When Karam Roberts first visited the Lights of Hope display at St. Paul’s Hospital in December 2019, she was utterly dazzled and inspired by the bright lights against the dark night. Little did she know that just twelve months later, her view of their radiance would be from inside the building.
“Never in a million years did I think that in 2020 I would be in that same hospital in a bed, trying to piece my life back together,” she says. “It was unfathomable.”
Karam’s passion for the outdoors, sports, and off the beaten path travel have taken her on a lifelong journey of exciting adventures. She met her partner Matt Holywell, an Australian, during a trip to Nepal nearly a decade ago. Together, they moved from Karam’s hometown of Wrexham to Vancouver in 2019 to delight in the city’s mountains and oceans.
In the summer of 2020, Karam began experiencing minor respiratory symptoms and simply attributed them to hay fever, a cold, or wildfire smoke. But her symptoms only got worse.
Months of intense sinus pain, stiff joints, fatigue, weight loss, and difficulty breathing severely affected her day-to-day life; she began coughing up blood and her ears filled with fluid, blocking her ability to hear or move without dizziness. She was treated for sinusitis and pneumonia, yet no medications seemed to help.
“By this point I was pretty much at home confined to the sofa. Matt had to leave things out for me within reach while he went to work,” Karam says. “It was a very isolating, worrying time.”
The lack of response to treatment was a red flag for Pam Roberts, Karam’s mom and a retired nurse. Karam had a scheduled appointment for a CT scan of her chest, which required routine bloodwork. Pam recommended Karam request a few extra tests. When the results came back, it was clear something was very wrong. Karam’s GP phoned and instructed her to go to the Emergency Department at St. Paul’s Hospital, where respirologist Dr. Scott Apperley would be waiting for her.
“It was a bit surreal. I got home from work and Karam told me about the conversation with her doctor. Karam thought we could have tea and go later on,” Matt recalls. “And I said, no. If they want us to go now, we need to go now.”
The couple didn’t anticipate what was to come.
“I was anxious, certainly, but we still didn’t think it was anything too serious,” Karam explains. “I had in my head I would go into hospital, be on a course of IV antibiotics for about a week or so, and I’d be home for Christmas. But unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.”
A double diagnosis
When Karam and Matt arrived at St. Paul’s Hospital, doctors immediately got to work figuring out what was wrong. Since Karam could barely hear and was immobile, staff allowed Matt to stay with her the first night she was admitted. After that, she moved into isolation because they didn’t know what was causing her illness or if she was contagious.
Eight specialists and four days later, Dr. Apperley came into Karam’s room with a diagnosis written on a piece of paper: granulomatosis with polyangiitis (GPA), a rare autoimmune disease and a type of vasculitis.
Although this diagnosis was overwhelming for Karam, Matt, and the entire Roberts family, everyone felt positive about her beginning a treatment plan.
But the very next day, Karam awoke with chest pain and a few hours later went into an unexpected cardiac arrest. Twice, staff at St. Paul’s Hospital resuscitated her. She spent the next four days in an induced coma in the intensive care unit (ICU).
GPA primarily affects the upper respiratory tract and lungs; it rarely impacts the heart. While Karam’s earlier tests showed some signs of cardiomyopathy and myocarditis, doctors soon confirmed that vasculitis caused the arrest.
“We’d literally just gotten the initial diagnosis and wrapped our heads around what that meant, and what that process was going to be,” Matt says. “It was a big shock to go from understanding that vasculitis is a manageable disease and there’s treatment for it, to we don’t know whether she’ll make it through the week.”
And for Karam’s family, an ocean away in Wales, the news was excruciating.
“Our lives just imploded,” says Arthur Roberts, Karam’s father. “All we wanted to do was get on a plane and go to sit with Karam and hold her hand. We were trying to get to Vancouver, but every way was blocked because of Covid.”
Karam woke up to learn the cardiac arrest had caused so much damage she was now in heart failure.
