She heard the crash and knew something was wrong. It was shortly after 1 a.m. when Karin Ybarra woke to find her husband lying on the bathroom floor. The torn shower curtain betrayed his failed struggle to pull himself up.
Saint Luke’s cardiac transplant program, the only one of its kind in the region, has joined an exclusive list as one of 27 hospitals nationwide to record 500 adult heart transplants. Michael Lynch, a 50-year-old father of four from Kansas City, Kan., received his new heart on June 15 at Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute.
Professional athletes and musicians have something in common: They both live to play. And something else: The wrong injury means they never will again. That's what happened—almost—to Linda Thomssen, a violinist with the Kansas City Symphony for 27 seasons. Not once, not twice, but three times.
I spent the first six weeks of my life at Saint Luke’s Hospital Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. I was born 10 weeks early and weighed 3 pounds. My dad could hold me in the palm of his hand.
I was born at 24 weeks on October 20, 1984, and weighed only 21.5 ounces. My mom said my eyes were still fused close. The doctors at Saint Luke’s Hospital Neonatal Intensive Care Unit told her I had only a 50 percent chance of surviving. (My odds went down to 13 percent when I developed a heart problem three weeks later.) The doctors said if I survived, I would be blind, deaf, and severely retarded.
Saint Luke’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit had just opened when I was born two months early on September 16, 1980. My mom developed preeclampsia, which caused her blood pressure to spike and her entire body to swell.
Patients needing CT scans at Saint Luke’s East-Lee’s Summit now have access to a new scanner with specialized radiation-reducing technology that produces a more accurate image.
Seabrun “Candy” Hunter is the co-writer of “Rockin’ Rockin’ Boogie,” one of the songs that brought his cousin Little Richard to the Songwriters Hall of Fame. But for the past 10 years, Hunter has had little to sing about.
