Health Care

Healing The Sick

  If there ever is a moment of truth this is it: Your life hangs in the balance and you’ve got to choose, right now, where you’d like to go to try and save it. Patti Chism went to her…

Pharmacists For The Future

Neal Florence estimates about 150 people a day come by the Medi-Thrift Pharmacy he and wife Carolyn operate in LaFayette, a fast growing community in the Georgia suburbs of Chattanooga. Florence says he never knows if his customers are in…

Surviving A Stroke

Andrei Bersatti is having trouble finding the words, and it’s not because English is his second language. It’s one of the aftershocks from the explosion in his brain. He’s also having a difficult time making decisions and thinking quickly.  …

Broken System

Zach Hayes thinks he flew out through the sunroof, but he isn’t sure. His memories of the accident that nearly killed him are choppy and grainy bits of sound and vision that don’t complete the story; the only arc he…

Treating Prostate Cancer

An estimated 6,380 Georgia men will learn this year that they have prostate cancer. For some, the diagnosis will be the first they have heard of the disease. While most men don’t know much about prostate cancer, they should, says…

Mending Broken Hearts

Nell Morris has a long, vertical scar in the middle of her chest, a lingering reminder of the broken heart that would have finished her if not for some fortunate timing.   For about 25 years she’d endured a condition…

2010 Healthcare Heroes

This year’s search for Georgia Trend’s healthcare heroes took us to Columbus, Augusta and Thomasville as well as Atlanta. We found individuals who are joining their skills and their passion – one traveling regularly to Haiti to provide medical and…

Pushing For Reform

Sharon Jenkins Tucker is living her second life. The first one fell apart and vanished like a dream. “I had a fabulous job,” says Tucker, who was putting her master’s degree to work as international admissions counselor for her alma…

Matters Of The Heart

It got to where Paul Smith couldn’t feed his dogs without losing his breath or feeling chest pains. Couldn’t hunt, couldn’t even take a bath. The exertion was killing him. “I was living, but just living, wasn’t much functioning to…

Hope And Help

Brencie Werner discovered the lump herself. It was spring 2008 – after the experts had concluded that breast self-examination was probably a wasted effort, and not worth a physician’s time to teach patients how to do it. Fortunately, Werner hadn’t…