Francoise Gilot: Life with Picasso
Francoise Gilot was an accomplished French artist whose works included more than 1,600 paintings. She was appointed an Officer of the Légion d'honneur, the French government's highest honor for the arts. She died in a New York City hospital on June 6 2023 at the age of 101, after suffering serious heart and lung disease. Her portraits are featured in more than a dozen leading museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
Ryan O’Neal: Remembering “Love Story”
Ryan O'Neal was a very famous Hollywood film actor and television star who will be remembered most for his role in Love Story (1970), for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama. He also starred in What's Up, Doc? (1972), Paper Moon (1973), which earned him another Golden Globe nomination, Barry Lyndon (1975), A Bridge Too Far (1977), The Driver (1978), and many others.
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor: Relationships Among Dementia Patients
Sandra Day O’Connor was the first woman appointed to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States and was also the first female majority leader of a state senate, as a Republican in Arizona. She did everything better than her peers and opened doors for women to be successful in these professions that were dominated by men.
Henry Kissinger, Centenarian
In 1938, when he was 15, Henry Kissinger's family escaped from Nazi Germany and came to the United States. They were so poor that he attended a New York high school at night and worked in a shaving brush factory during the day. At age 20, he was drafted into the U.S. army. He spoke German fluently and even though he was a private, the lowest rank in the army, he was put in charge of the administration of the conquered city of Krefeld.
Bobby Knight, Legendary Basketball Coach
Bobby Knight was one of the most successful college basketball coaches of all time. He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1991 as the coach of college teams that won 902 games and lost 371. At Indiana University from 1971 to 2000, his teams won three NCAA championships, one National Invitational Tourney and 11 Big Ten Conference championships.
Merle Haggard: Be Good to Your Lungs
Merle Haggard was a legendary country music singer and guitar player with 38 songs that reached number one on the country charts, and 71 in the top ten. We have lost another great musical talent to the ravages of lung cancer and pneumonia, brought on by this generation's horrible treatment of their lungs.
John Nuttall, Distance Runner, Dies of Heart Attack at 56
John Nuttall was a British long-distance runner who competed at the highest Olympic and international levels until he was 31, ran in competitive races until he was 40 and coached world-class international runners until he died of a heart attack at age 56. How could a fit and heathy runner die of a heart attack at such a young age? Research evidence shows that exercise strengthens the heart, helps to prevent heart attacks and strokes, and prolongs lives
Matthew Perry’s Addictions
Matthew Perry was an American and Canadian actor who became famous as Chandler Bing on the NBC-TV sitcom “Friends,” which ran from 1994-2004 and won a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy. Perry made it through all 10 seasons and 236 episodes in spite of being routinely drunk and high or hungover on set, especially during the later shows.
Richard Roundtree: Breast Cancer in Men and Pancreatic Cancer
Actor Richard Roundtree was the first black-action-movie-star hero, playing private detective John Shaft in the 1971 film Shaft and its sequels. He has been credited with changing the way black men were portrayed in films. In 1993, at age 51, he was diagnosed with breast cancer and had his left breast removed all the way to his armpit.
Terry Dischinger and Dementia
Terry Dischinger was an All-American college basketball player at Purdue, averaging 28 points per game, and a 2019 inductee into the College Basketball Hall of Fame. At age 19, he was a member of the United States men's 1960 Olympic championship basketball team. He went on to play basketball for nine years in the NBA, where he was a three-time NBA All-Star and the 1963 NBA Rookie of the Year.
Suzanne Somers and Breast Cancer
Suzanne Somers was a famous actress who is remembered for her roles on the popular TV sitcoms Three's Company and Step by Step. She was also a best-selling author, singer, promoter of beauty products and spokesperson for various alternative health treatments. On October 15, 2023, Suzanne Somers died of breast cancer the day before her 77th birthday. She was first diagnosed with stage II breast cancer twenty-three years earlier and was treated with surgery, radiation and other treatments, some conventional and some controversial.
