Health & Medicine: 1)Ahead of Valentine’s Day, area resident gives heartfelt thanks to cardiac team at RVH; 2)Parents urge province to create standard of care for Ontario students with diabetes

1)Ahead of Valentine’s Day, area resident gives heartfelt thanks to cardiac team at RVH

Courtesy Barrie360.com and News Release

By Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre, February 13, 2026

Valentine’s Day will mean more than flowers and cards for Cliff Lloyd and his family this year.

Just months ago, Cliff suffered a major heart attack. Ahead of Valentine’s Day, he returned to Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (RVH) with his wife and two daughters to thank the cardiac team who saved his life.

Last fall, while having routine blood work done, Cliff felt sudden, sharp pain in his back, left shoulder and chest.

“I knew right away something was off,” said Cliff. “I headed home and my wife drove me straight to the hospital. Looking back, that quick decision made all the difference.”

Cliff arrived at RVH’s emergency department and within an hour was undergoing blood work, an ECG and receiving medication. A Code STEMI was called — the hospital’s most urgent response to a severe heart attack — and he was transferred to the cardiac catheterization lab.

Doctors determined Cliff had an occluded mid-left anterior descending (LAD) artery, often referred to as the “widow maker.” A stent restored blood flow to his heart, a rapid intervention that ultimately saved his life.

“From the very beginning, every member of the team was professional, calm and reassuring,” said Cliff. “Despite the seriousness of my condition, everything was explained in a way I could understand. They eased my fear and helped me focus on recovery.”

Cliff spent the remainder of the week in RVH’s cardiac care unit before returning home with a cardiac education package and enrolment in the health centre’s cardiovascular rehabilitation program.

As the father of two, daughters Pam Newlove and Shawna Ropson, who both work at RVH, and husband to retired RVH medical device reprocessing technician Heidi Lloyd, Cliff said being on the receiving end of care deepened the respect he already had for the teams at the health centre.

“I have always known the sacrifices health-care workers make,” he said. “But being in their care gave me an even deeper appreciation for the skill, dedication and compassion that define the people who work at RVH.”

For his daughter, Shawna Ropson, a nurse in RVH’s cancer centre, seeing her father receive emergency cardiac care was emotional.

“As a nurse, you know how much planning and preparation happens behind the scenes,” said Ropson. “But when it’s your own dad, it can be scary. Watching the team move so quickly and confidently to co-ordinate his care brought me real relief. I’m proud to be part of a team that ensures families like mine have access to life-saving care when it matters most.”

RVH’s Simcoe Muskoka Regional Heart Program provides advanced cardiac care close to home for patients from across the region and beyond. In the past year alone, the program performed 1,674 cardiac catheterizations and treated 280 STEMI cases. More than 370 pacemakers were implanted, 449 patients participated in the cardiac rehabilitation program and approximately 50,000 ECGs were completed.

“These numbers represent more than statistics — they represent lives changed and critical moments where minutes matter,” said Dana Naylor, vice-president, clinical, and regional vice-president, cancer services, Ontario Health (Cancer Care Ontario), at RVH. “Stories like Cliff’s remind us why rapid access to expert cardiac care close to home is so important. Our cardiac teams bring skill, co-ordination and compassion to every patient, every day.”

Heart disease remains the second-leading cause of death in Canada. Early recognition of symptoms and immediate medical attention are critical in improving outcomes.

During February’s Heart Month, the Simcoe Muskoka Regional Heart Program encourages community members to lower their risk of heart disease by staying smoke free, being physically active, eating a balanced diet, limiting alcohol and working with their health-care team to monitor and manage conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol.

For Cliff, returning to RVH was a welcome opportunity to thank the team who helped him get back to what matters most — being a husband and father.

“The care I received was exceptional, and I will never forget it,” said Cliff. “The skill, speed and teamwork gave me confidence that I was in the very best hands. My family gave me strength, and RVH gave me a second chance.”

