Health

Do you know the warning signs for a stroke? Would you recognize them in someone else? What about yourself? We often think if something like a stroke has occurred, we would realize it immediately, right? As it turns out, nearly 70 percent of people who have suffered a minor stroke don’t recognize the symptoms at all. Seeking medical treatment within the first three hours is critical to successful treatment. However, according to a study published in the journal Stroke, 30 percent of stroke patients wait more than 24 hours to contact their doctor or head to the emergency room.

Rob Taylor was doing almost everything right.

For 15 years, the 59-year-old Bullard resident worked out in the gym at least three times a week with his personal trainer. He didn’t smoke and recently added playing in a senior softball league to his list of activities. Though he weighed around 250 pounds, Taylor carried it well on his six-foot frame.

Together with his wife and three children, the family kept up an active lifestyle and ate a “well-rounded, healthy diet” most of the time.

Despite the obstacles she has faced throughout her life, Joanna Blundell is only looking forward.

“I don’t have time to look backward,” said Blundell, a 57-year-old resident of Ore City. “I always try to be positive and move forward.”

Diagnosed at age two with cerebral palsy, a group of disorders that affect a person's ability to move and maintain balance and posture, Blundell speaks highly of the doctors who have cared for her. “I have been blessed to receive care from some of the best doctors,” she said.

Preventable, early deaths have happened too many times in Louis Ashley’s family.

“I’ve lost three of my four brothers,” said Ashley, a 51-year-old fluids engineer with a Texas oil company. “One drank himself to death, another died by suicide and one died in a car wreck. I suppose I’m the one who can change his lifestyle before it’s too late.”

Though he and his love Juliet live in Louisiana, Ashley has worked in Texas for 15 years on a 14 days on, 14 days off schedule. He designs the hydraulics and fluid systems that the company uses to pull oil out of the ground.

For Sam Steele, 72, a retired Presbyterian minister living in Hallsville, his heart health has been a constant concern for him and his family.

For the Dixon household in Palestine, the day usually starts with mom, dad and their two kids getting dressed and heading out to work and school.

However, one morning in February, everyone left the house except mom, who wasn’t feeling well. Leah Dixon, 40, the chief operating officer of the UT Health East Texas Physicians Group, woke with symptoms of a sore throat and sinus congestion, so she decided to work from home.

When you are sick at home and cannot get out to visit a healthcare provider, there is now a service that helps you get personalized healthcare in the comfort of your own home: on-demand video visits.

Leah Dixon, chief operating officer of UT Health East Texas Physicians, said the service is convenient and very easy to use — individuals just need to have a strong internet connection and a computer, smartphone or tablet.

Melisa Collum is very familiar with being inside a hospital. After working at hospitals in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and then Wheeling, West Virginia, Collum moved to East Texas to care for her mother.

She continued her nursing career at UT Health Athens where she worked on the medical/surgical floor, the intensive care unit and the emergency department. She collaborated with and got to know many of the doctors at the hospital, including general surgeon, Dr. Robert Dorman.

When John Gaston woke up that spring morning in 2015, something didn’t feel right.

The 64-year-old was familiar with having shortness of breath because he had asthma his entire life. However, this shortness of breath, along with a lack of energy, was something new.

John called his primary care physician and was examined later that afternoon. His doctor said his heart rate was 180 beats a minute (normal is 60-100), so he asked him, “Can you drive yourself to UT Health East Texas or do you want to go by ambulance?”