Her double mastectomy was the easiest part. That’s what Cheryl West says of breast cancer treatment, which tells you just how difficult her road has been. Two weeks before her annual mammogram, Cheryl saw a bruise in the mirror and felt a lump. She decided not to wait to see her doctor, and is […]
Terra Boudreaux is good at getting things done. As a single mom of three kids, she has to be. But when her 17-year-old daughter, Reagan, was admitted to ICU with a severe concussion and memory loss, Terra found herself in an unfamiliar position: she needed help. “The EEG showed her brain was functioning at 1 […]
After 22 years caring for patients, Janet Shields found herself in need of care. In early 2018, the Memorial Hospital Jacksonville ER clerk was diagnosed with breast cancer. The week she had her lumpectomy, she suffered a detached retina. While surgery was scary enough, having a second problem on top of that — and one […]
Getting the call that your husband is extremely ill in the hospital is terrifying enough, but when that hospital is far from home, the fear intensifies. That was the situation for Christine Comerford, a nurse in Austin, Texas. She dropped everything so that she could fly to Phoenix and be by her husband’s side. “He […]
In a matter of seconds, Jose “Rusty” Ouano, a medical technician at Centennial Medical Plaza in Centennial, Colorado, went from joyfully singing during a church service to getting so weak he nearly passed out. An ambulance rushed him to the hospital where doctors worked to find what was wrong. “It was scary for my wife. […]
Julie Overton, an RN from Kansas, was fighting to keep things together for herself and her family while life seemed to be throwing her one curve ball after another. Since late 2016 Julie had been having severe migraine headaches, and over the next few months her symptoms got progressively worse to include confusion, difficulty with […]
Working with patients who are recovering from a stroke or other major medical issue is how James Keith spends his days. But when he became the patient, he was not prepared for how much and how quickly his world would change. “I had an acute stroke and wasn’t aware what had happened right away,” recalls James, a […]
Ask any 13-year-old’s mother, and she will tell you that life is a whirlwind. That is certainly true for Amy Wilson-King and her son Caeden, but in early March 2016 an unexpected diagnosis added a lot of uncertainty and fear as well. “He’d been having some vague symptoms, like blurry vision and headaches, but he’d also […]
Each month as donors give to the Hope Fund their generosity is changing lives! Hope Fund recipient Chris Bondie from TriStar Centennial Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee found his family in need of help after Grayson, his seven-year-old daughter, was diagnosed with Myasthenia Gravis. Since her diagnosis, she has had a multitude of admissions to the hospital, specialist visits, expensive medications and surgeries. Even minor […]
Dec. 14, 2015, started as any other day in the Fort Walton Beach Medical Center’s emergency department. Eric Heaton, a paramedic, was at a desk in the department’s lobby where patients are checked in when he heard a noise, a scream … and then “the next thing I know, I’m riding on the front of […]