2)Parents urge province to create standard of care for Ontario students with diabetes

Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Allison Jones, February 10, 2026

One of Susan Simpson’s scariest moments as a parent came when her diabetic preteen daughter’s blood sugar became dangerously low while on a tree planting field trip and neither she, nor any classmates, nor teachers had a snack that would prevent a health emergency.

Simpson, who monitors her child’s blood sugar levels from her laptop or phone, was close to calling 911 but managed to get a teacher on the phone and they rounded up the whole class, got on the bus and drove to a gas station so her daughter could get a source of sugar.

Simpson and other parents whose children have Type 1 diabetes are urging the Ministry of Education to create a provincewide standard of care for diabetes in schools, so it doesn’t vary from classroom to classroom, school to school, or board to board.

“For anyone with kids, you just want your kids to enjoy their childhood, be enriched through school or extracurricular activities and be safe while they do those things,” she said. 

“Our kids are not safe right now.”

Technological advances in the management of Type 1 diabetes mean that most kids wear a pump that administers insulin so separate needle injections are not needed, and kids can wear a continuous glucose monitor so they can keep track of their blood sugar levels, as can their parents, remotely through an app.

But that doesn’t mean kids can manage diabetes on their own, especially young students or kids with cognitive disabilities, parents say.

Alana Diening’s seven-year-old son, for example, needs help doing the math to count the carbs in his food at lunch and inputting them into his pump. Accidentally putting in the wrong number could be life threatening.

“It’s a scary condition, but with the technology that we have, it’s totally doable,” she said. “The kids can thrive, but you can’t do stuff like not help them with their insulin.”

When blood sugar gets too low it can lead to symptoms such as confusion, weakness and shakiness, and even loss of consciousness.

Diening’s son has had reliable support at school through a publicly funded registered practical nurse, who would come to school at lunch to help him, but when the primary nurse went on leave, the care became sporadic and Diening was being told less than an hour before lunch period that no nurse was available that day.

“You talk to the nursing agency and they just say, ‘We don’t have nurses, what do you want us to do?'” she said.

“Then you talk to the school and they’re like, ‘We can’t engage in any part of your son’s care, so there’s nothing we can do.’ And then you go to the school board, and they’re like, ‘Oh, that’s the Ministry of Health.”

Diening reached out to her member of provincial parliament and heard nothing. She said she notified the Ministry of Education and heard nothing. Diening then reported the nursing agency to the Children’s Aid Society and that led to more stable care for her son, she said.

“We’ve resolved our situation for the moment, but … at no point do I have any assurance what will happen next week,” Diening said. 

Ontario has a policy stating that all school boards should develop and maintain policies to support students with asthma, diabetes, epilepsy and who are at risk for anaphylaxis. 

A spokesperson for Education Minister Paul Calandra said the ministry is currently reviewing that policy.

“As part of this review, the ministry will be evaluating implementation of the policy and hosting engagements with academic/clinical experts, condition-specific groups, parents, and education partners to help ensure students have access to a safe, healthy and inclusive learning environment,” Emma Testani wrote in a statement.

The policy is too vague, Diening and other parents say, and should include specific policies on issues such as who will support students with insulin administration, allowing students to keep their cellphone with them because it reads the glucose monitor and taking diabetes kits on field trips, among other measures.

Diabetes Canada is calling on all provinces and territories to implement a standard of care, saying only Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and British Columbia currently have standards that closely align with the national diabetes organization’s guidelines.

Having those types of policies standardized across the province would save parents from fighting individual battles, parents say.

Catherine Grixti’s son was lucky to have a wonderful educational resource worker, who provided reliable care for most of his time in school, she said. But Grixti said a lot has changed now that he is in high school, where most kids have a certain level of independence.

In addition to having Type 1 diabetes he has autism and is not always able to independently make sure his blood sugar is at a safe level, Grixti said. She is almost constantly watching his numbers remotely and messaging or calling him when he needs to take action.

“If he doesn’t pick up on his watch, and if I see that (his blood sugar is) dropping, I’m running to that school and I’m making sure I get to him in time, and if I don’t get to him in time, then I’m calling 911,” Grixti said. 

“They have a right to an education … We’re not asking for much. We just want a policy that (schools) have to follow.”