Florida. Health. Resource.

Tony Seraphin

Tony Seraphin learned about his hearing problem in an unusual way. His friend, James (Jay) Hall III, Professor of Audiology at the University of Florida, mentioned it to him.

“Jay is a world-famous hearing specialist,” explains Tony. “We have gotten to know each other, and over the last year he had noticed how I was always leaning forward or saying,Excuse me?

“We got to talking one night, and he told me, You really ought to get your hearing checked. You’re a prime candidate for hearing aids .”

Tony says he was incredulous.

“I laughed and said, Hearing aids? That’s for old folks! Well, I’m sixty-five now,” he adds with a smile.

But as he reflected, Tony realized his hearing was starting to deteriorate.

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Alma Neal

At Atlantic Eye Center of Palm Coast, board-certified ophthalmologist Alexandra Kostick, MD, believes in making sure her patients receive meticulous examination and thorough, informative guidance about treatment options for cataract surgery. “Today, the field of ophthalmology is able to offer an abundance of high-quality options to patients, whether they are seeking relief from cataracts or release from their reliance on eyeglasses,” observes Dr. Kostick.

In keeping with that commitment to new technology, the doctor now has another tool at her disposal for the treatment of cataracts. The Intrepid System , state-of-the-art surgical equipment that significantly improves patient outcomes and allows for the smallest possible incisions, is now being used at Atlantic Eye Center with excellent results. Dr. Kostick is currently the only ophthalmologist in Flagler and Volusia Counties using the Intrepid System.

Susan Scovell

When it comes to her teeth, Susan Scovell knows exactly what makes her happy. “I like to have a perfect smile,” she shares.

Though she took the time to have cosmetic work done 15 or 20 years ago, including bridges, crowns and veneers, recently she says she had started to notice some wear and tear. And, because she lived in several different places throughout her life, much of that work was completed by different dentists, resulting in an inconsistent look.

After her mother decided not long ago to undergo a smile restoration with wonderful results, Susan opted to do the same for herself. “Dr. Patel did my mother’s mouth,” she explains, “and it looked beautiful. I decided to go see him to get everything uniform, to get new veneers and get rid of all the metal. I wanted a perfect smile again.”

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Norm Stephens

“I’m eighty-one years old, so I figure something is going to wear out eventually,” says Norm Stephens with a good-natured chuckle. “In my case, my hearing was gone. It just kept deteriorating.”

Norm’s situation was complicated by the fact that he previously underwent a surgical procedure on one ear.

“Years ago, I had to have my left ear operated on,” he explains. “I don’t know what was wrong with it at the time, but the specialist said he’d give me three treatments and if the third one didn’t work, he had to operate. It didn’t work, so he operated on that ear.”

Since then, Norm has had his ears cleaned periodically to prevent infection, but then he experienced a sharp decline in his hearing ability. He sought help from hearing aid dispensers, but they were unable to help him due to his prior surgery.

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Louisa Lunt

“My feet had been slowly getting worse over the past ten years,” shares Louisa Lunt, “and it finally was at the point where no shoes were comfortable anymore.”

Louisa’s problem? Bunions.

“The bunions on both my feet had gotten so large that they were making my toes go at an angle,” she explains. “It was bad.”

A bunion results when a patient’s gait flattens the arch of the foot, causing the foot to roll and weakening the tendon that stabilizes the great toe. As the bunion develops, it causes a misalignment of the joints of the great toe. This results in unequal distribution of pressure on the foot when walking. Eventually, the area becomes painful and arthritis may develop.

Such was the case for Louisa.

“The bunion was on the side of the big toe, and it was the same on both feet,” she says. “On the second toe over, I had a hammertoe on each foot.”

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Josephine DiMartino

Retired hairdresser Josephine DiMartino believes she knows what caused her back problems.

“I think it was from my work,” she says. “I was a hairdresser for forty years, so that’s a long time standing. Sometimes, we would stand ten hours a day in one spot, and with shampooing there’s a lot of leaning over.”

