When Marjorie Stanek was a little girl, she accompanied her physician father on his house visits and hospital rounds. “He loved medicine,” she said, remembering that he inspired many members of the extended family to pursue careers in medicine. And even though she almost passed out while watching him perform surgery when she was a young teen, she became a doc, too.

Stanek is in her 40^th year of practice at Einstein Medical Center Philadelphia, where she was the first full-time female cardiologist when she was hired in 1977. Now, she’s been named the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women 2017 Woman of Heart Award.

“I love cardiology and I’m thrilled to be honored by this wonderful organization for my work,” said Dr. Stanek, 70, who lives in Huntingdon Valley.

The award recognizes an “outstanding healthcare professional who has made it their mission to make a difference in the lives of those who have been impacted by heart disease,” according to the American Heart Association.

“I often think about my patients, especially in the middle of the night. You’re never free of that.”

Dr. Stanek was among the women pioneers who broke gender barriers when they became physicians.

Her husband’s class of 160 at Temple Medical School had eight women. She attended Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania—now Drexel—and said she’s “grateful” for the opportunity to pursue the career she loved, rather than bitter at the discrimination that may have kept her out of a coed school.

Actor Alan Thicke, dead at 69. Singer George Michael, dead at 53. Actor Carrie Fisher (right), dead at 60. All three celebrities were felled by cardiovascular catastrophes, a reminder that heart disease remains the No. 1 killer of men and women.

The reminder is especially relevant at this time of year. Heart-related deaths spike around the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, because of overeating, overdrinking, stressful travel, family tensions and a propensity to willfully ignore symptoms so as not to ruin the festivities.

“These are three kinds of cardiovascular diseases that result in devastating loss,” said Vincent Figueredo, MD, Associate Chair of Medicine and Chief of Clinical Cardiology at Einstein Medical Center Philadelphia. “High blood pressure is a common denominator in all of them,” he said, speaking generally, without direct knowledge of the medical history or health status of the three stars.

Jeanne Fryar

Memories of a sad, long-ago Christmas explain why Jeanne Fryar supports the Adopt-A-Patient program at Einstein Healthcare Network. The program, funded by donations from employees such as Fryar, provides a gift to every patient who’s hospitalized over the holidays.

This year, more than 1,000 inpatients at Einstein Medical Center Philadelphia, Einstein Medical Center Montgomery, Einstein Medical Center Elkins Park and MossRehab, will receive blankets and slipper socks. Nurses in each unit will give out the gifts on Wednesday, Dec. 21 and Thursday, Dec. 22.

Rufus Wallace, center, who served 9 years in the United States Army (photo by Wes Hilton)

Nurses conducting morning rounds at Einstein Healthcare Network on Veterans Day had a special question for inpatients: Have you served in the military? If the answer was yes, the nurses returned with a tumbler and a large magnet, emblazoned with American flags and the sentiment: Thank You For Your Service. 

The tribute to veterans began last year at Einstein Medical Center Montgomery, and was expanded to the network’s two other medical centers this year, thanks to board member Madalyn Rovinsky.  “I’m very grateful for people who put their life on the line for my freedom,” said Rovinsky, who donated the funds for the program on behalf of herself and her husband, Harvey.  “I don’t take it for granted.”

On a recent afternoon, a couple of nurses from Einstein Medical Center Philadelphia went to an apartment in the city’s Northeast. They scrubbed it clean, hung curtains and art work, and arranged all the furniture they’d either purchased or collected from coworkers:  bed and kitchen set, sofa, chair and lamps. They put away the dishes, pots and pans, the sheets and towels and toiletries, and everything else they’d gathered.

Asthma, diabetes and obesity are the childhood afflictions that receive the most public attention. But the health problem that causes more missed school days than any other isn’t any of them. It’s ... tooth decay.

Tooth decay is the “single most chronic disease of childhood,” according to the America Academy of Pediatric Dentistry. It’s five times more common than asthma, four times more common than early childhood obesity and 20 times more common than diabetes.

For a split second Karl Sangree thought he’d gotten lucky: when he landed on the ground after being thrown from his motorcycle, there was no blood and there were no bones piercing his skin. Maybe it wasn’t going to be so bad after all. And then 800 pounds of the Harley Davidson that had skidded and became airborne landed on his body and crushed his mid-section. So much for luck.

The police and an ambulance soon arrived to rush Sangree to the hospital. He had four pelvic fractures, two hip fractures, three crushed vertebrae and six broken ribs. Doctors performed a tracheotomy, attached him to a ventilator—and summoned his three children to bid him goodbye. But after three-and-a-half weeks in an induced coma, Sangree awakened in the intensive care unit. A few weeks later, after a stint in rehab, he went home. That was April of 2012.

Einstein Medical Center Montgomery has pioneered the use of an artificial aortic valve that takes half the time to implant than previous prosthetics, enabling patients to recover more quickly. Einstein Montgomery is the first and only hospital in the Philadelphia region to use the EDWARDS INTUITY Elite valve commercially, since it was approved by the FDA last summer.

Tommy Ford, a member of the cast of “Martin,” a popular sitcom that aired on the Fox network in the '90s, died of an abdominal aortic aneurysm on Wednesday at the age of 52. The rupture is a surprisingly common cause of death, according to Nadia Awad, MD, a vascular surgeon at Einstein.

AAA is the 10th leading cause of death in men over the age of 55 and the 15th leading cause of death in the United States, Dr. Awad said. It's caused by the weakening of the aorta, the main blood vessel that supplies blood to your body, which leads to a balloon-like dilation.

According to Dr. Awad:

AAA is fairly common and every year 200,000 people in the United States are diagnosed with one. Most AAA cause no symptoms and are found when a patient is being evaluated for another medical problem. However, some patients have pain, which can be a sign of impending rupture. The larger the AAA becomes, the greater the chance that it may burst, which is a life-threatening event that can happen without notice. Up to 90 percent of patients who have ruptured AAA die.

Sheila Adkins was halfway through her devastating chemotherapy treatment—unable to eat, walk, work, consumed by exhaustion, weakness and pain—when, one day, she looked at her oncologist and said: “Someday, doc, you and I are going to dance.”

It may have been false bravado, a desperate expression of hope, because the promise was unlikely to be kept: Sheila had stage 4 stomach cancer that had already spread to her liver, and the powerful treatment had rendered her an invalid. But here she was a year and a half later, back to work, making the keynote speech at a recent Cancer Survivor’s Day Celebration sponsored by Einstein Medical Center Montgomery.

William Biermann, MD, her physician, was in the audience of survivors, their families and friends, and the nurses and other physicians from Einstein Montgomery who brought them back to health. The fact that Adkins could walk to the podium at all showed just how far she’d come.