Imagine you’re in the hospital and your doctor or nurse mentions that they have a pet therapy program and asks if you’d be interested in having a dog visit you. You say yes and soon thereafter a dog and its handler arrive. You interact with and pet the dog. After they’ve gone, you notice you…
David Kraft, a 59-year-old mechanic for the Long Island Railroad who worked in the Port Jefferson yard, was suffering for a few years from dizziness, tiredness, headaches, sinus pressure and bouts of hearing loss. He had been caring for his father, who had Alzheimer’s disease, and thought that he was developing allergies while in his…
Kelly Clark feels like she has lived two different lives. “My whole life started over for me after surgery,” Kelly said. “It was a new beginning, a new time to focus on myself, on my goals, on my marriage, on my career and really to just be happy — and that has been the best gift I’ve ever received. “I’m not Kelly who was really fat before. I’m not Kelly who had weight loss surgery. I’m just Kelly. And that is awesome.”
Richard Cooney, a 77-year-old retired Athletic Director from East Hampton High School, leads a very active life. “When I’m not busy renovating homes with my wife, Kathy, I’m out hiking, gardening, golfing and evening paddling in an outrigger canoe with a crew of six in Hawaii.” So when his doctor told him he had prostate…
Something just wasn’t adding up for Anthony Santangelo. What he thought were the good things in life, especially his insatiable appetite for his wife’s excellent cooking, were making him feel horrible. “I just felt terrible,” said Anthony, a safety supervisor, who was 350 pounds with a 56-inch waist. “It was getting worse and worse, I was really obese and it affected my sleep at night.”
Mather Hospital has once again earned the prestigious Magnet® recognition from the American Nurses Credentialing Center(ANCC). The Magnet Recognition Program® recognizes health care organizations for quality patient care, nursing excellence and innovations in professional nursing practice. Developed by ANCC, Magnet is the leading source of successful nursing practices and strategies worldwide. Only 471 hospitals worldwide have…
Gerald Buckley couldn’t tell you much about his prostate cancer treatments at Precision CyberKnife of New York, except that they were easy and painless. “Talk about not hurting or being invasive!” he said. “I fell asleep during four of the five treatments when they put the headsets on and played country music. I was laying…
MaryLouise and Lee Meltzer have been inseparable for more than 30 years. They share so much, from their love of swimming to rooting for the New York Yankees to finishing each other’s sentences. But one thing they never expected to share was being obese. Or having bariatric surgery.
Monica Freyberg is the living embodiment of before-and-after. “My life before the surgery was boring, uneventful and like a prison,” she said. “After the surgery I have to say I feel blessed, excited and fortunate.” Before bariatric surgery with the director at the Mather Hospital Bariatric Center of Excellence, the 38-year-old mother of two felt she “was trapped in somebody else’s body.”
Like so many people with weight problems, Gemeli Loney’s life was about limitations – the things she couldn’t do or was afraid to try because of her weight. “There were so many things I always wanted to do that I didn’t have the confidence to do, whether it was something athletic, for example, or trying something adventurous or traveling. Life before was about limitations, some conscious and some self-conscious.”