Heather Grondin

“Infant botulism is a very rare illness, it happens maybe to 75 patients a year. They told us later it's more likely to be struck by lightning, and so most doctors never see this in their whole career.”

Bob Brown

“I was fifty years old and living my life, pretty healthy, no issues whatsoever and I got a little bit ill and after a series of tests I was diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer. And that's a devastating diagnosis. There aren't many types of cancer that you can get that have a worse prognosis than that.”

Dawn Flemming

“The tumor was just there, taking up space, putting my baby's life in jeopardy. It was like the enemy. I was upset because this was my baby, it belonged to me. And there was nothing I could do.”

P.J. Hermida

“I ripped every part of jeans from walking around on the rugs on my knees, and then I would walk on all fours which didn't work out very well because you couldn't carry anything around the house. So, I would go into a crab walk.”

Tim Sweeney

“I'm convinced that the only reason why I recovered so quickly, the only reason why I was out of the hospital in six days and I was running within a month and running a marathon within a year, was because of Dr. Sonett's words of encouragement. I respected him so much and I trusted him so much that when he planted the seed that I could run 26 miles within a year of getting a double-lung transplant, I just knew that I could do it.”

Benjamin Carey

“After I was diagnosed with an aortic aneurysm, my whole world was turned upside down. You know, I'm in the middle of building the American dream. I had two children, and another one on the way. My wife was five months pregnant, and now I'm a ticking time bomb.”

Jessica Chipkin

“It was June 6. That's what I call my crash day. I was at home in northern New Jersey and nobody else was home. My parents were working, and my younger brother was at school. I woke up, got out of bed, and couldn't stand straight up. I immediately crashed to the floor. I was gasping for air.”

Matthew Long

“It took quite a while for the police officers and firemen to get me out from under the bus.
But when they did, I was lucky that they made a left turn up First Avenue and took me to
NewYork-Presbyterian. The doctors originally told my family that I had less than a 5 percent
chance to live. They didn’t think anyone could withstand this amount of insult to their body.”

Heather McNamara

“The tumor was the size of a baseball. It was wrapped around all my organs, and other hospitals
didn’t want to touch it. The only doctor who did was Dr. Kato. He was willing to do the surgery,
which I thought was amazing. Nobody wanted to do it, and I just thought it was amazing that he
was the only one who would try.”

Joe Tiralosi

“I was in the triage area, and the nurse started to ask me a series of questions. And I collapsed.
Everyone sprang into action. Everyone grabbed for me as I fell on the floor. Dr. Sharma called
out that he only wanted the strongest arms and the strongest people to work on me. For the next
47 minutes, they never stopped doing those chest compressions.”

Nicole Marquez

“When I woke up, I learned that I fell six stories from the rooftop. I was lying on the ground for
about eight hours. Then they took me to NewYork-Presbyterian. And, my injuries were pretty
catastrophic. I had a broken neck, back, pelvis, and ribs, and a punctured lung. I thank my lucky
stars for NewYork-Presbyterian. They really did put Humpty Dumpty back together again.”