Son Uses Grandfather's Heartbeats to Help Save Mom's Life

Dr. Daniel Mason, a prominent cardiologist, had a big heart, taking an active interest in each one of his grandchildren's summers on New Jersey’s Long Beach Island until his death in 2011 at age 92.

But he left behind another kind of legacy for his family, one that set his grandson Andrew Josephson on the path to medical school and, inadvertently, but luckily, helped to save his mother’s life.

Mason, who lectured and practiced for 50 years at Philadelphia’s Hahnemann Hospital, had produced a three-CD set of digitized heart sounds and murmurs, some extremely rare, to teach medical students the nuances of detecting heart disease.

“Whenever someone had a patient with an irregular pattern with their heart sounds, he would grab his recording equipment,” grandson Josephson said. “He used them as a teaching tool for students and cardiologists and other physicians in the field, anyone who used a stethoscope.”

“My grandfather was such an influence in my life,” Josephson, 23, who lives at home in Moorestown, N.J., said.

That was an understatement.

Josephson, after his graduation in biochemistry from Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, discovered on the family bookshelf his grandfather’s collection of 125 or more heart sounds, and created an app, “Listening to the Heart,” that uses the iPhone to record a person’s heartbeat, compare it to Mason’s recordings, and identify any abnormalities.

And in the process this year, he diagnosed his mother’s silent heart disease.

It all started in 2011, when Josephson was on a gap year and considering applying to his grandfather’s alma mater, Drexel University in Philadelphia.

“I was going through his stuff after he died and discovered the CDs,” he said. “He had spent years running around the hospital recording people. I thought about doing something with them, to republish them was my initial goal.”

As Josephson thought about it he was inspired by the music app Shazam, which matches songs with a musician’s body of work. Although he had taken only had one computer programming class in college, he bought some books and taught himself to learn writing code.

“With the platform of the iPhone, I extracted all the sample sounds he had recorded from lectures and did a little acoustic analysis on the computer,” Josephson said.

“At first, we really weren't sure it worked,” he added. “I was not the most reliable programmer.”

He had to tweak the iPhone’s microphone but soon figured a way to hold the iPhone up to the chest and compare and analyze the sound to match the recordings in his grandfather’s collection and to get the five closest matches.

Josephson first began experimenting on friends and found that their heart sounds yielded “normal” results.

By 2013, one of his first guinea pigs for the prototype was his mother, Dr. Tina Josephson, the daughter of Daniel Mason and an internist in Cherry Hill, N.J.

“Mom kept coming up with the same abnormal heart sound,” he said. “We did it multiple times and in multiple locations and got the same result.”

Even though she had “complete faith” in her son, Tina Josephson ignored the results: a heart murmur, suggesting a potentially dangerous condition. “I was probably in denial,” she said, laughing. “I’m a doctor. I never get sick.”

But when the family went out to Steamboat Springs in Colorado to ski this year, she noticed a difference in her breathing.

Source: ABC News

Read More

Bugs

Hi friend, Shake hands. How's it going? Just wanted to say Hello!! >Not much going on here. So how are you? <> Actually, I don't have anything to say. But I had to do it. I just wanted to BUG you for a minute. After all, isn't that what friends are for?! Thanks for being a friend! Now go BUG the rest of YOUR friends! Good bye!

Read More

Don Piper: At Heaven's Gate

Don Piper was relieved when the pastor's conference he had been attending finished a little early that Wednesday in January 1989. Being associate pastor and having just been appointed minister of education at a Houston area church, Don was a busy man. The early start home would provide him much needed time to mentally organize his hectic schedule.

"I was thinking about that night and also that I was going to be preaching that next Sunday morning in three services," Don remembers.

Little did Don know he would be late for the service that night--not just by minutes or hours, but by months--and before he got home, he would take a detour he would never forget.

Within minutes of leaving the retreat center, Don drove onto a bridge spanning a lake. It was a fairly long bridge and there was water on both sides of the elevated highway.

Recalling the scene, Don says, "I approached the end of the bridge, and before I reached the end, a tractor-trailer truck owned by the Texas Dept. of Corrections crossed the center stripe and hit my car head on."

Not only did the truck hit Don's car, it ran over the passenger side of the small Ford Escort, completely crushing the vehicle and killing Don Piper. Instantly, Don began an amazing journey.

"When I was killed, I was instantly transported to heaven's gate," he says. "It was an instantaneous thing."

Don found himself standing in front of a divine portal, surrounded by familiar faces.

"I did not see a single person that I did not know," he says. "They were relatives, they were friends that died in high school, they were teachers--they were people I had seen and known all my life who had gone to glory. They were smiling; they were embracing me; they were welcoming me' they were in the process of taking me through the gate of heaven."

Looking over the heads of his friends, Don saw a looming pearl gate.

"The gate of heaven was a magnificent edifice, the one that I saw. It looked no less like a giant gate that had been sculpted from mother-of-pearl," Don explains.