Dick Butkus and Heart Disease in Athletes
Dick Butkus played football for the Chicago Bears from 1965 to 1973 and was regarded as one of the greatest, fiercest and most intimidating linebackers in professional football history. He played in eight Pro Bowls, was named a first-team All-Pro six times, and twice was the NFL's Defensive Player of the Year. He was voted NFL 1960s All-Decade Team, NFL 1970s All-Decade Team, NFL 75th Anniversary All-Time Team and NFL 100th Anniversary All-Time Team.
Brooks Robinson, Heart Disease and Prostate Cancer
On September 26, 2023, Baltimore Orioles baseball great Brooks Robinson died from heart disease at age 86. He had been diagnosed with prostate cancer at age 72, but most people with prostate cancer do not die from their cancer, they die primarily from heart disease. Heart disease and prostate cancer have the same risk factors
Otzi the Iceman and 5,300 Years of the Diseases of Inflammation
In 1991, hikers in the Italian Alps discovered Otzi the Iceman, a man who was preserved in ice after his murder about 5,300 years ago. He was killed by a hard hit on his head and an arrow through his shoulder when he was about 46 years old. He is now entombed at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy with a life-size statue of him as he may have looked standing nearby.
Steve Harwell: Brain Damage from Alcohol
Steve Harwell was lead vocalist for the rock band Smash Mouth from its formation in 1994 until his retirement in 2021. He produced three top hit songs: "Walkin' on the Sun," "All Star" and “I’m a Believer." He and the band sold more than 10 million albums and had two #1 hit singles, five Top 40 singles, three Hot 100 singles, four Billboard 200 albums and a Grammy nomination. The band also appeared on hundreds of film and television placements and was featured on “Shrek.”
Jimmy Buffett’s Merkel Cell Skin Cancer
Jimmy Buffett was a famous singer and ukelele and guitar player who combined country, rock, folk, calypso and pop music. His top hits that he wrote and sang were "Margaritaville" and "Come Monday," and he had nine platinum albums and eight gold albums.He was also a businessman who was worth more than $1 billion from an incredible number of investments, including restaurant chains named after two of his best-known songs, the Margaritaville Cafe and Cheeseburger in Paradise restaurants.
Tori Bowie, Signals for Help
Tori Bowie was a world-famous track and field star who won three medals at the 2016 Olympics in Rio: a gold medal in 4X100 meter relay, a silver medal in 100 meters and a bronze medal in 200 meters. She also won gold medals in 100 meters and the 4x100 meter relay at the 2017 London World Championships, and a bronze medal in 100 meters at the 2015 Beijing World Championships. At age 32, on May 2, 2023, her dead body was found in her home and her autopsy reported that she had died several days earlier during labor, possibly from eclampsia.
Edith Piaf, Old Too Young
Edith Piaf was a French cabaret singer who became famous throughout the world during the Nazi occupation of France during World War II. She captivated listeners with her sad, seemingly autobiographical songs of lost love, sorrow and deprivation.
Robbie Robertson and Prostate Cancer
Robbie Robertson was a Canadian musician who played lead guitar and sang and wrote songs for Bob Dylan in the 1960s and 1970s, and with “The Band” until 1978. Then he continued his successful career as a solo recording artist and film music composer, and wrote books. He worked on films with Martin Scorsese as an actor and music writer, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, Canada's Walk of Fame, and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Sinead O’Connor and Mental Illness
Sinead O'Connor was a very successful and popular Irish singer and musician who in 1987, at age 21, released her debut album, “The Lion and the Cobra,” that made her famous internationally. Her second album, released in 1990, “I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got,” sold more than seven million copies throughout the world and included "Nothing Compares 2 U", which was voted the top single by Billboard Music Awards and earned her a Grammy Award.
