Medicine & Music: Saving Your Own Life

[HTML1] In the first two segments of today’s show, we’ll hear from Greg Cassel, who just might become the poster boy for the “Nurse Managed Congestive Heart Failure” program at California’s Kaiser Permanente. Nurse Joan Beverly literally persuaded Greg that he had to choose between life and death. He had been ignoring Hepatitis C, while continuing to drink alcohol and exacerbate his cirrhosis of the liver. That was leading to nasty complications like edema (fluid in the legs) and ascites (fluid in the abdomen). You gotta admire Greg — he saw the light, while Nurse Beverly, provided her own life-changing illumination. Their story and their relationship give new meaning to the words compassion and empathy.

In the final segment, we’ll shift gears radically, with songwriters and musicians Laurel Thomse and Sahra Baker, who write songs about addiction, temptation and hedonism — among other things. They discuss what it’s like to convey emotion and empathy through the aural language of musical expression.

Segment A (0:00 – 11:00)
Life Love & Health: Special Edition executive producer Christopher Springmann speaks with Joan Beverly RN and patient Greg Cassel about Hepatitis C and heart failure prevention

Segment B (11:01 – 22:00)
More with Joan Beverly and Greg Cassel

Segment C (22:01 – 33:00)
Christopher Springmann speaks with songwriters and musicians Laurel Thomsen and Sahra Baker about communicating emotion and empathy

More about Joan Beverly
Joan Beverly RN is a Heart Failure Care Manager with Kaiser Permanente. In this role Joan manages heart failure patients by providing valuable information and support with education about diet, exercise and other lifestyle changes. Joan is no stranger to nursing, having spent more than 20 years as a Registered Nurse at Kaiser Permanente. She recently received her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from California State University – Fullerton. Drawing from many years of healthcare experience has permitted Joan to focus on the whole person and his or her needs. Joan is passionate about helping people with change and sustaining that change to live a longer and healthier life.

More about Laurel Thomsen
Laurel Thomsen performs, records and teaches music in and around Monterey, California. She began playing violin at age of nine and studied classically with many teachers and in a variety of youth orchestras around the California Central Coast, the San Francisco Bay Area, at the University of Montana-Missoula, and in Italy. Though Laurel continues to play classically, at weddings, events, and in orchestras, she is frequently sought out by songwriters and bands for her ability to find the voice of the violin in all genres of music. Laurel has played in Celtic, Pop-rock, folk-rock, and tribute bands, and collaborated with songwriters in the classical, folk, jazz, cabaret, country, Paraguayan, Gypsy, and blues genres. She has co-produced a CD, recorded on several albums, accompanied Sufi dancers, created traditional Indian devotional music for Kirtans, and for three years served as the main performer in the Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital music-therapy program.

More about Sahra Baker
Sahra Baker wrote her first song at age 13 to impress a neighbor. She has since written hundreds of songs but rarely performs them in person. Her recordings include “My Wish for You,” written to benefit children in an orphanage in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia and eventually becoming the score to a film about their plight.

© 2010 by On the Path Productions, LLC.  All rights reserved.

About Christopher Springmann

Christopher Springmann is Executive Producer and Senior Correspondent of Life, Love and Health, the award-winning health and wellness program that reaches millions daily on multiple news, talk and sports channels including Sirius XM, CNN, FOX, NPR affiliates, American Forces Network, and HealthRadio.net.

Life, Love and Health is also Mr. Springmann’s latest endeavor in a journey of “creative convergence” that started as a photographer for Time, Fortune, National Geographic and Smithsonian magazines. He moved into writing leadership profiles for Chief Executive and California CEO magazines, which in turn provided the inspiration for creating Life, Love and Health: to fulfill the unmet need of telling America’s health story. Mr. Springmann meets this need in entertaining and emotionally engaging ways, with the authentic voices of real people, including a diverse group of doctors and nurses, patients and their families, plus researchers and innovators in the health-and-wellness field. He relies on the credibility and persuasiveness of people’s passionate storytelling to get the point across. People identify with the experiences of others and are encouraged to take positive, attainable actions to improve their personal and family health.

Christopher is also the Host of Life, Love and Health on WomensRadio. Life, Love and Health seeks to ultimately make a difference in people’s lives by encouraging individuals to take positive, attainable actions to improve their personal and family health.