Deborah Gibson

May 23rd, 2008

All of my older sisters were taking piano lessons and singing, and I got my start basically by bugging my parents at age four. They kept telling me I was too young, and that maybe I should wait until I was six or seven. But eventually they gave in when they saw I was learning songs by ear.

From age five through sixteen I started doing a ton of theater, which led to voiceovers. That led to my fascination with recording studios, and suddenly I was composing and arranging the music in my head. At age 12, my mom came home from work to find me with my sister’s tape recorders lined up on the ironing board with my little synthesizer. I was doing my own version of multi-track recording, layering all the parts of the music while I played each part back.

When my mom saw that, she took out a loan and set up a recording studio for me in our house, where I worked on my own music for four years. By the time I arrived at Atlantic Records, I already had 100 finished demos and original songs. They couldn’t believe it. But I knew music! I knew how I wanted my music to sound. It was a matter of convincing them that I knew it – obviously the best way to do that is to have a number one hit! But being the youngest person ever to write, produce, and sing a number one hit song brought a lot of pressure. (more…)

Posted in Mental Illness | 5 Comments »

Juddson Rupp

May 19th, 2008

When I was 35, my heart stopped pumping blood while I was exercising at the YMCA, and I nearly died. Before my heart went into ventricular fibrillation, I was the picture of health. Although I had a pre-existing heart condition known as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, or “Athlete’s Heart,” I had never been on any medication. I was active in the gym and played football throughout my youth and then at the University of Virginia.

My enlarged heart had been diagnosed when I was 25 years old - nearly a decade before the cardiac arrest. Doctors told me that, due to genetics, my heart had grown to become a little larger than normal, and my athletic activities hadn’t helped.

I was a ticking time bomb, but there was not enough research or case studies for my cardiologists to know it. Even the full run-up of tests that I received after two incidents of fainting while exercising within a 6-month window of my near fatal cardiac arrest in 2000 was not enough for my prognosis to be changed by the doctors. (more…)

Posted in Heart Disease & Stroke | No Comments »

Alecia Harris

May 27th, 2008

I had a marriage made in heaven, three wonderful little boys and a house with a white picket fence. I was so blessed. I had a wonderful family and great friends. I had worked for one of the nation’s top hospitals and as a university instructor. Life was great! All of my hard work had paid off and I was on my way.

In a matter of months, my picture perfect world was shattered. After the birth of my youngest son, I began to regularly experience extreme fatigue, numbness and tingling in my limbs, loss of balance and other unusual symptoms. Having been trained as a nurse, I thought that I was experiencing post-partum fatigue. After all, my new bundle of joy was keeping me quite busy. I continued to be a wife, mother, daughter, sister, aunt and friend. I had absolutely no time to dwell on a little physical discomfort. I had things to do.  (more…)

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