Marian Anderson, a Voice that Made History
In 1930, 33-year-old Marian Anderson responded to this discrimination by going to Europe where she was acclaimed as one of world's greatest singers. Back in the United States in 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) would not allow the now world-famous contralto to give a concert in Constitution Hall in Washington, DC. Because of this, Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the DAR and asked her husband, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to have Harold L. Ickes, the Secretary of the Interior, open the Lincoln Memorial for Anderson to perform a concert on Easter Sunday.
Lisa Marie Presley’s Cause of Death
Lisa Marie Presley died from scar tissue from weight loss surgery. She died on January 12, 2023 at the very young age of 54, from intestinal obstruction caused by previous scar tissue from her gastric-bypass weight loss surgery that was supposed to prevent food from passing through her stomach. The original reports of her death listed the cause as cardiac arrest, and these autopsy findings have just recently been released.
The Heat Stroke Death of Korey Stringer
The heat wave that has affected much of North America this summer should remind us of the signs and dangers of heatstroke. Twenty-two years ago, on August 1, 2001, Korey Stringer died of heat stroke at age 27. He was 6' 4" tall, weighed 335 pounds and had been an All American tackle at Ohio State University. He became an All Pro lineman for the Minnesota Vikings in 1995.
Antonin Scalia: Incredibly Bad Health Decisions
Today's extremely conservative U.S. Supreme Court members are all aware of the opinions of Antonin Scalia, who was appointed to the Court by President Ronald Reagan in 1986. Scalia was the first Italian-American justice and he spent the next 30 years as one of the most conservative Court members ever. He defended many of his votes and opinions by claiming that he wanted to prevent any changes to the U.S. Constitution that was written 200 years ago.
Raquel Welch: Heart Failure and Dementia
Raquel Welch was a Hollywood actress and television star whom Playboy called the "Most Desired Woman" of the 1970s and ranked her as Number Three on their "100 Sexiest Stars of the Twentieth Century" (after Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield). She won a Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture Actress in a Musical or Comedy in 1974 for her performance in The Three Musketeers, and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in Television Films for her performance in the film Right to Die (1987).
Micheline Ostermeyer, Olympian and Concert Pianist
It takes so much work and time to train to become outstanding at any endeavor that there are very few people who have risen to the top of the world stage in more than one field. One of the most impressive people who ever lived was Micheline Ostermeyer of France. She was born in 1922 and died at age 78 in 2001, and was a concert pianist who won three Olympic medals in the 1948 Olympics.
Gustav Born: Choosing the Right Parents
Gustav Born was a physician and pharmacologist who taught the world about blood clotting. In 1945, he was posted as a British army doctor in Hiroshima, and noticed that most of the survivors of the atomic bomb suffered from chronic bleeding. He demonstrated that exposure to radiation destroys the body's platelets to cause the bleeding and laid the basics for treatment of bleeding and clotting disorders, some of which are still used today.
Munchausen’s Syndrome
Every physician eventually is asked to treat patients who fake illness, usually to get attention or for personal gain. In 1951, British physician Dr. Robert Asher described three patients who went from doctor to doctor with multiple fictional symptoms, many unexplained hospitalizations, and multiple scars from surgeries that never should have been performed in the first place. Their stories sounded so real that they convinced honest doctors to operate on them for no good reason.
Tina Turner: High Blood Pressure and Kidney Failure
Tina Turner died on May 24, 2023 at age 83 of kidney failure following many years of severe high blood pressure, a kidney transplant, colon cancer, and several strokes. She was a singer, dancer and actress who rose from depressing poverty and an abusive marriage to become the "Queen of Rock 'n' Roll" as the lead singer of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue, before divorcing him and becoming a very popular solo performer.
Roger Bannister, First Sub-4-Minute Miler
Roger Bannister was the first human to run a mile in less than four minutes, even though his training was totally inadequate for world-class competition because he was a full time medical student who trained on a single 30-minute workout per day, compared to today's runners who train twice a day for as much as three hours.
