Globe: PATRICIA VAN TIGHEM, NURSE AND AUTHOR 1958-2005

[Barry Kent MacKay]

PATRICIA VAN TIGHEM, NURSE AND AUTHOR 1958-2005

Alberta woman who survived a mauling by a grizzly was forever tortured by
the experience, even though it produced a bestseller, writes SANDRA MARTIN.
'For 17 years I have had a recurring nightmare. I curl up tight, but still
it comes. It claws at me and bites into my face with the sound of teeth
scraping on bone'

By SANDRA MARTIN

Saturday, December 24, 2005 Page S9

Aweek before she was mauled by a grizzly bear on a crisp autumn day in 1983,

Patricia Van Tighem came home from her shift as a surgical nurse, slipped
off her nurse's uniform and stared at herself in the bathroom mirror.

"I am 24. My hair is blonde and brown, like a taffy pull. My teeth are well
aligned after teen years in braces. All my life, I've been told that my blue

eyes are lovely. I think so too, shy approval coming from deep inside . . .
I'm proud of how I look, but I struggle with that pride. As a Catholic, I've

been taught that pride is a vice. Not good."

She wrote those sentences in her 2000 memoir, The Bear's Embrace, about the
grizzly attack that ripped her face and her life apart in a flash of bad
luck. She and her doctor-husband Trevor Janz, who were experienced hikers,
were returning from an overnight trek to Crypt Lake in Waterton Lakes
National Park in southern Alberta. The bear, which had been gorging on the
carcass of a big horn sheep, didn't smell them coming because they were
downwind. Startled, she charged to protect her kill.

The grizzly grabbed Dr. Janz by the leg while a terrified Ms. Van Tighem
climbed a tree. The bear came up after her. They both fell to the ground and

the bear began chomping on her face. By the time the bear retreated, both
Ms. Van Tighem and her husband were disfigured, but Dr. Janz's injuries were

not so emotionally or figuratively debilitating.

Ms. Van Tighem lost her left eye, endured dozens of surgeries (most of them
failures) to reconstruct her face and to eradicate bone-crushing infections.

As a result, she suffered from chronic pain, recurring and deep-rooted
infections, drug dependencies, recurring nightmares, soul destroying
depressions and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress syndrome. Even so,
she persevered through the birth of four children (one of whom has Down
syndrome), drug dependencies, a number of failed suicide attempts and the
eventual breakdown of her marriage.

"She was absolutely determined that she was going to be there for those
kids. She wanted to make sure that they had a mother as long as she could
give them one," said her older brother Kevin Van Tighem, a parks
superintendent in Prince Albert National Park in Saskatchewan. "This was
certainly not the first time she tried to take her own life. It was just
that this time she succeeded."

Her family loved and supported her, friends mobilized around her and her
former husband was patient and devoted -- The Bear's Embrace is a testament
to his loyalty. But it wasn't enough. "The rest of us can't see into the
place she was living in," said her brother. "The question about her death is

not so much why now, but how did she last so long?"

Patricia Anne Van Tighem was one of 10 children in the family of John, a
superintendent in the Calgary Catholic School System and Eileen, a
homemaker. Her older brother described her as a quiet, shy child with a
winning little smile who was "everybody's special sister."

She went to school in Calgary, graduating from St. Mary's High School,
before studying nursing at Mount Royal College. "She was quietly
determined," her brother said, remembering that when her father wouldn't
give her driving lessons, she went out and got them on her own and then
showed him her driver's licence.

Ms. Van Tighem met her future husband Trevor Janz in 1978 at a Canada World
Youth Reunion. She had just returned from four months volunteering in the
Ivory Coast in Africa and he had come back from a similar sojourn in
Guatemala. They married two years later when she was 22 and a nurse at
Calgary's Foothills Hospital and he was a medical student.

After the bear attack on Sept. 18, 1983, they both spent months in hospital,

but her recovery was much more complicated. Even so, she completed a
bachelor of science degree (nursing) with distinction from the University of

Victoria in 1989.

In 1993, the family moved to Nelson, B.C., where Dr. Janz had an appointment

at the local hospital as an emergency doctor. Despite her frequent
hospitalizations, Ms. Van Tighem wrote The Bear's Embrace, which became a
bestseller in Canada and abroad, and she worked with other people who
suffered from facial disfigurements. She established a Calgary branch of
About Face, an international organization that tries to combat negative and
distorted images of women, and she was a key member of Ups and Downs, a
resource group for families of children with Down syndrome.

Her suffering was acute and she tried to make sense of it by writing about
her own experience and by helping others who were struggling with facial
abnormalities or trying to raise children with disabilities. She recently
initiated an information night and support group for Nelson parents
addressing the developmental challenges of special needs children. She also
gave talks about her experience.

That's how Ms. Van Tighem connected with her publisher. She was reading an
essay about the attack at a writer's workshop that was attended by an editor

at Greystone, who recommended her to publisher Rob Sanders. "She was a
hugely courageous person," he said yesterday.

Ms. Van Tighem talked about the grizzly attack in an interview with The
Globe after her memoir was published. "I tried very much not to take it
personally. I knew the bear was just protecting her food supply, that she
was a mother like me. And yet, had it been a car accident, I know it would
have been different. For one thing, people don't have morbid fascinations
about car accidents in the way they do bears."

Ultimately, the book went beyond her own suffering to embrace a universal
pain and loneliness. "I wear my scars on my face but other people wear scars

that we don't see," she was fond of saying.

"Most of us are never tested," her brother said. "She was just my little
sister, but I saw parts of her that had never been expressed until after the

attack -- certainly her talent as a writer became clear and also her ability

to say, if this is what I have been given I am going to turn it into
something good for others, something for my children and for other people
who suffered from facial disfigurement."

In the conclusion of The Bear's Embrace she wrote: "For 17 years I have had
a recurring nightmare. I am locked in a cage. There is a black opening at
the back, and out of the opening comes a bear. I curl up tight, but still it

comes. It claws at me and bites into my face, my neck, my head, with the
sound of teeth scraping on bone. There is the smell of blood and fur and
fear.

"One night I have the dream again. I am locked in a cage. There is a black
opening at the back. Out of the opening comes a bear. I am on my knees,
hands clasped in front of me, and I beg the bear not to hurt me. I beseech
it to leave me alone. I am too injured already. I can take no more. The bear

approaches me and I cringe, preparing myself for the attack. But this time,
its arms reach out to hold me close. It whispers comfort in my ear. I am
held and rocked and cared for, safe in the bear's embrace."

That embrace, in the form of a drug overdose in an anonymous hotel room, put

an end to her suffering.

Patricia Van Tighem was born

in Calgary, Alta., on Aug. 22,

1958. She committed suicide

in Kelowna, B.C., on Dec. 14.

She was 47. She is survived by

her children Molly 19, Tobin

and Claire 15, and James 9, her mother Eileen, eight siblings and their
families and her former husband Trevor Janz.

______________________________________
Barry Kent MacKay
Canadian Representative
Animal Protection Institute
www.api4animals.org