How To Guide

Four examples below

Brandy Cleveland

Brandy Cleveland was morbidly obese, weighing in over 400 pounds. She and her husband wanted to have kids, but could not because of her weight problem. She tried myriad weight loss programs and after losing some weight, would land up gaining even more.

She decided to go in for bariatric surgery, but even before that she had to lose 50 pounds. Finally she underwent the laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery which made a pouch in her stomach which was attached to the small intestine. After the surgery she lost 100 pounds and over the next few years had two healthy babies.

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Mike Bluske

Mike Bluske was always physically active in his youth, but in his 30s he started putting on weight after cutting down on his physical activities. Over the years his weight went from 200 pounds to 340 pounds. He tried dieting, but was not very successful. It was only when he went for a bike race and could not keep up with a 70 year old woman that he decided he… Read More

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Stephen Thomas

When Stephen Thomas was growing up in a Washington neighborhood, and was still in school, he got addicted to drugs. Starting with marijuana, he went on to alcohol, PCP, hash, cigarettes and acid when he was only 13. After graduated from high school, he got addicted to cocaine.

During the next 30 years he went through five jobs which were paying him $50,000 to $80,000 a year. He was evicted from eleven apartments and lost his wife and child and distanced himself from family and friends and then found himself on the streets, where he lived for a year on a bench, eating at soup kitchens and depending on hand-outs.

Finally one day a a doctor on a homeless health care van helped him out, sent him to Samaritans Inn where he went through a drug and recovery program, and was finally clean. He is now an advocate for homeless people, a speaker, member and chairman of many programs which help the homeless.

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Michael Brown

Michael Brown is an artist and painter.… Read More

A person who has never suffered from vertigo will never know how scary it can be to be living with vertigo.

You may have been in a train which was not moving, but when a moving train passed by, you may will have felt it was your train which was moving. This kind of disorientation happens to a person who suffers from vertigo. He or she feels movement when there isn’t any. Usually all objects may spin, or distances seem skewed; if you look down from even a small height you will feel as if you are going to fall down. If you are lying in bed you may feel that you are spiraling down into a tunnel.

What is vertigo?

Vertigo is very different from dizziness or giddiness. In the latter, the person feels giddy, whereas in the former, it seems that everything around the patient is moving around. You must be able to understand the difference so that you can tell the doctor what exactly you are feeling.

Causes of vertigo

Some people have an occasional attack vertigo… Read More

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Ruben Delgadillo

One day Ruben Delgadillo, 41, just collapsed at work and was found by his co-workers with blood oozing from his skull. From Yuma where he lived and worked, he was flown to Phoenix, He had had a heart infection four years earlier and always suffered from fatigue and shortness of breath because his heart was pumping at only 10 percent of its capacity.

He was the first patient in the state to be implanted with HeartMate II, a device to maintain the flow of blood to his heart. Fortunately he was in line to get a heart transplant and before he could go home with his heart device, he was able to get a heart transplant. He was back home almost as good as new within two weeks of the surgery.

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Bob Aronson

Bob Aronson, a broadcast journalist, had been diagnosed with cardiomyopathy in 1995 and was told that he would probably need a heart transplant someday. Over the next years he fortunately did not suffer any complications, but did grow weaker.… Read More

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Brenda Houman

Brenda Houman led a busy life as an accountant in Paris, Ontario, and also did 20 hours of volunteer work a week. She was in her late forties when she realized that she was forgetting things and could not calculate in her head as she was used to doing. Gradually, she also became more emotional and finally had to take leave from work.

It took 18 months and 127 medical appointments which finally resulted in a diagnosis of early Alzheimer’s. She also met Linda Westbrook and her singer/songwriter daughter Sarah which led to a song sung by Sarah, One More Memory. Brenda works at raising awareness about the disease and lives with her son, his wife and daughter. She lives one moment at a time.

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Ted

Ted worked as a computer systems analyst in a major Chicago area hospital and noticed he was having memory problems at the work place. He wrote down step by step instructions and was able to follow them for sometime, but then complaints began mounting and he… Read More

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Wendy Cook

Wendy Cook was diagnosed with neurofibromatosis, a condition where tumors grow on various nerves when she was kid. She never faced any problems except once when she had to undergo surgery. It was only much later in life, when she was married and had a 14 year old son that she started experienced pain when sitting down.

An MRI revealed that she had a rare dumbbell-shaped tumor that extended on both sides of the sciatic notch, where the sciatic nerve passes through the hipbone. She underwent an extremely complex eight hour surgery at Mayo Clinic in Rochester. Fortunately the surgery was successful and she was able to resume normal life after six weeks.

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Carolyn Length

Carolyn Lengh found out that she had a benign tumor on her spinal cord after suffering from back pain for six months. The tumor was pushing against her spine and the cause of her back pain. When she was told that this type of tumor was rare, she was frightened that she may lose the ability to… Read More

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Mary

When Mary was 45 she was diagnosed with advances osteoporis by chance – her doctor thought her back was getting rounded, but otherwise she had no symptoms. A PhD in English and working as a school teacher, Mary had a very active life. Later she started having back ache and was also put on Fosamax weekly.

She exercises when she can, but has had many small fractures. She does not smoke, drink alcohol or coffee and has milk as also calcium supplements. She concentrates on weight bearing exercises also, because those are the ones which build bones. She also retired from work six years ago – she is now 65 and does not feel that osteoporosis has had a significant impact on her life.

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Bonnie Daue

http://www.thirdage.com/encyclopedia/in-her-own-words-living-with-osteoporosis

Bonnie Daue of Wellington, New Zealand had a hysterectomy when she was 47 and fell down six years later, hurting her neck considerably. At that time osteoporosis was not diagnosed. In her 50s and 60s she kept on falling and breaking various bones and finally she… Read More

Michael Dell

Michael Dell is a billionaire, but he dropped out of college. He actually took apart and put together again a computer when he was only 15. With just $1,000 as capital he started building and selling computers via his company, PC’s Ltd. A person could order a computer according to his or her own specifications.

The computer eventually became Dell Inc. and is now one of the largest sellers of computers. A customer can still order a computer according to his requirements. Michael turned $1,000 into a company worth more than $100 billion.

Debbie Fields

As a child Debbi Fields loved making cookies. She got married when she was 19, did not go to college and found that she was ‘just’ a housewife. She then decided to do something and that was opening a cookie shop, when she was only 20.

In the beginning she found the going tough. She started with chocolate chip cookies and later changed the name of the company to Mrs. Fields Cookies which turned into a $450 million business with more than 600… Read More