s usually done by radiologists or neurosurgeons, but it can be done if you’re a neurologist.

Here at The Ottawa Hospital, we cultivate this multidisciplinary approach, and I think that’s the best way to offer optimal care to our patients.

I’m also a researcher. I think research is important because today’s research is tomorrow’s care. What we are studying today will be the cutting-edge, groundbreaking, disruptive treatment we can offer to our patients.

Q: How is the field of neurology changing?

A: I’m proud to be able to be part of such disruptive innovations and treatments, and I have a lot of excitement, because the future is even brighter.

Not only are we going to be better at treating stroke, but we are also going to expand the number of people we treat. We’re treating more strokes because we can go get clots that are smaller, and we can treat patients who are a bit older, and we have catheters that can navigate basically anywhere.

We’ve even started to treat other things, like tinnitus, and we might in the future help treat Parkinson’s disease, because we’re not able to implant little electrodes in the brain from inside the vessels.

The pace of evolution and improvements is exponentially higher and better every year. My job already has nothing to do with what my job was 10 years ago when I started; it’s already so different. And 10 years from now, it will again be a completely different field.

A major blood vessel in the brain is blocked by a blood clot, causing an acute ischemic stroke.

A thin catheter inserted into the groin travels through an artery until it reached the clot. A stent passes through the catheter and engages with the clot.

The stent is then pulled back taking the clot with it. The goal is to remove the entire clot on the first try to restore blood flow as quickly as possible, limiting damage caused by the stroke. 

Blood flow is restored, and brain function can often improve immediately.

Read how new technology and techniques like the endovascular thrombectomy changes the outcome for stroke .

Learn More

New technology and techniques like the endovascular thrombectomy changes the outcome for stroke .

Q: How is the field of neurology changing?

A: I’m proud to be able to be part of such disruptive innovations and treatments, and I have a lot of excitement, because the future is even brighter.

A major blood vessel in the brain is blocked by a blood clot, causing an acute ischemic stroke.

A thin catheter inserted into the groin travels through an artery until it reached the clot. A stent passes through the catheter and engages with the clot.

The stent is then pulled back taking the clot with it. The goal is to remove the entire clot on the first try to restore blood flow as quickly as possible, limiting damage caused by the stroke. 

Blood flow is restored, and brain function can often improve immediately.

Read how new technology and techniques like the endovascular thrombectomy changes the outcome for stroke .

Learn More

New technology and techniques like the endovascular thrombectomy changes the outcome for stroke .

Q: What will the Campaign to Create Tomorrow mean for your work in neurology?

A: It means more beds to treat more patients in a timely manner, so it means better care. But more importantly, it means more support to do research. I think many people dichotomize research and care, they separate those two entities, which is a big mistake that The Ottawa Hospital is not making. The Ottawa Hospital is supporting trials and studies embedded within clinical care, so we can care for patients while offering them cutting-edge treatments within the context of a research study.

In terms of research, we’re going to find neuroprotective drugs that can be administered in the ambulance to protect the brain. We’re also working on stem cell therapy to enhance rehabilitation and brain recovery following on a stroke. And we’re going to have new tools and techniques that will allow us to reopen vessels faster and better, which will translate into better outcomes for patients.

I think our performance in neuroscience research is already pretty amazing worldwide, but we’re going to go up to that next level with a new neuroscience institute. I am very hopeful that with this new space and research infrastructure, we’ll be able to do miracles.

Q: Where would we find you when you’re not working with patients or in the lab?

A: That one is easy: I’m a gym rat, I love working out! I’ve been doing it ever since I was a teenager. I have dumbbells, a bench, a rowing machine. I started working out at the gym on campus, but when COVID started, I stocked up on some equipment. My colleagues all made fun of me, saying it wouldn’t be that long. Two months later, everyone was knocking on my door asking if they could use my equipment for a workout.

There is a saying in Latin, “mens sana in corpore sano,” which basically means a healthy mind, a healthy body. I’m training my brain enough with my work, but the body is very important too. We only get one, and we need to look after it. Prevention is the best medicine.

I also spend a lot of time with my family. My parents and sister are now in Gatineau. Along with my wife and my daughter, and soon my second daughter, we enjoy everything Canada has to offer. Ottawa is a magical city: it’s full of parks, you can go on a boat on Dow’s Lake in the summertime, and in the wintertime, you can do ice skating, which is completely new to me. You can go skiing, you can go to zoos, you have so many things to do. I’ve been here for three years, and I have so many things to discover. I am enjoying everything this beautiful country has to offer.

Q: Can you tell us about the world-first treatment you just completed on a tinnitus patient?

A: We recently used this endovascular procedure on a patient with pulsatile tinnitus. It’s a rare type of tinnitus in which patients have any variety of underlying vessel disorders that cause a whooshing sound in the ears. We can almost always treat this type of tinnitus endovascularly, and traditionally, we’d place a stent and put the patient on blood thinners. But for patient Chris Scharff, we used the process typically used for brain arterial aneurysms on the venous aneurysm that was causing the pulsatile tinnitus. It solved the tinnitus without the need to put the patient on blood thinners. It was the first time this treatment had ever been done in the world.

We also recently opened the Ottawa Pulsatile Clinic. While other types of tinnitus are treated by an ear, nose, and throat doctor (ENT), pulsatile tinnitus requires a different approach.

This new treatment and the clinic really highlight how The Ottawa Hospital is at the forefront of innovation.

A powerful calling: The physiotherapist teaching people to walk after a stroke

Q: Can you tell us a bit about your early years?

Q: What did you want to be when you grew up?

Q: When did you realize you wanted to become a physiotherapist?

Q: How did you wind up in neurology physiotherapy?

Q: How does your unit differ from rehab physio?

Q: You worked on Sophie Leblond Robert’s case; what made it challenging or unique?

Q: How does community support ultimately help patients like Sophie?

Q: Where would we find you when you’re not at work?

Q: How did you decide to pursue neurology?

Q: What do you love about stroke neurology in particular?

Q: How has the field of stroke research and care changed since you started out?

Q: As a scientist at The Ottawa Hospital, you’re working on an important trial for the treatment of a very dangerous type of stroke. Can you tell us more about that?

Q: What is some of the other exciting research happening here at The Ottawa Hospital?

Q: As a neurologist, why do you work at The Ottawa Hospital?

Q: What would we find you up to when you’re not at work?

Striking a chord with stroke research

Meet Dr. Ronda Lun — recipient of a rare honourable mention for the 2022 Worton Researcher in Training Award

Q: Can you tell us a bit about your childhood?

Q: Can you tell us a bit about your childhood?

Q: How did you decide to study neuroscience?

Q: Why did you choose to do your residency at The Ottawa Hospital?

Q: How did you get into more research?

Q: How does your stroke research intersect with cancer research?

Q: What motivates your work?

Q: Where might we find you outside the lab?

Q: Where might we find you outside the lab?

Honouring our top researchers of 2022

Soccer skills and stem cell science

Lighting up cancer research with firefly proteins

A self-proclaimed nerd with a knack for nephrology

Life-altering stroke treatment and care from a “gym rat”

Meet The Ottawa Hospital’s Dr. Robert Fahed, one of only four interventional neurologists in Canada

Q: How did you wind up at The Ottawa Hospital?

Q: Why did you choose to go into neurology?

Q: How would you describe your role at The Ottawa Hospital?

Q: How is the field of neurology changing?

Q: How is the field of neurology changing?

Q: What will the Campaign to Create Tomorrow mean for your work in neurology?

Q: Where would we find you when you’re not working with patients or in the lab?

Q: Can you tell us about the world-first treatment you just completed on a tinnitus patient?