South Carolina’s Most Common Illnesses

Graphic: The elpehant in the room - South Carolina's most common illnesses

Attempting to quantify the most common medical disorders in the Palmetto State brings to mind the tale arising from the ancient Indian subcontinent of the blind men describing a strange animal – an elephant. One, who touched only the trunk, thought it was much like a snake; another, feeling the tail, thought it resembled a […]

Emergency Room Disaster Preparedness

Graphic for hospital disaster preparedness

We all know what a hospital emergency room – an ER – is. It’s the first place you turn to for medical attention when a personal disaster strikes. But what if a catastrophe, natural or man-made – such as a hurricane or a mass shooting – forced all of our hospitals and all of their […]

Living with Lupus

Lupus (SLE) medications and a syringe

Shonda Coleman has been suffering from flu-like symptoms for longer than she would like to remember. She has debilitating headaches, severe joint pain, rashes and extreme fatigue that sometimes puts her to sleep for 24 to 36 hours at a time. She has been misdiagnosed with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), cancer and a blood disorder. […]

The Shortage of Doctors Strikes the South

Article graphic: A Shortage of Doctors Strikes the South

Don’t Panic or You’ll Make the Wait Even Longer The now-imminent physician shortage in this country — a dearth of up to 120,000 in the next 12 years, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges – seemed to creep up on us like a serial killer spooking for the unsuspecting young college girl in […]

Bug Bites in the Summer

A swollen tick on a leaf.

The dog days of summer in the tri-county area can be so energy depleting that even the Palmetto bugs move at a slower pace. Ticks, fleas and mosquitoes? Not so much. If they could talk, we’d hear, “Warmer and wetter is better.” And, as one might expect with bloodthirsty external parasites, it gets worse. The […]

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