“At that point, I was crushed. Dealing with one diagnosis was one thing. And now I felt that the hurdle had doubled in size,” she says.
An extended, surrogate family providing compassionate care
Karam spent a total of seven weeks in the cardiology ward before being transferred to cardiac catheterization (CATH) lab for a defibrillator implant as part of her treatment and recovery.
Since Karam and Matt moved to Vancouver shortly before the pandemic began, they didn’t have time to build community. And so, the staff at St. Paul’s became her support system – particularly the nurses, who wrote encouraging messages on the white board in her room, offered hugs, and brought her little pieces of chocolate.
“The nurses stepped in, and it wasn’t just the practical, medical aspect of nursing. It was a more personal, emotional touch. I used to look forward to seeing which nurse I had for the day when the shift came on in the morning,” Karam recalls. “I look back at it now with quite fond memories, which seems like a really strange thing to say for such a scary period. But it was thanks to them that I felt so relaxed.”
Charissa Leddy, a nurse in the bronchoscopy suite, remembers meeting Karam in the hallway before her first bronchoscopy procedure, shortly after she was admitted to the hospital. She immediately gave Karam a hug.
“At the time, we were covered in head to toe in PPE, so the only part she could see was our eyes,” Charissa says. “She was just so scared and we were trying to instill faith, hope, and support with just our eyes doing the talking.”
Charissa’s warm hands and cheerful voice were a constant that carried Karam through more than a dozen subsequent bronchoscopy procedures required to treat GPA.
“Charissa had my back from the very beginning. She’s been through the whole roller coaster journey with us. She’s always there when I wake up from sedation. And that’s when I know that everything’s okay,” says Karam. “She’s an absolute angel, and one in a million.”
Karam and Charissa continue to run into one another in the halls at St. Paul’s Hospital and stop for a hello and a quick catch up.
“I feel like our team was able to give her the support she needed and become an extended family to her,” Charissa says. “It’s a special bond that I’ll always have with Karam, and it’s just amazing. Usually when I see her, I get teary.”
The ongoing journey of recovery
When Karam was discharged from the hospital, she could only move with the help of a walker. She gazed at the mountains in the distance and hoped that one day she’d be able to explore them again.
“I wasn’t even certain at that point how much better I could get, or how long it would take. So we just kept plowing on one step at a time,” she says.
A game changer for Karam was an Erbecryo machine, which was purchased in 2023 thanks to St. Paul’s Foundation donor dollars. Cryotherapy helped reduce inflammation and keep Karam’s airways open, greatly reducing instances of her lungs collapsing.
With treatment, along with rehabilitation and plenty of support from Matt, her family, and her health care team, Karam’s condition has stabilized and she’s been able to reclaim her beloved active lifestyle. In 2022, she and Matt hiked the Beehive in Banff and last year, she ran an 8K race.
“I can’t tell you how good it feels to get back out in the mountains again,” she says. “Just being in the trees and the nature – words can’t describe. I don’t know whether to say I’m very lucky, or unlucky, to know the true meaning of ‘you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone’. I’ve been there, and I’ve got it again. I know how special that is. And I wouldn’t be here and able to say that without the help of everyone involved in my care every step of the way.”
To express their heartfelt gratitude, Karam and Matt’s family and friends supported a star this year honouring her care team. During a recent trip to Vancouver, her father Arthur and brother Gareth dropped off the collective raised donation to Lights of Hope.
Karam and Matt live close to St. Paul’s Hospital, and the annual Lights of Hope display continues to remind her of what she went through – and the vital impact of compassionate, innovative, and expert care.
“Every time I see the lights it has a special meaning for me,” she says. “It’s so poignant, and the display is just the perfect symbol of hope. There really is hope, and I am proof of that.”
When you give to Lights of Hope, you bring compassion to patients and families during their most vulnerable moments. You help give patients like Karam the chance to beat the odds. You help support innovative research that saves and improves lives.