Mike Dulakis was progressing through his normal workout Feb. 3 at Taylorville’s Lock Up Gym, lifting weights from a seated position, when everything changed. The 39-year-old guard for the Taylorville Correctional Facility was “training to failure,” a common weight-lifting strategy.…
Wilma Fricke loves Memorial Medical Center and always has—from the time she started at Memorial as a nurse in 1947, to her retirement in 1990, to her “second career” as a volunteer beginning in 2000. During her work as head…
Her granddaughter was the first to notice something was off. When Courtney called from her home in Carbondale, her grandmother, 84-year-old Springfield resident Kathryn Kramer, couldn’t finish sentences. She didn’t remember if she’d eaten, and she was sleeping throughout…
For the first time in nearly 13 years, Tandra Perkins of Urbana woke up and didn’t have to think about dialysis. It had been her routine three times a week, four hours at a time. On June 10, the 44-year-old…
After a long day of work last March, Virginia native Barbara Arenz decided to relax by watching one of her favorite shows—Grey’s Anatomy. It showed a patient undergoing a unique treatment, where a special drug was given to make the…
Brianne Buckmaster didn’t know what was happening to her when she was rushed to Memorial Medical Center in the early morning hours of a January winter. She knew something was wrong when she tried to get out of bed and…
Ruthetta Getchel and her husband, Jack, were a day away from embarking on a trip to Minnesota in July 2014 when Ruthetta awoke in the middle of the night experiencing severe back pain and profuse sweating. Jack quickly drove Ruthetta…
The open house for the Memorial Center for Learning and Innovation is fast approaching on Sunday, May 17. The MCLI is a technologically advanced learning environment where Memorial employees, medical residents and our physician and community-health partners will develop and…
Friends come and go. A true friend, however, is invaluable. They stick up for you, never judge and are with you in good times and bad. And when times get really bad, it helps when that true friend is the…
Chances are you know (or are) someone whose life has been saved or improved by blood donation. Each year millions of Americans donate blood and 40,000 pints of blood are used every day in the United States – but more…