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Courageous Voyage

Lakeland Man’s Journey Through Sickness and Transplant to Second Chance by MATT NORMAN, RN Heart health is something that we don’t often think about. Especially when we’re young. For Lakeland resident DeWayne Wilson, this all changed in 1999 when he received a life-changing diagnosis. That moment started him on a journey towards something bigger than…
Good for the Heart

Heart Walk Participants Explain Why Event Is So Rewarding by TERESA SCHIFFER According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), heart disease is the leading cause of death for men, women, and people of most ethnic and racial groups in the U.S., being responsible for one out of every four deaths, or approximately…
Convenient Care

Winter Haven Doctor Offers TAVR Treatment That Once Required Travel by TERESA SCHIFFER For patients suffering from aortic valve stenosis, there used to be little to nothing that could be done to restore heart health. As little as two decades ago, high-risk patients who experienced this narrowing of the aortic valve opening faced a very…

Ask a Nurse: The evolution of modern medicine

Did you know that an anesthesiologist (the doctor that puts you to sleep and keeps you alive during surgery) wasn’t even considered a field or specialty in medicine until 1941!1 Could you imagine undergoing surgery without anesthesia? Barbaric! Thoracic surgery (chest surgery) wasn’t approved until 1970, and bariatric (obesity) medicine has yet to become an official…
Medical Advice: Avoiding mosquitoes and chikungunya virus

I was first introduced to a disease known as chikungunya during my medical training. Initially, I dismissed this foreign illness as something I would probably not see in my career. Chikungunya was originally found in Asia, Africa, and the islands of the Indian Ocean and Western Pacific. This changed on December 2013, when there was…
Editor’s Dose: Adventures with school physicals!

It’s school physical time already! Am I the only one who feels like summer went by way too fast? Maybe it’s because “time flies when you’re having fun.” Or, maybe it’s because time flies when you have four kids . . . maybe it’s a combination of both. Either way, our house is in full…