Health

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.

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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.

Unfortunately, her symptoms got progressively worse during the morning. Leah decided to access UT Health East Texas...

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.

But years later, Melisa, 47,...

Cindy Hilliard, 64, doesn’t exactly remember when the irregular heartbeats started.

“It’s been about 5-6 years now, but I probably ignored them for quite some time before,” she said.

A truck driver who crisscrossed the U.S. for 18 years, Cindy enjoyed driving, especially on her favorite route. She would start at her home in Winnsboro, travel to Dallas, Los Angeles and Reading, Pennsylvania, before returning to Dallas and then back home – a journey over 5,800 miles that lasted 5 days.

“I never got to see many popular sites because of time constraints and because I...