Insider Health

By Joan Elovitz Kazan When Dr. Jason Jurva performs rounds at Milwaukee’s Clement J. Zablocki VA Medical Center, he has his stethoscope around his neck and his Vscan in his pocket. Stethoscopes are a familiar medical tool, but few patients have been “Vscanned.” GE Healthcare in Wauwatosa created the portable ultrasound machine, which Time magazine named an “Invention of the Year” in 2009 – one year before it was commercially available. “The Vscan is a pocket-sized visualization tool for physicians to take a quick look inside the body,” says Agnes Berzsenyi, the general manager of global primary care ultrasound at…

By Joan Elovitz Kazan The morning of Feb. 3, 2011, started typically enough for 67-year-old Jerome Schrantz. He drove to his daughter’s home to give his 6-year-old grandson, Tyler, a ride to preschool. But what happened next was anything but typical. “I heard him come in the door, then it sounded like the chairs fell over in the kitchen,” says Schrantz’s son-in-law, Ben Hartley. “Tyler came yelling, ‘Papa passed out!’” Hartley ran to the kitchen and found Schrantz unconscious. He dialed 911 and sent Tyler out to the sidewalk to flag down the ambulance. They live across the street from the…

Illustration by Firecatcher Dr. Paul Luepke, a periodontist and assistant professor at the Marquette University School of Dentistry, was examining a patient referred to him for possible periodontitis. But he spotted something else, something that worried him: granulated tissue similar to the skin of a strawberry. Luepke suspected that the middle-aged man’s health issues went much deeper than gum disease. The granulated tissue Luepke saw is more common in patients with diabetes. And this patient noted that he hadn’t been tested recently but had a family history for the disease. He agreed to follow up with his physician. The result?…

Illustration by Firecatcher  By Kathy Bergstrom Bethany Coats-Topel, 43, had suffered run-of-the-mill headaches before, but in fall 2009, she began to experience daily migraines so severe that they affected her quality of life. “It never went away,” she says. “I couldn’t sleep because of the pain.” She was tired all the time and unable to focus on her job as a hospice social worker in Pleasant Prairie. When she wasn’t at work, she wanted to hole up in a dark, quiet room by herself. A trip to an ear, nose and throat specialist proved sinuses weren’t the problem. Ibuprofen merely…

Illustration by Firecatcher Doctors, magazines and even the first lady preach this message: Physical activity means a longer, healthier life. But the sports many enjoyed during their youth can bring pain and injury with age. Today, however, surgical advancements are providing recreational athletes throughout the Milwaukee metro area with new options designed to get them back in the game with relative ease. Meet three of these cases. Martial Artist At 51, Cindy Martinez has a construction job, owns Art of Kung Fu in Walker’s Point and teaches martial arts. She also has an unpleasant history of arthritis in her knees.…

It was back in 1995 that Dr. Sheldon Wasserman, an obstetrician/gynecologist and former state assemblyman, was asked to a meeting at Clarice Zucker’s home. Zucker, a founding member of the Wisconsin Breast Cancer Coalition, was alarmed at the number of North Shore women with breast cancer. Wasserman asked the Wisconsin Department of Health to look into the issue. Dr. Patrick Remington, an epidemiologist and professor at UW-Madison’s medical school, found a definite pattern. “He found that [ZIP codes] 53217 and 53211 had statistically high incidences of breast cancer,” says Wasserman. According to Remington’s 1997 report, these North Shore communities have…

Frank and Ronda Arndorfer of Pewaukee were boating on the Atlantic coast last summer when their chronically ill son Chris, 24, took a turn for the worse. They decided to head back home, and Ronda called their friend out east to cancel plans. “Lyme disease,” said the friend when told of Chris’ symptoms. That’s crazy, thought Ronda; Chris had recently tested negative for Lyme. Still shipboard, she got out her laptop and started Googling. She discovered that Lyme disease – a bacterial infection transmitted by deer ticks – is not easy to peg. Early symptoms may include fever, fatigue, muscle…

Mark Sirek has some advice for those thinking of competing in the Riverwest 24-Hour Bike Race. “When you feel like laying in a crying huddled mass on the side of the road while crows pick at your lifeless body,” he says, “take solace in the fact that you are participating in a yearly legend in the greatest neighborhood in the world.” Part criterium, part block party and part celebration of neighborhood pride, RW24 (as it’s known by participants) consists of bikers – either solo or in teams of up to six people – riding continuous 4.6-mile laps around the neighborhood…

  The woman was in her early 50s and arrived at Columbia St. Mary’s with a severely deformed foot. It had changed shape over time, and now it was oddly rounded on the bottom. As a result, she’d developed an open sore on the sole. When Dr. Jason Boudreau, a foot and ankle surgeon and co-medical director of Columbia St. Mary’s Wound Healing Centers, asked if there was any pain, the woman said, surprisingly, that the foot never hurt. “That was a red flag,” Boudreau says. He suspected the patient was diabetic; people with diabetes often lose sensation in their…

It was way back in July 1974 that The Milwaukee Journal’s “Ask the Dentist” column sported the headline “Milk Bottle Teeth a Threat to Children.” The column was Dr. Alfred E. Seyler’s response to a parent’s letter about her 2-year-old’s decaying front teeth. “I finally took her to a dentist who told me my daughter had ‘milk bottle teeth’ and that the upper teeth were so far gone he couldn’t even cap them – they must be extracted,” the parent’s letter read. In response, Seyler discussed the dental perils of giving children a bottle when putting them to bed for…