Inside the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Vancouver General Hospital (VGH), a clinician peers through a microscope. She is looking at a thin slice from a block of paraffin wax embedded with tissue samples, searching for clues to cure disease. VGH neuropathologist and VCHRI researcher Dr. Stephen Yip calls this the analogue version of histology—the study of the structure of tissues at the microscopic level. Research he and colleagues are conducting is paving the way for histology 2.0 in the age of digital technology.
Gerald van Wyck is a lucky man who, until recently, had never experienced a health crisis. The 60-year-old choir conductor, musician and educator married his high school sweetheart 41 years ago, and together they have two sons and one daughter.
A glance at a bulletin board in her GP’s waiting room changed everything for Vancouver resident Joanne. Last year, while waiting for an appointment, the 62-year-old noticed a poster advertising a lung cancer screening trial. Although she had no symptoms of lung cancer, the retired federal government employee knew she was at high-risk of developing the disease and decided to participate. Joanne's mother had died from lung cancer and Joanne is a former smoker.
“I feel so lucky that I pulled that little tag off in the doctor’s office. So very, very lucky.”
During a routine trip to the dentist, Michael Haack was told that he had a white patch on his tongue. Haack did not have a history of mouth injuries or gum disease, so the news came as a surprise.
“My dentist told me that it resembled a freckle in my mouth,” explains the 28-year-old executive director of a local political organization. “He told me that it was an oral lesion, and that we would need to monitor it going forward.”
Eighty-seven year old Vancouver resident John France never knew he had sleep apnea until his son shared a startling observation.
“He said, ‘I’ve come into the room and you don’t breathe for 45 seconds,” says France. “But I didn’t believe it. That’s a long time, but I wasn’t aware of it because I just kept sleeping I guess.”
