The view from the 1,011-foot summit of Pinnacle Mountain is spectacular, and Gary Evans does his best to get there as often as he can. But after a lung cancer diagnosis in January 2023, Evans wasn’t sure he would get to the top of his favorite mountain ever again.
As Dewey Hickey took apart and reassembled a bait casting reel using an experimental prosthetic hand system, he marveled at the revolutionary technology that made it possible. “It amazes me,” said Hickey, who in January 2023 became the first Arkansan and only the second person in the world to receive the device, which restored his…
A 45-foot van in the parking lot of your child’s elementary school might seem an unlikely location for one of the most important medical exams of your life. It was ideal for Lyndee Braley. The busy mother of three from tiny Genoa, Arkansas, population 972, had just turned 40 when she saw a notice on…
Briana Pringle, 22, of Little Rock, is pretty busy these days, and that’s a good thing. The Helena-West Helena native studies at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) during the week and works on weekends. She barely has time to visit her family back home. Sickle cell disease is an unwelcome part of…
Memphis OB-GYN Lea Bannister was so excited about buying a fancy new carbon-fiber bicycle that the first time she rode it, she didn’t stop pedaling for 25 miles. It was the first time she had ridden a bike in several years, however, and at age 61, she was prone to osteoarthritis. She had already undergone…
Greenwood police officer John Michael O’Mara has been dealing with hearing loss since childhood. For years, he tried all manner of traditional hearing aids, but he just didn’t like the way they performed. “I was stubborn and refused to wear hearing aids,” O’Mara said. “I didn’t like the way that it sounded like a 1960s…
Tom and Deb Heau have come a long way together. “I couldn’t have made it without Deb, she’s the guardian angel,” said Tom Heau, who was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2018. Deb Heau describes the day they found out about her husband’s illness. “It was March 1, 2018. Tom came home and said, ‘I…
Jolee Camp was a thriving 15-year-old who dreamed of becoming a professional dancer and enjoyed hunting, fishing and working on her family’s farm in Lonoke when she was suddenly disabled by unexplained low back pain. “She spent her senior year in a wheelchair,” said her mother, B.J. Camp, who took her daughter from doctor to…
Nothing seems to slow Leotis Harris down or take the smile off his face. As a teenager, he was a star football player at Hall High School in Little Rock. From there, he became the first Black All-American Arkansas Razorback football player. Then, after being drafted in 1978 into the National Football League, he spent…
Creative works have their beginnings in various ways. For multiple myeloma survivor Vicki C. Wicker, Ph.D., it was the loss of a loved one and social media. “My mom passed away around two years before my diagnosis,” said Wicker. “Every Sunday I would write something on Facebook with a short scripture and a few paragraphs…
John Arthur, chief kidney doctor at the University of Arkansas Medical Sciences (UAMS), understands the benefits of a living kidney donation more than most people would expect. As the director of the Division of Nephrology in the UAMS Department of Internal Medicine since 2015, he has long been aware that about 100,000 patients across the…
In November 2023, Malinda Larey, 67, of Fort Smith, Arkansas, was all set to jump on the retirement travel bandwagon when she was unexpectedly diagnosed with atypical meningioma. Meningiomas are tumors that grow from the membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord. Patients can have a range of symptoms — from none to severe seizures,…