Peering through the gate, Don saw an incredible light.

"Behind that portal was such a light that I don't conceive of how you could see it in an earthly body. It could only be envisioned in a heavenly body because it was too bright."

And, says Don, there was music, that of a literal, angelic choir.

"In all honesty, as awesome as the sight was, the sound was more amazing," he says. "I heard literally thousands of praise songs. They were all praise songs. I really couldn't see anything. I was so preoccupied with the people around me, I couldn't see anything. But you could sense this hum of wings hovering all about you, like you were being ministered to by angels, and they were observing this whole episode."

While Don stood at the gates of heaven, pastor Dick Onerecker of Kline, Texas, stood on a Texas highway by Don's lifeless body. He had also attended the pastor's conference. He came upon the accident moments after it happened. The EMS personnel had told him that Don was dead.

"It was as though I was compelled to stop and to pray for him. The Lord had just impressed on me very emphatically, very urgently that I was to pray for him," says Dick. "I walked over by the door. There was great physical damage on the outside. I laid my hands on him and began to pray for him."

As soon as Don's journey began, it ended. Don found himself back in his crushed vehicle, staring up at a tarp that had been thrown over him by medical attendants.

Says Don, "The first conscious memory was 'What a Friend we have in Jesus.' I was singing. I was thinking to myself, Why am I singing this song? I'm in the dark, and I knew it was about noon time when the accident happened. I'm in the dark, I'm singing, and I'm holding a hand. I'm thinking to myself, What on earth is happening?"

Dick had begun singing hymns to Don.

"The Lord impressed on me not only to pray for him but that there would be no internal injuries and that there would be no head injuries. Then, I began to sing, and I to heard him singing with me," says Dick.

Don was transported to Herman Hospital in Houston. Miraculously, he suffered no head or internal injuries. However, virtually every bone in Don's body was either broken or shattered.

His left arm and left leg were completely severed, and had to be rebuilt and replaced. Looking at his battered and pain-seared body, this man who had touched heaven's gates wanted to go back.

"My mindset was having now been able to see what the matter with me was, and to know how beautiful heaven was, to want to be there again. As much as I loved these people that I was with, I was so confident of their salvation experiences that I knew they would join me sometime in the future," Don says.

But the prayers and love of family and friends pulled Don through four months of intensive therapy, numerous operations, and infections that on two occasions almost claimed his life.

"I like to say that I came back by popular demand," he says. "People prayed me back from the gates of heaven. People prayed me back from death's door. I'm here because people asked God for me to be here."

SOURCE: cbn.com

Read More

Texas teen buys home to help families in crises

Most 16-year-olds aren't investing in their first property, especially if it's not for them. But a Texas teen is doing just that - renovating a house she bought for people to live in during family crises.

Kelsy Mauer, from Kirbyville, Tx., has big plans for the $2,000 house.

"Sometimes people have had enough, they get frustrated, they get stressed out, they have things going on at work that they might, you know, worry about," Mauer said. "So little things just keep on stacking up and stacking up and in a few cases, it just gets into where it can be a dangerous situation for somebody."

It's this belief that is driving Mauer, with the help of family and friends, to turn the property into a free temporary shelter for families going through problems.

Mauer, who created the nonprofit organization 'A Friend's Place,' about two years ago, says the house still needs major renovations, including tearing down a wall and putting on a roof, but hopes to have it finished within six months.

"The community needs something like this and I hear a lot of people tell me that you know, it's going to be hard. But I think I can do it. It's going to be worth it because it will help a whole lot of people," said Mauer.

And Mauer, who would like to become a family marriage counselor,  is not stopping at one home; she hopes to expand in the future and add more houses for her community.

Source: CBS News 

Read More

Religious Book Saves Bus Driver’s Life From Gunshots

A bus driver in Dayton, Ohio, survived a shooting today, thanks to a religious book in his shirt pocket that stopped two bullets, authorities said.

“This is almost unheard of for us,” Greater Dayton Regional Transit Authority Executive Director Mark Donaghy said in a statement. “The last time we had a gun incident involving a bus was almost a decade ago.”

The bus driver, Rick Waggoner, 49, is recovering and is doing well, Donaghy said.

Police said Waggoner, who was shot at 5:07 a.m. today, would not have survived if the book, a devotional book titled “The Message,” wasn't in his pocket, according to local ABC affiliate WKEF.

“I had a book in my pocket — at first I thought it had went through, but it just feels like I’ve been hit by a sledgehammer in the chest, and I've been cut on the arm,” Wagoner told the 911 dispatcher, WKEF reported.

Police said the victim was shot twice in the chest, once in the hip, and also stabbed in the arm.

Waggoner started his morning route along Lakeview Avenue and Lakeside Drive but then stopped at the side of the road because the bus broke down, WKEF reported.

Three male suspects, possibly juveniles, approached him, police said.

Waggoner told police that he heard a suspect say that “if you want to be all the way in the club, you have to kill the polar bear.”

