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How a life-saving transplant transformed my life

| Annemarie Ward shares her journey of keeping hope alive amidst heart disease | NEARLY 15 YEARS AGO, Annemarie Ward was walking the family’s three dogs with her mother Polly and sister Emily when she collapsed. At age seven, Annemarie had suffered a heart attack. She was diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, or enlargement of the…
Pop Quiz: Maintaining optimal optical health

| Understanding the causes of low vision and taking precautions as you age | EYESIGHT is a precious thing, and unfortunately there are many threats to optimal optical health. One common eye problem is low vision, and it affects seniors the most. Low vision, in its simplest terms, is any vision loss that interferes with…
Celebrating Black History Month with a look at local African-Americans in medicine

ALEX ALEXANDER Registered Nurse Bartow Regional Medical Center As a black registered nurse from North Carolina, 56-year-old Alex Alexander has had his run-ins with prejudice. But he’s learned to remember who he is, treat others like his brothers and sisters, forgive, and … not believe everything he hears. “You earn things by your merit and…

Signs & Symptoms: Practicing safety & preventing the little known CMV Virus

The Varicella-Zoster Virus causes chicken pox and the painful rash, shingles. The Epstein-Barr Virus is associated with mononucleosis, an infection known as the kissing disease. Then there’s CMV, the lesser-known cytomegalovirus, which joins them as a herpes viruses. Most people who catch CMV don’t know they have anything, at least nothing more than a…
Common ground found regarding the 1099 rule

It is very seldom that the two political parties of our country join together in a bipartisan fashion. The former 1099 rule of the new health care bill, however, did just that. Many of the leaders from both parties rallied behind the cause to remove this particular rule from being mandated as part of…
Take these two pills of commentary and call me in the morning

You Spoke, We Listened In our last online poll at www.CentralFloridaHealthNews.com, we asked what you wanted to read about most for your health. The top answer was no surprise to me: Disease Prevention. As a person who cares about your health and that of your children’s, you don’t just want to know how to…