Her story begins in Moldova, a tiny nation of 3.5 million people sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine on the north shore of the Black Sea.
The former Soviet republic declared independence in August 1991, when Natalia Stavila - now a Masters student in the Department of Psychiatry's Graduate Program - was just two years old.
She has little personal memory of those events, of course, or the breakup of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) a few months later. But she does remember making a firm career choice early in life.
"I was very young when I first said I wanted to be a doctor, maybe 12 years old," she recalls.
"My family kept saying 'Oh you'll change your mind.' But I didn't. When I had to choose between science or arts classes after grade nine, I chose science. In Moldova you go straight from high school to medical school. There is no prerequisite Bachelor's program."
Stavila subsequently spent six years studying for her degree at Moldova's only medical school, the State University of Medicine and Pharmacy, in the capital city of Chisinau. She graduated in June 2014.
So why did she decide to make the 8,000-kilometre trek west to the University of Alberta, a few months later? The answer stems from a chance meeting she had at a medical conference in Italy when she was still in medical school.
That's where Stavila met Dr. Michael Dorey, an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Ophthamology in the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Alberta. The two hit it off. After seeing each other a few times and introducing their families on both continents they made the leap and decided to marry.
In October 2014 Stavila joined her new husband in Edmonton, where she started a whole new chapter in her life. Was it a tough adjustment? In some ways yes, she says. In other ways, no.
"Moldova isn't that different from Edmonton. It doesn't get as cold but we do get snow in winter and it can get to -25 Celsius. Adjusting to the weather wasn't a big problem," she says.
"My first year here was difficult because I missed my family in Europe, and I had to study for exams in a completely different language. Although I was fluent in conversational English at the time, I graduated from medical school in Romanian. There is a lot of specialized terminology in medicine, so my first year here was challenging."
Nonetheless, Stavila was determined to complete all the medical qualifying exams required in Canada - including the eight-hour LMCC (Licentiate of the Medical Council of Canada) exam, which she wrote just three days before delivering her daughter, Sofia, in 2015.
"I'm really glad I did it then, because after having a newborn baby, to prepare for that exam immediately afterwards would have been more difficult," she says.
A few months later, Stavila accepted a job as a research assistant, working under the supervision of Dr. Andrew Cave in the Department of Family Medicine. She continues to work on projects for him today, while pursuing her Masters degree in the Graduate Program, and ultimately, she hopes, a place in the Department of Psychiatry's Residency Program.
"I completed all of my (Canadian medical) examinations last fall and I've completed several Medical Observorships as well, with both family doctors and psychiatrists like Dr. Lenka Zedkova and Dr. Richard Gurke, a Clinical Professor here in the Department of Psychiatry. I'm so grateful to all those people. They helped reassure me that psychiatry is what I want to do," she says.
In 2017, at the annual Research Day event, Stavila chatted with Dr. Andrew Greenshaw, the Department of Psychiatry's Associate Chair - Research. She had previously reached out to him in hopes of identifying a research project she could work on, but unfortunately there were none. This time, however, she struck gold.
"He asked if I'd be interested in doing some research for the Eating Disorders Program, and I said yes, I'd love to. He connected me with Dr. Lara Ostolosky, who oversees the program. She is now one of my supervisors, along with Dr. Esther Fujiwara," the Graduate Program's Director.
The Eating Disorders Program, housed in University of Alberta Hospital, operates 12 to 14 hours a day, seven days a week. Roughly 60 patients attend each day, as day patients or inpatients. The vast majority are young females in their teens and 20s.
Demand for the program is huge. Referrals flow in on a nonstop basis. Since eating disorders like Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa are often lifelong conditions, individuals might attend the program multiple times. Relapses are common, and some patients return for "tune ups" several times.
"Dr. Ostolosky is incredible. She contributes so much to the Department. I don't know how she finds balance in her life," says Stavila.
"The first time she wanted to see me it was on a Saturday morning at 7 a.m. She wants to help so many people, and that was the only free time she had to meet with me."
Stavila, who just delivered her second child, is currently on maternity leave until September. Once she returns, she expects to dive right into her new research project for the Eating Disorders Program.
