Battling Heart and Stroke

He is a legend in cardiovascular medicine. He is a pioneer in open-heart surgery and cardiovascular devices. He was instrumental in developing innovations such as heart pumps and artificial hearts, and interventions such arterial bypass surgery and heart transplants. Dr. Michael DeBakey, the legendary innovator and doctor dies of natural causes at the age of 99, Dallas Morning News reports.

With his medical innovations, DeBakey saved the lives of thousands- even millions of people from all walks of life, the known and unknown, the young and the old, the rich and the poor. He is also instrumental in the development of the Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals (M.A.S.H.) for the American military, an innovation which save American lives in the front. He himself was touched by the monster of heart disease when his first wife died of a heart attack in 1972. He benefited from his own invention when he had to undergo heart surgery to fix a damaged aorta in 2006.

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Instead of featuring a heart(y) celebrity this month, I would like to pay my respects to Tim Russert of NBC.

I was travelling around Western Europe when I heard of his unexpected death. Even here in the old continent, his name and face was known, especially among the English-speaking community. Russert was a respected political journalist whose opinion carried a lot of weight in the political scene.

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She is not your typical heart patient: she is young, physically fit, and slim. But musical performer and Grammy-award winner Toni Braxton knows how it feels to battle the monster that is heart disease. And she puts her celebrity status to use for a good cause - to increase awareness about heart disease among women.

Four years ago, Toni experienced symptoms of breathless and tightness in her chest during a performance’s intermission and ended up in an emergency room. She was diagnosed to have pericarditis. According to Medline Medical Encyclopedia, pericarditis is
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Musical artist, tenor, actor, stage performer, radio host, all these words describe Benjamin “BeBe” Winans. But why do we chose BeBe to be our May celebrity for Battling Heart and Stroke?

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