Waggoner scuffled with the suspects and took the gun and knife away from them, police said. Waggoner shot at them as they fled but he wasn't sure if he hit any of them, WKEF reported.

“We’re still trying to find out what exactly happened,” Sgt. Richard Blommel of the Dayton Police Department said. “We’re going to go back to the scene.”

Waggoner has been working at RTA for 10 years, officials said. During that time, he had a perfect attendance and no accidents, Donaghy said in a statement.

“He is one of our best people,” Donaghy said. “He runs a 90 percent on-time performance record, which is incredible. That just shows you the kind of person Rick is.”

Donaghy the RTA is working to retrieve surveillance video from the bus.

SOURCE: ABC News

Read More

Lost 7-year-old Boy Cuddled With Dog to Stay Warm

A little Tennessee boy who became trapped and hidden from view while walking his dog survived cold temperatures for 14 hours by cuddling with his dog.

Dominic Jeffries, 7, was walking his dog Coco in his front yard when she pulled him from the home and eventually they both slipped behind a cement retainer wall that was covered in brush. Unable to climb out Dominic had wait in the cold until help could arrive.

Dominic remained stuck behind the retainer wall during a cold night in Cordova, Tenn., wearing a camouflage jacket and large fur hat.

His legal guardian Robbyne Manning said that they searched the area near where Dominic was stuck many times. but never saw him behind the leaves. While Dominic heard his name and saw police lights he didn’t respond.

“He said he heard us and saw the blue lights and thought he was in trouble,” Manning told ABCNews.com. “When he used to be with his parents, blue lights mean you’re in trouble.”

Dominic was only a few blocks from home, but he was missing for approximately 14 hours during a cold night when the temperature dipped below freezing.

Manning said to keep warm, Dominic started to hug Coco, a black Shih Tzu. However as the night wore on, the dog started to get cold and Dominic took off his jacket to warm up the dog. Eventually worried that the dog would get too cold, Dominic took off her leash so that she would hopefully go home and get help.

For another three hours Dominic stayed in the cold by himself. When his shoes and socks became wet, he took them off and put his gloves on his feet.

Eventually as daylight broke, a police officer spotted Dominic.

“He was just happy,” Manning said of Dominic when he was found “The police talked to him and said not all the time [do blue lights] mean you’re in trouble.

After his ordeal Dominic got his own badge from the police and told Manning he wants to be a police officer to help “people who get lost.”

Source:  ABC News

Read More

Tough Calif. teacher has a tender heart

At St. Francis High School in La Canada, Calif., there's something to be said about math teacher Jim O'Connor. The question is, what is that something?

For whatever reason, none of his students would tell me what they really think of him.

"Oh, what's the word," one student says.

Jim O'Connor's students thought they knew him -- until last November, when senior Pat McGoldrick learned they didn’t know the half of him.

 CBS NEWS

 None of the boys came in and said, "Oh, we have hated him at times." I wonder why.

"He's going to be seeing this, right?" the student asks.

Oh yeah, that's why.

Truth is, O'Connor can be a bit of a drudge. But the 70-year-old Vietnam vet says he's not here to entertain his students.

"It drives me crazy when people say school should be fun," he says. "I mean, it's nice if it could be, but you can't make school fun." 

 And for years, the kids thought that's all there was to him -- until last November, when senior Pat McGoldrick learned they didn’t know the half of him.

Pat was in charge of a student blood drive and had just come to Children's Hospital Los Angeles for a meeting. And he says it was weird: whenever he told someone he went to St. Francis High School, they all said, "Oh, you must know Jim O'Connor. Isn’t he wonderful?"

"It was disbelief, really," Pat says. "It was almost, like, kind of finding this alter ego that he has."

Inside the blood donor center, Pat found a plaque listing all the top blood donors at the hospital, including the record holder, Jim O'Connor. Then he learned something even more unbelievable: that whenever O'Connor isn’t torturing kids with calculus, he's on a whole other tangent -- cuddling sick babies.

Three days a week for the past 20 years, Jim has volunteered at the hospital, stepping in when parents can't, to hold, feed and comfort their children.

Nurse Erin Schmidt says he's invaluable. 

Three days a week for the past 20 years, Jim has volunteered at the Children's Hospital Los Angeles.

 CBS NEWS

  "They tend to calm for him," she says. "They tend to relax with him. They fall asleep with him."

"I just like them and relate to them somehow," O'Connor says.

O'Connor has never been married; he has no kids of his own. But he has fallen hard for these babies.

"I don’t want to see them alone," he says. "You can't do that."

He's not a tough guy at all.

"I know, but don't tell my students," he says.

Sometimes you think you know someone, but you don't have the slightest. Sometimes you think you're learning calculus, but the real lesson is life.

"I've always respected him, but now it's to an even different degree -- really to the point where I try to emulate him," Pat says. "He's the epitome of a man of service."

Source: CBS News

Read More