Now that robot-assisted surgery has saved her life, Sylvia Molnar can reflect on a tense past and celebrate a few words shared in the past tense.
“Dr. Alon Altman called me following my surgery with my test results,” recalls Molnar, a resident of Lockport. “He said ‘you had cancer’. Had! The past tense! The relief I felt was unbelievable.”
Molnar, now 62, had been diagnosed with endometrial cancer in 2022. While initially slow-growing, her cancer became more advanced and her intermittent bleeding became more frequent. With complex medical needs, she was not a candidate for conventional forms of minimally invasive surgery, and open surgery would have been far too risky for her.
Molnar was treated with a combination of drugs, but the cancer progressed and her stress intensified. The future seemed bleak. And then, a new possibility emerged.
Through donor support of the HSC Foundation’s Operation Excellence campaign, HSC had recently acquired Manitoba’s first surgical robot—the da Vinci Xi.
“I had heard about the robot on the news,” she recalled. “When Dr. Altman told me I might be a candidate, it was the first time in years that I felt real hope.”
During the September 2025 hysterectomy, Molnar’s doctors discovered that the cancer had progressed further than expected. But crucially, it had not spread beyond the uterus.
Because of the minimally invasive nature of the surgery, Molnar was up and walking the very next morning, and discharged in the afternoon.
“I could not believe it,” she said. “It felt like a miracle. I didn’t feel like I’d just had major surgery.”
“If it weren’t for the robot,” she said, “this would have been a totally different story.”
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