"The focus of my research will be on maternal health in the eating disorders patient group. It's going to be a qualitative study, and we are just in the process of doing our ethics application now. Hopefully by September we'll have ethics board approval for it and we can get started."
Since her research isn't yet approved, Stavila is hesitant to get into too much detail as yet. But she says it will focus on the breastfeeding patterns of mothers with eating disorders.
"Based on doctors' practical experience, it appears that some patients may prolong breastfeeding, but the reasons for this behaviour are unclear. We reviewed the literature and found nothing directly related to this question. We are now looking forward to getting approval for our study, getting started, and meeting the patients to get a better sense of what is going on."
If approved, the methodology for Stavila's research will revolve around a series of 90-minute to 120-minute patient interviews and subsequent analysis.
"The World Health Organization has established guidelines for breastfeeding. They recommend six months of exclusive breastfeeding, and then after six months they recommend diversifying the food sources, while continuing to breastfeed until at least age two," she explains.
The WHO's guidelines also call for the frequency of intraday breastfeeding to decline gradually over time, she notes, although the precise timing and speed will depend on how and when other food is introduced. The WHO benchmarks will be used as a guide to assess the breastfeeding patterns of the eating disorders study group.
"If you go online and look on these eating disorders forums, you'll find that some mothers will pump and dump the milk to lose weight. They can easily calculate how many calories they will burn to produce so many millilitres of pumped breast milk. The information is very accessible."
Aside from the research study, Stavila hopes to enter the Department of Psychiatry's Residency Program next year, while simultaneously continuing to work on her Master's degree on a part-time basis until completion.
"I feel very fortunate and grateful. I don't know if somebody up there loves me or what," she says, with a big smile. "Edmonton has treated me very well. I've had such great luck to meet so many amazing and wonderful people, like Dr. Ostolosky, Dr. Cave and Dr. Greenshaw, and I have a very supportive husband who is proud of everything I do."
As for her ultimate goal, she says, it is to complete the Residency Program and become a practicing psychiatrist over the next six years. "I don't know yet if I will have a sub-specialty. Psychiatry is a very large, diverse program with many sub-specializations," she says. "You never know where it might lead."
The former Soviet republic declared independence in August 1991, when Natalia Stavila - now a Masters student in the Department of Psychiatry's Graduate Program - was just two years old.
She has little personal memory of those events, of course, or the breakup of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) a few months later. But she does remember making a firm career choice early in life.
"I was very young when I first said I wanted to be a doctor, maybe 12 years old," she recalls.
"My family kept saying 'Oh you'll change your mind.' But I didn't. When I had to choose between science or arts classes after grade nine, I chose science. In Moldova you go straight from high school to medical school. There is no prerequisite Bachelor's program."
Stavila subsequently spent six years studying for her degree at Moldova's only medical school, the State University of Medicine and Pharmacy, in the capital city of Chisinau. She graduated in June 2014.
So why did she decide to make the 8,000-kilometre trek west to the University of Alberta, a few months later? The answer stems from a chance meeting she had at a medical conference in Italy when she was still in medical school.
That's where Stavila met Dr. Michael Dorey, an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Ophthamology in the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Alberta. The two hit it off. After seeing each other a few times and introducing their families on both continents they made the leap and decided to marry.
In October 2014 Stavila joined her new husband in Edmonton, where she started a whole new chapter in her life. Was it a tough adjustment? In some ways yes, she says. In other ways, no.
"Moldova isn't that different from Edmonton. It doesn't get as cold but we do get snow in winter and it can get to -25 Celsius. Adjusting to the weather wasn't a big problem," she says.
"My first year here was difficult because I missed my family in Europe, and I had to study for exams in a completely different language. Although I was fluent in conversational English at the time, I graduated from medical school in Romanian. There is a lot of specialized terminology in medicine, so my first year here was challenging."
Nonetheless, Stavila was determined to complete all the medical qualifying exams required in Canada - including the eight-hour LMCC (Licentiate of the Medical Council of Canada) exam, which she wrote just three days before delivering her daughter, Sofia, in 2015.
"I'm really glad I did it then, because after having a newborn baby, to prepare for that exam immediately afterwards would have been more difficult," she says.
