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Healing Through a Traumatic Brain Injury and Memory Loss: Kelly WestbrookWhen Kelly Westbrook was 23, she was in a single-car accident that put her in a coma for 12 days. She had a shattered left hip. And she had a traumatic brain injury, which led to brain bleeds and memory issues. When she woke up from her coma, she says she she didn’t cry or communicate for a “very long time.” And she didn’t remember the previous year of her life...
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Finding Power Over an Eating Disorder: Laura EmmonsLaura Emmons did not expect her physical exam before high school to change her life. But it did. During that exam, Emmons was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa, an eating disorder categorized by restricting one’s calorie intake to the point of malnutrition, coupled with an intense fear of gaining weight. There are two subtypes of anorexia nervosa: restricting type and binge-eating/purging type. Initially, Emmons says she fell under the restricting subtype...
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Finding Renewal After Decades of Substance Abuse, Prison Time: Courtney TrankleCourtney Trankle says she always felt different from her family. When her father, a combat veteran, retired and moved their family from Fort Huachuca, Ariz., to the small town of Marble Hill, Mo., Trankle felt even more uncomfortable and alienated. To cope with her emotions, she started experimenting with drugs and alcohol when she was 14 years old...
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Surviving a Heart Transplant: Jimmy WilliamsIf you passed Jimmy Williams on the street, you’d see a typical teenager doing teenager-y things. A freshman at Jackson High School, Jimmy loves music and Tennessee football, staying up late and hanging out with friends, eating Chick-fil-A and munching on barbecue Fritos. Talk with him a bit, and you’d find out he’s obsessed with golf and hopes to play D1 in college. He practices just about every day, and while he loves to compete, he really loves to win...
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Overcoming Breast Cancer to Start a Bakery: Jodi HollandsworthDuring the spring of the year she was 32 years old, Jodi Hollandsworth began feeling a sensation in her left breast. Always very “in tune” with her body, she says she knew something was wrong. “I remember telling my husband, ‘I don't know what’s going on,’” Hollandsworth says. “The best way I can describe it to anybody was like somebody was flicking a lighter in there. It would be like a little zap, burn.”...
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Surviving Colon Cancer to Help Children: Donna BullardOn Jan. 9, 2019, Donna Bullard went in for a routine colonoscopy. Before she was completely out of anesthesia, the doctor told her husband they needed to see someone right away. Two days later, she received a call stating she had aggressive stage four cancer; it had already grown outside Bullard’s colon and pushed into her reproductive organs and abdominal wall...
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