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David had bypass surgery in 1997 and thought his heart was doing well until he experienced another cardiac event out of nowhere.

What began as a middle-of-the-night trip to the bathroom turned into a nightmare—and then a miracle—for 83-year-old Chillicothe resident Shirley Eskew. After getting out of bed, Shirley slipped and fell. “I just hit the concrete hard,” she remembers. Things got blurry after that, but she did manage to call for help and get to the emergency room at Hedrick Medical Center.

The 37-year-old Chillicothe wife and mother had two active teen boys, a full-time job, and had recently returned to college for to earn dual majors in business administration and organizational leadership. Then one day she felt a lump in her breast.

For three decades, breathing troubles followed James Seymore as he and his wife moved from one place to another. In 1980, he received his first diagnosis of pulmonary sarcoidosis in Wyoming. The inflammatory condition can cause shortness of breath, coughing, fatigue, and joint pain. His first bout resolved after a course of steroids, but it returned seven years later after the Seymores moved to Oregon.