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Michelle Pfeiffer, 45, got to know her future husband, Mark, on the tennis courts. Whenever she wasn’t in the classroom teaching honors and advanced placement chemistry and physics, Michelle was challenging Mark to keep up with her. Romance blossomed over one sport or another between the active duo – from tennis to golf to long-distance running.

Amelia Holley had walked this road plenty of times. At just 18, she was undergoing her 51st surgery to remove the extra fluid pressing on her brain. But this time was different. She was unresponsive after the procedure, and doctors soon discovered she’d had a stroke at some point either during or immediately after the procedure.

Diego Delfino, 29, cannot remember life without music at the center of it. He began playing piano at age five. When he looks back at home videos of growing up in his native Argentina, Diego laughs at how often he’s singing.

“I think once I discovered music, I started putting a soundtrack to my whole life, even as a little kid,” he says.

After his mother underwent brain surgery and her condition unexpectedly worsened, 5-year-old Isaiah Pegues asked his schoolteacher if his mother was going to die.

Now, more than three years later, Isaiah’s mom, Yvette Pegues, of Canton, Ga., is not only alive after completing rehabilitation at Shepherd Center and Shepherd Pathways, but she and her children (Isaiah, now 8, and Elijah, 6) have also collaborated with her on a children’s book called “My Mommy Had Brain Surgery and I’m Okay!”