When Josephine began to experience problems in her lumbar spine, she found that the pain grew progressively more severe over time.

“What happened was that my discs just started rupturing,” she explains. “I could handle it for about the first six months, but then it started getting really bad. I was in pain for almost a year, and it kept getting worse and worse.”

As the pain became less tolerable, Josephine began to make a determined effort to find the cause.

“I went to vocational rehabilitation, because I don’t have insurance, and they sent me for an MRI,” she says. “That was wonderful because then they could actually see my spine. I had three ruptured discs pressing on my sciatic nerve.”

Josephine consulted an orthopedic physician, but because of her lack of health insurance, she had to pay for her entire treatment herself. Unfortunately, it proved unsuccessful.

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June Heileman

June Heileman has learned much since her husband Raymond’s battle with neurosarcoidosis began a few years ago.

Characterized by inflammation and abnormal tissue deposits that occur throughout the nervous system – including the brain and the spinal cord – neurosarcoidosis sometimes goes away on its own in four to six months; other times, it continues on and off for the duration of the patient’s life, possibly causing permanent disability. In Raymond’s case, the disease has debilitated him to the point of being a paraplegic.

As a result, one of Raymond’s most recent problems beyond his underlying illness was a serious bedsore that was categorized as a stage four, meaning it had reached the level of bone. “He’s doing okay now. The nurses were there to help and he has healed tremendously,” June shares.

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Mike Perry

Mike Perry has always worked quite a bit with his hands.

“I’m a welder by trade, and I do a lot of woodwork and metalwork,” he explains.

Mike also keeps busy with his wife and two children. “I do a lot of things,” he adds, “from building swing sets for the kids to going out in the woods with them on four-wheelers.”

However, those kinds of activities became a bit difficult in recent years for Mike.

“Slowly, over the years, I noticed a little numbness in my fingers,” he says. “I put my family before myself, and for years I just kept putting off doing anything about it.”

Mike’s symptoms eventually progressed from numbness to weakness and pain…severe pain.

“The numbness was there, and occasionally I would notice a little weakness,” he continues, “but then it got so bad that we actually went from having glass plates and cups to plastic ones at home because things were dropping out of my hands.

“That was a problem.”

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Charles E. Sergent

“In September 2009, I had an episode where I suddenly couldn’t lift my left arm voluntarily,” says retired RN Kathy Hanrahan. “Being a nurse, I tried to do some exercise on it and see how that went, but after several weeks the pain was getting to be so severe in my neck and shoulder that I went to my primary care physician.”

Kathy underwent physical therapy, but only obtained moderate relief from her symptoms.

“I went to rehab, which helped me a little but not really that much,” she reflects. “What happened was that I rehabilitated myself back to fairly decent use of the left arm for a couple of months, but then I had a second episode. At that point, I knew I had to see someone else to determine whether or not I needed surgery.”

Like Kathy, Charles E. Sergent developed pain without having suffered any trauma to the shoulder.

“For some reason, I started having a lot of trouble with my right shoulder,” he reports. “I don’t know how it happened, or when it happened.”

Charles went to the doctor as well, but conservative treatment didn’t help him either.

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A retired registered nurse, Maureen Kelly knows exactly what to look for in a top-notch physician. And when her back pain recently reached nearly intolerable levels, she did her research and decided a pain management specialist was the next logical step.

For Maureen, pain has been a constant companion for many years, stemming back to an unfortunate accident when she worked as the director of nursing in a children’s psychiatric hospital in New York; an accident that left her with a broken neck.

“I was always kind of in pain,” she explains, “and then I had breast cancer and had reconstruction surgery. Since they use abdominal muscles to hold up the reconstructed breasts, and the abdominal muscles are actually a girdle that holds the abdominal core in place, I had two discs in my lumbar region herniate, one to the right and one to the left.”

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