Insider Health

Photo by Doug Dietz/GE Healthcare Four and a half years ago, a father stood in a hospital hallway and told his young daughter to be strong. Right after he had spoken the words, tears welled in the corners of her eyes, soon bursting into a complete meltdown. There would be no MRI scan that day. Doug Dietz, of Waukesha-based GE Healthcare, was at the hospital that day to watch his latest project – a state-of-the-art MRI scanner – in action. The new scanner looked shiny and beautiful and utilized cutting-edge technology. Dietz was pleased. The hospital was pleased. The family…

Illustration by Justin Renteria By Julie A. Jacob Hope and Martin Garcia were looking for answers. Their 8-year-old son, Rylan, was wracked with constant fits of vomiting and was diagnosed with cyclic vomiting syndrome when he was 2. He had spent 90 percent of his life in a hospital. The Belvidere, Ill., couple turned to the Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin’s Genomic Medicine Clinic. The clinic’s whole genome sequencing analyzes a patient’s entire genetic sequence to search for mutations that might be the cause of the patient’s health condition. But because the process looks at the entire genome rather than a…

In a room belonging to Marquette University’s Department of Psychology, Dr. Amy Van Hecke, an autism specialist and assistant professor of psychology, slips a net outfitted with 64 electrodes over a child’s head, leaves the room, and records activity in the brain’s left and right hemispheres. The test lasts three minutes. Over two years, she’s done this more than 100 times. Developing a baseline for brain activity – specifically, whether the left or right hemisphere is more active – provided the foundation for Van Hecke’s recently published research showing that social intervention therapy increases left hemispheric brain activity. This shift…

Illustration by Lindsey Balbierz A little more than a year ago, 6-year-old Xavier Wielebski sat on the edge of an examination table waiting for his first treatment. A class visit to a pumpkin farm made his eyes swell shut. Persistent rubbing produced sores under his nose and mouth. And despite advice from several doctors to maintain a daily regimen of five (sometimes up to eight) medications, he still itched, still coughed, and his eyes still sported dark circles. His allergy symptoms, which can be triggered by any number of outdoor activities, were not improving.  “Even with the medications, he was…

Dr. Stadler reconstructed Lt. Brian Murphy’s voice box. Photo by Adam Ryan Morris Dr. Michael Stadler, a 33-year-old head and neck surgeon, had just walked into his house, returning from a long shift at Froedtert Hospital. It was Aug. 5, 2012, and the relative newcomer to Froedtert – he’d worked there about a month – had yet to turn on the TV or hear news of the Sikh temple shooting in Oak Creek. “And then,” he says, “I got a page.” One of the wounded from the shooting – which left seven people dead, the gunman included – was Oak…

By Jeanette Hurt Photo by Ekaterina Pokrovsky via Shutterstock Last August, clinical psychologist Dr. Lynn Vice saw something unusual. One of the first certified sex therapists in the country and a three-decade veteran of the field, Vice typically runs a steady business of teaching others how to get their groove on. But Hope Springs, the Meryl Streep-Tommy Lee Jones romantic comedy, hit theaters in the summer of 2012, and Vice’s business jumped about 25 percent. The movie was fairly realistic, Vice says, and it sent people to her door. “The therapist gives very similar assignments to the ones I do,”…

Illustration by Sam Island Dr. Oludamilola Salami has a map of the brain. And he knows how to use it. To treat depression, he heads over to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (on the left front of the brain), which modulates mood, behavior and higher cognitive functions (like planning, organization and multitasking). Once he gets there, he uses magnetic fields to stimulate brain activity by way of a hand-held electromagnetic coil. “It is similar to a magnet used in an MRI but of less strength, and the magnetic field is focused to a specific part of the brain, unlike an MRI,…

MCW researcher Dr. Anne Hoch Photo by Ben Smidt Betsy Hines had just suffered her 10th stress fracture in less than six years, forcing the 21-year-old Marquette University student to pull out of her Irish dancing competitions yet again. But Hines knew what the problem was. And she was finally ready to confront it. Hines was suffering from the female athlete triad, a condition that affects women who don’t eat enough calories to support their level of activity. It’s commonly seen in women and girls who compete in sports that encourage a thin but athletic build – such as gymnastics,…

Illustration by Firecatcher When 29-year-old Christina Fordham gave birth to daughter Lily Anna last March, baby Lily was immediately brought to her chest, where she remained for 30 minutes, with husband and father, Nathaniel, close by. This time allowed the trio to “start being a family,” Christina Fordham says. The promise of that time was ultimately what convinced her to give birth outside the hospital setting after attending a class at the Well-Rounded Maternity Center in Menomonee Falls. “The midwife explained that after a home birth or a birthing center birth, your baby would come straight to your chest and…

Illustration by Firecatcher There are two kinds of people: Those for whom the phrase “scientific research” induces apathy and those who scooch up to the table, open a New Glarus Spotted Cow and eagerly discuss the known and unknown.      Fifty scientists who are gathered on Discovery World’s patio one rare, temperate July afternoon belong to the latter group. They include 40 men and 10 women from 12 universities and research institutions in four countries. For two days, they examined the detailed science of what one attendee calls the most important science research project in the country, one with…