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In 1941, I was a 14 year-old girl stripped away from my home in Poland. My family and I were placed in a ghetto. A year later, the ghetto was liquidated and the Nazis sent us to Koszedary labor camp. I recall at one point that the Germans came with dogs and loudspeakers. Men, women, and children were brutally separated. The mothers were forced to put their children in a group. Everyone was told not to move or they would ...
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The Emmy nominated “My Beautiful Broken Brain” (Exec Producer, David Lynch) is a profoundly personal voyage into the complexity, fragility and wonder of the human brain, after Lotje Sodderland miraculously survives a hemorrhagic stroke and finds herself starting again in an alien world, bereft of language and logic.
This feature documentary takes us on a genre-twisting tale that is by turns excruciating and exquisite – from the devastating consequences of a first-time neurological experiment, through to the extraordinary revelations of her ...
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My brain was bleeding. I sat at a friend’s kitchen table, right cheek against the cold wood, images of the most recent space shuttle disaster flickering across the T.V. I couldn’t feel my left arm. I was dizzy and weak and the room was getting darker.
My shirt was wet.
I thought “my brain is hemorrhaging and I’m about to die”.
My life didn’t flash before my eyes. I thought instead of my death at such a young age, forty-three, and what I ...
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I CREATE TO HEAL
I’m Lisa Sniderman, and similar to many of us living with chronic illness, for 10 years I’ve been living and dealing with the challenges of managing a rare progressive muscle weakness autoimmune disease, dermatomyositis (DM) that if untreated attacks and weakens my immune system and muscles, trying to find the right combination of treatments, drugs, and therapies. The worst of it was a flare-up in 2010, when I was hospitalized for nearly a month with complete ...
My name is Stanley Rafal. I am 86 years old and married 66 years, with numerous pain problems.
As I look back at my 66 years of married life, I now realize when we were young, how robust and healthy we were. Maybe it is because I have time to think about things now, so I worry. When we are young you are so busy you don’t even have time to think about it. You have in your mind more ...
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I graduated from Framingham State University and received my Bachelor’s in Fashion Design and Merchandising. After taking a year break after graduating in 2007, I wanted to further my education and to get my Master’s Degree in Business, because I always knew I wanted to be a business owner. While in graduate school receiving my Master’s, degree was when I started to experience symptoms like repeatedly falling, my leg would just give out and I would fall to the floor ...
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When people hear the term “post-traumatic stress disorder” or “PTSD,” what do they usually picture in their heads? The majority of people typically think of combat veterans who suffer at home with the memories of war. Others might think of survivors of major earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters. While these types of survivors certainly can develop this condition, there is one group of people that seems to be forgotten about and yet make up a significant portion of PTSD ...
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My name is Bill Hrncir and I am a stroke survivor. On December 9th, 2017, I celebrated my 11th stroke anniversary or “strokiversary”.
I was an athlete, a super dad, a loving husband, but overnight I became the poster child for stroke. I was running when I had a knock me down, take my voice away, throw me into a wheelchair stroke. After 11 years, I can finally say that I understand why I was chosen to survive such a trauma. ...
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I was diagnosed with breast cancer, without any lump or clue as to how this disease started or why, on the eve of my 40th birthday. At the time, my children were 6 and 9, my marriage was a bit of a sham and I was working my first full-time job in several years.
When the floor is taken out from under you during a life-threatening diagnosis, things change. Things change because they have to – there is no way you ...
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