Revelations can happen anywhere. Georgia pharmacist Garrett Strawn’s flash of awareness came in a fairly mundane setting. He was in a glassed-in pharmacy at the rear of a big chain store in Rome. He was flanked by shelves loaded with pills and tablets, creams and ointments, injectables and inhalers that doctors prescribe for illnesses of…
Editor’s note: Five and a half years ago, Hammad Aslam started medical school in Athens, and his story appeared then in Georgia Health News. This is an update of his medical journey. A video is included below. Hammad Aslam has always wanted to be a doctor. He knew that medicine was the profession in which…
Three years ago, Grady Health System in Atlanta was getting thousands of 911 calls from people with mental health problems. Some were calling up to 30 times a month for emergency help. A large majority of these people were transported by ambulance to the Grady Memorial Hospital ER, said Michael Colman, vice president of EMS…
A federal agency that investigates hazardous substances has accepted a community petition to investigate possible environmental links to cancers in the Waycross area. Much of the residents’ concern recently has centered on three childhood cases of rhabdomyosarcoma and one case of Ewing sarcoma in and near Ware County, in the southeast corner of Georgia. The…
Grady Health System physicians and officials say the HIV crisis continues to grow in metro Atlanta, with young black men in poverty at the highest risk for infection. The Grady staff outlined the extent of the problem in a meeting with U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) on Monday, the day before World AIDS Day. The…
Nathan Copp, 24, recently came to the Piedmont Fayette Hospital’s ER complaining that he felt tired, short of breath and lightheaded. Copp, who has the inflammatory bowel ailment known as Crohn’s disease, also told Dr. Robin Lowman, an emergency room physician, that he’d been having some chills. As Lowman examined him, she dictated her observations…
About two years ago, semi-retired business executive Bob Carr thought he’d spend some time driving for Uber, the innovative company that allows individuals to use their own vehicles to transport paying passengers. Little did Carr know that the journey would take him to a whole new career. One rider told Carr that she had a doctor’s…
Patients such as D.C. are known in health care circles as “frequent fliers,” a term that has nothing to do with airline miles. D.C. (his initials), 62, has been to Appling Healthcare’s emergency room in the South Georgia town of Baxley several times this year with various ailments. He has no health insurance and no…
Lexi Crawford, 14, began complaining of back and abdominal pain and fatigue earlier this year. “She was too tired to do anything,’’ says her mother, Cristy Rice. The pain got so bad that Lexi was taken several times to a Waycross emergency room. At first, she was diagnosed with urinary tract and kidney infections. Finally,…
Janet McMahan figured it out five years ago — just before her son Ben was diagnosed with cancer. Starting in 2008, she had skin cancers erupting all over her body, including parts “where the sun don’t shine.” Her two dogs had also developed cancer. McMahan had just given a talk about world hunger at an…