Heather’s Blog

Teaming Up to Help Mothers

Maternal mortality is when women die because of complications from pregnancy or childbirth. It’s a problem in Africa–and in Texas. Dr Gregg Alleyne is a doctor in Philadelphia. He works as an obstetrician and gynecologist at Drexel University. Dr Alleyne also travels to Africa, to improve medical care so that pregnant women there are less […]

What’s It Worth to You?

My mom spent her life as a teacher in the public school system. She never talked about her salary, but she was underpaid. She taught emotionally disturbed high school students in the resource room. Her days were stressful and sometimes dangerous, and yet she was paid far less than my salesman father. It had nothing […]

Oaths Have Power – Healthcare Relationships

OATHS HAVE POWERLawyers take oaths. Jurors do as well. In Philadelphia, where I try cases most often, jurors pledge to “well and truly try the case”. I can tell you that jurors take this oath very seriously. Medical malpractice cases almost always involve extremely sympathetic plaintiffs. They’re injured, sometimes catastrophically. Often the injured are children. […]

Healing One Laugh at a Time

Man it’s been a rough week. Most of us are sleep deprived from staying up way too late waiting for election returns. Many are heartbroken about the result. In fact, The Washington Post is reporting that the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline had an unprecedented volume of calls this week. Others are pleased with the results, […]

Is Healthcare a Privilege or a Right?

I met Rick Ungar when I was a regular panelist on The Daily Wrap, a show he co-hosted on the Newsmax channel. He is a liberal voice on a channel that’s been known to lean towards the conservative viewpoint, and he always held his own. That’s due, in large part, to the breadth of knowledge […]

Equating Life with Life

“It’s very important to me to equate life with life.” When Dr Owen Montgomery said this in our recent interview, it stuck with me. What does that mean? Do I do that? Do I equate life with life? For the answer to the first question, we need to look no further than Dr Montgomery and […]

“You Cut Them, You Marry Them” – Anatomy of a Total Knee Replacement

As you may have seen from my blog “The Science of a Spark” I had the chance to watch a knee replacement live. While we don’t have a video of a knee replacement surgery here, we do have the next best thing. Dr. Booth, the world’s most experienced knee replacement surgeon, talks to us about what […]

The Science of a Spark

It all begins with friction – the resistance that is created when two objects meet. That friction creates a spark, and if you feed that spark with oxygen you get fire. In the right environment, a spark can change the world. History has it that Ben Franklin discovered electricity by extracting sparks from a cloud […]