Singing isn’t new for Mike Shortal, who is 81 and lives in Sandy Springs. He loves music, and says being a member of a choir has long been one of the joys of his life. “I became an engineer because I knew I couldn’t make a career out of music, but I’ve always tried be…
The Georgia Poison Center gets a lot of urgent phone calls every day. Two of these calls, on average, involve a category of products that many people might not consider dangerous. The products are known as “essential oils’’ – highly concentrated extracts from plants – and the victims of such poisoning are usually children. Dr….
Camilla White’s days as a part-time caregiver for her mother began at 4 a.m. They ended at 10 or 11 at night. “It just depended on Mom,’’ White says. White was living in Huntsville, Ala., at the time. Her mother, Lillian Barber, had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, so White regularly commuted to Carrollton in…
Cases of Legionnaires’ disease have quadrupled in Georgia over the past 10 years, public health statistics show. That increase mirrors a national trend, with U.S. cases up fivefold since 2000. About 80 percent of Georgia outbreaks have occurred in health care facilities, according to Cherie Drenzek, state epidemiologist. Legionella bacteria live in water, and are…
David Carmon’s body began to shut down just three days after a mosquito bite over Labor Day weekend. He arrived at a Gainesville emergency room extremely ill. No one knew what was wrong. “They ran every test,” says his wife, Jessie. “By the fifth day, he was paralyzed, on a respirator and fighting for his life.”…
Playing the cello usually takes two hands. But for 12-year-old Christopher Fairchild, it’s a matter of one hand, one prosthetic and a lot of determination. The challenge for Christopher is that he has been missing his right hand since birth, even though it would otherwise be his dominant hand. Christopher came to Children’s Healthcare of…
A recent overdose case in the Atlanta suburb of Dunwoody involved a 55-year-old woman. The cause of her death was determined to be the toxic effects of cocaine, morphine and methamphetamine, says Patrick L. Bailey, director of the DeKalb County Medical Examiner’s Office. Of those three drugs, morphine is an opioid. It’s a tragic reminder that while…
While thinking about the rough flu season that Georgia had this year, I wondered about something: How do hospitals keep everything running smoothly when they are overwhelmed with patients who are contagious? What about things that have to be changed regularly — like linens, sheets, pillowcases and towels? How do hospitals manage that? I contacted Grady Health…
“I’ve always been health-conscious,” said 49-year-old Sean Skeete, who attended the February ribbon-cutting ceremony at the men’s health and wellness clinic in Decatur. Skeete, who lives in Decatur’s Wesley Chapel area, knew he needed a checkup, but had no health insurance ‘’and no place to go,” he told Georgia Health News. His appointment was not…
Christopher Morgan, 9 years old, has no sight in one eye, and limited vision in the other. The Douglasville youngster was born with a condition that caused his right eye not to develop at all, and he wears a prosthesis in its place, says his mother, Tee Morgan. The left eye was underdeveloped at birth….