Welcome to the Aug.-Sept. issue, our second bimonthly each summer. If you are reading a printed copy, we are also online at www.paradisenewsfl.com. Our online team emails a FREE weekly newsletter each Thursday to a growing list of subscribers. Find this week’s under the weekly tab and enter your email to be added to the list. We welcome new advertisers this issue Craig Munroe’s Gulf Coast Property Maintenance, Dr. Jamie Todd who opened Shoreline Animal Hospital, where Dr. Rose’s St. Pete Beach vet office was for years, at 6650 Gulf Blvd. Dr. Todd has expanded her practice from the highly respected Court Street Animal Hospital in Clearwater, and Sunbiz Construction. Yoga Teacher Jeanne Salvo will be back from Nov. to May, at Pass-a-Grille Community Church.
We moved back into our fully renovated bungalow 15 months after Helene flooded and Milton damaged the roof of our home and office on St. Pete Beach. Since we lost most of our furniture in the flood, we have been carefully choosing replacements and are still “settling in.” Meanwhile, with sounds of recovery construction continuing all around us, our focus has turned toward protecting our home and our health.
I had already outlived my parents, when I switched Medicare Advantage plans this year to get Dr. Colin Chan as my PCP (Primary Care Physician). Reputedly one of Tampa Bay’s top diagnosticians, I challenged Dr. Chan to predict what was going to kill me and when. After a high PSA score on a blood test, he ordered an MRI, then a biopsy by urologist Dr. Nicholas Laryngakis of Florida Urology at Orlando Health Bayfront and ultimately, my Humana HMO Medicare Advantage plan paid for my successful robotic cancer surgery (at Moffitt) May 21st. After an abnormal reading on an in-office EKG, in March, Dr. Chan also sent me for a heart CT scan and calcium score from South Tampa Cardiology. After a super high calcium score, Dr. Chan had ordered a CCTA scan to see where I needed stents. The first opening was June 4, six weeks later. I got the result June 11.
Dr. Chan prescribed nitroglycerin to carry with me and sent me to the cardiologist. Dr. Gregg Shuyler had just ok’d me for my cancer surgery. I got an appointment the next day. After a quick look at the scan results Dr. Shuyler checked the operating room schedule on his computer and asked what I was doing early Monday morning. By noon on the 15th of June, after less than an hour, I had a stent in an artery that badly needed it and just a bandage on my wrist as a souvenir. Curiously, Shuyler’s partner, surgeon Andrew Rosenthal said my “heart had already done its own bypass.” He found another place that needed the stent. I am so thankful to Dr. Chan for quickly finding the two things that could have caused me to suffer, or worse as I get older and to refer me for expert care. Cardiologists Gregg Shuyler and his partner, surgeon Andrew Rosenthal represent Orlando Health at Bayfront and Crossroads. I met with Gregg at the new Orlando Health “Crossroads” facility you have seen advertised in Paradise News that was built near Tyrone, where the County Clerk outpost used to be. The successful cardiac catheterization and stent placement was done at the James Heart Center at Orlando Health Bayfront Hospital complex in DTSP. I’m thrilled to say that Orlando Health hosted both my biopsy and heart catheterization and the facility and staff were amazing, as was Moffitt Cancer Center.
The Tampa Bay area has some excellent healthcare providers. I am also pleased to say I am pretty satisfied overall with the Humana HMO Medicare Advantage plan we are in. Enough about me. We finally got a break in late July from desert-like weather for a reminder that it is storm season. Thank the Lord for the rain. Be safe and enjoy it. In October, we return to a monthly frequency.