Trevor Janz was a doctor-in-training at the same Calgary hospital where his wife Patricia Van Tighem was the nurse with the pretty blue eyes. They were in their twenties, hopelessly in love and both enjoyed spending time outdoors. Life was full of promise.

But a weekend of hiking in September 1983 at Waterton Lakes National Park in southwestern Alberta would change the young couple forever and the difficult emotional recovery would be universally inspiring.

The chances of being attacked by a grizzly bear are remote, far less than being hit by lightning.

"This was no ordinary bear. Bears usually don't want anything to do with humans, and only charge as a last resort... We ran into a particularly grumpy bear on a very bad day. This was a loaded gun," says Trevor.

Unbeknownst to them, they had crossed the path of a mama bear protecting her cubs and her dinner, a bighorn sheep carcass.

"I was aware of being on the ground with this bear on top of me chewing on the side of my head... One of my very first thoughts that I had lying on the ground was, 'I can't die, my mother will be too upset," says Patricia.

"It occurred to me that today was the day that I was going to die and I was going to die a violent death. I was going to die at 23 years of age," says Trevor.

The grizzly attack left Trevor and Patricia with critical injuries. They had lost a significant amount of blood and the bear came close to severing major arteries.

After being rushed to a Calgary hospital, plastic surgeon Dr. Robert Lindsay performed a 20-hour medical marathon with back-to-back operations on Trish and Trevor. Their recoveries would take two very different paths.

Trevor's nose and jaw required reconstruction. They may have been broken, but not his spirit. He had life plans, like a dream house in the B.C. mountains that he would eventually build from scratch. He'd be damned if a bear was going to get in his way.

"I was young and wild. I thought, 'Hey, I'm pre-disaster. Lightning never strikes in the same place twice. I'm virtually immortal now and isn't it great to be alive'?"

With Trish, the plastic surgeon literally tried to put the missing pieces of her face back together again. She'd lost the entire back of her scalp down to the bone.

They took an enormous muscle out of her back and laid it across her head, put skin grafts on top, and one of her ribs became her cheekbone. Ultimately, they couldn't save her left eye and her body rejected a prosthetic one.

"I was 24 years old. It was disfigurement and I felt ugly. I couldn't make my face do what it wanted," says Patricia.

Trish would end up having more than 30 different operations, a seemingly endless cycle of reconstruction and infection. An attack that lasted just minutes left Trish facing a lifetime of pain.

For a long time, she hated going out in public. People stared, pointed, blurted out questions. Others treated her like she was mentally challenged.

"The survival part wasn't the bear attack and the walk out, to me that was actually the easy part. The hard part is what came afterward," says Patricia.

She fell into a black hole of physical and emotional anguish, post traumatic stress disorder and depression. Patricia was haunted and wounded, a far cry form the hopeful young woman back in 1983.

Nevertheless just three years after the attack, Trish and Trevor started a family. They had the four kids they'd always dreamed of and desperately wanted to provide them with a happy childhood.

"I wanted to somehow hold them emotionally, create enough security, enough love, enough connectedness and enough belonging among us that we could find our way through this experience," says Trevor.

The oldest is Molly, full of poise and promise at 16. Then there's the youngest, sweet baby James at age 6. In between them are the twins, 13-year-old Tobin and Claire, whose birth prompted them to wonder once again, why us? Claire was born with Down's syndrome.

"I was very upset. I didn't want to deal with a child who was going to look different when we already looked different. Trevor cried in the delivery room, " says Patricia.

All those feelings changed and they've both come to recognize her special gifts.

"Claire has very many gifts. So she has Down's Syndrome but she also has beautiful blue eyes that twinkle, a wonderful singing voice and this incredible lust for life," says Trevor.

Despite four children and their dream home in the mountains, Trish couldn't seem to get past the darkness. She suffered years with terrifying nightmares about the bear.

In between the surgeries, Trish spent weeks and months at a time away from home, in and out of psychiatric hospitals with manic depression. There were pills, electroshock, a three-month lockup, and even attempted suicide.

For Trevor, the hardest part was not being able to help her.

"Physician, doctor, in control, got all the answers, can fix anything and anybody and the person that I love the most with a condition that I could do very little to change... I lost the Trish I loved in so many ways."

He was superman. The dad who could bake pumpkin pie from scratch, work three jobs as a doctor, and made sure that he was always there to pick up the pieces when Trish disappeared.

"My trying to help turned into holding everything together. Holding everything together turned into controlling everything, and over functioning... When she was feeling better, we had everything so well organized that there wasn't much room for Trish in my kitchen. Our routine and the kids and I settled into such a comfortable place that... it was almost like Trish was irrelevant," says Trevor.

Now the woman once afraid of her own shadow has to learn to be alone, and face the world.

"We're actually separated at the moment, and I don't know where that's going to go. But it's hurt him... We love each other very much. I think we are kindred spirits. But it's the toll of time," says Patricia.

It has been a long, painful journey. Patricia Van Tighem has begun to face her nightmares. Part of her healing has been to put her story down on paper and have it published.

"I could take that book and put it on a shelf and it was like I could take all those memories and put them there. And not have to dwell on them, really, anymore," says Patricia.

What she didn't know that writing her story would make her a celebrated author.
Overwhelmed by support, she soon realized that her remarkable story was universal.

"We kind of all have a bear in our life. The bear's embrace was a metaphor for looking for control or a sense of power in our life. Feeling powerless or not having control is what we're all afraid of," says Patricia.

She's beginning to see herself physically and emotionally in a different light.

"I guess I look at it this way, I wear my scar with my patch on my face. But I do believe that people carry scars around with them. You just don't see them. And we all have to work on those things."