A few months later, Stavila accepted a job as a research assistant, working under the supervision of Dr. Andrew Cave in the Department of Family Medicine. She continues to work on projects for him today, while pursuing her Masters degree in the Graduate Program, and ultimately, she hopes, a place in the Department of Psychiatry's Residency Program.
"I completed all of my (Canadian medical) examinations last fall and I've completed several Medical Observorships as well, with both family doctors and psychiatrists like Dr. Lenka Zedkova and Dr. Richard Gurke, a Clinical Professor here in the Department of Psychiatry. I'm so grateful to all those people. They helped reassure me that psychiatry is what I want to do," she says.
In 2017, at the annual Research Day event, Stavila chatted with Dr. Andrew Greenshaw, the Department of Psychiatry's Associate Chair - Research. She had previously reached out to him in hopes of identifying a research project she could work on, but unfortunately there were none. This time, however, she struck gold.
"He asked if I'd be interested in doing some research for the Eating Disorders Program, and I said yes, I'd love to. He connected me with Dr. Lara Ostolosky, who oversees the program. She is now one of my supervisors, along with Dr. Esther Fujiwara," the Graduate Program's Director.
The Eating Disorders Program, housed in University of Alberta Hospital, operates 12 to 14 hours a day, seven days a week. Roughly 60 patients attend each day, as day patients or inpatients. The vast majority are young females in their teens and 20s.
Demand for the program is huge. Referrals flow in on a nonstop basis. Since eating disorders like Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa are often lifelong conditions, individuals might attend the program multiple times. Relapses are common, and some patients return for "tune ups" several times.
"Dr. Ostolosky is incredible. She contributes so much to the Department. I don't know how she finds balance in her life," says Stavila.
"The first time she wanted to see me it was on a Saturday morning at 7 a.m. She wants to help so many people, and that was the only free time she had to meet with me."
Stavila, who just delivered her second child, is currently on maternity leave until September. Once she returns, she expects to dive right into her new research project for the Eating Disorders Program.
"The focus of my research will be on maternal health in the eating disorders patient group. It's going to be a qualitative study, and we are just in the process of doing our ethics application now. Hopefully by September we'll have ethics board approval for it and we can get started."
Since her research isn't yet approved, Stavila is hesitant to get into too much detail as yet. But she says it will focus on the breastfeeding patterns of mothers with eating disorders.
"Based on doctors' practical experience, it appears that some patients may prolong breastfeeding, but the reasons for this behaviour are unclear. We reviewed the literature and found nothing directly related to this question. We are now looking forward to getting approval for our study, getting started, and meeting the patients to get a better sense of what is going on."
If approved, the methodology for Stavila's research will revolve around a series of 90-minute to 120-minute patient interviews and subsequent analysis.
"The World Health Organization has established guidelines for breastfeeding. They recommend six months of exclusive breastfeeding, and then after six months they recommend diversifying the food sources, while continuing to breastfeed until at least age two," she explains.
The WHO's guidelines also call for the frequency of intraday breastfeeding to decline gradually over time, she notes, although the precise timing and speed will depend on how and when other food is introduced. The WHO benchmarks will be used as a guide to assess the breastfeeding patterns of the eating disorders study group.
"If you go online and look on these eating disorders forums, you'll find that some mothers will pump and dump the milk to lose weight. They can easily calculate how many calories they will burn to produce so many millilitres of pumped breast milk. The information is very accessible."
Aside from the research study, Stavila hopes to enter the Department of Psychiatry's Residency Program next year, while simultaneously continuing to work on her Master's degree on a part-time basis until completion.
"I feel very fortunate and grateful. I don't know if somebody up there loves me or what," she says, with a big smile. "Edmonton has treated me very well. I've had such great luck to meet so many amazing and wonderful people, like Dr. Ostolosky, Dr. Cave and Dr. Greenshaw, and I have a very supportive husband who is proud of everything I do."
As for her ultimate goal, she says, it is to complete the Residency Program and become a practicing psychiatrist over the next six years. "I don't know yet if I will have a sub-specialty. Psychiatry is a very large, diverse program with many sub-specializations," she says. "You never know where it might lead."