When the Plant City Woman’s Club hosted a health fair Saturday, Oct. 11, the organizer of the event did not know it would save her husband’s life.
Lynn Connor is the chair of the club’s Home Life Community Services program. The program focuses on a different aspect of home life each month, and October’s emphases were breast cancer and domestic-violence awareness. Connor and other club members decided to organize the health fair to correspond with breast cancer awareness but also general wellness.
Vendors sold health and wellness-promoting projects, and nurses aboard the South Florida Baptist Hospital Wellness Wagon offered free checks at the fair.
Connor’s husband, Evans Crosby, had been at the fair early in the morning to help Lynn set up and run last-minute errands in preparation of the event. Crosby had been on medication for high blood pressure, but he took it irregularly.
“He would get a prescription for 30 days, but it would last him six months,” Connor said. “He was taking his blood-pressure medications like he would take headache medicine.”
Connor suggested Crosby get his blood pressure checked while he was at the health fair. The nurse seemed nervous after reading his result, and she told him it was 192/108.
“I said, ‘Is it bad?’ She said, ‘Yes, it’s really bad,’” Crosby said.
Crosby went to Urgent Care, where a physician wrote him another prescription for his blood pressure.
“But, as I sat there, it got higher,” Crosby said.
He was showing signs of someone who had had a stroke or was about to have one.
Crosby checked into the emergency room at South Florida Baptist Hospital. A doctor examined Crosby and told him he had deposits of copper on the blood vessels in his eyes. And, his kidneys were functioning at only 50% capacity.
That afternoon, while Connor was finishing up at the health fair, she got a call from her husband. The hospital had admitted him as an overnight patient. She gathered his things from home and rushed over.
Crosby underwent tests and treatments until he was released Tuesday, Oct. 14. He was sent home with eight new prescriptions. Getting checked at the health fair might have been a life-saving decision.
And Crosby wasn’t the only one to benefit from the fair. Connor said the nurses on the Wellness Wagon had been so busy the day of the fair, they didn’t have time for breaks.
“They considered it a very successful event, from their perspective,” she said.
Although Connor was disappointed that more visitors had not browsed the tables of vendors, she was glad that meant the vendors had time to get checked, as well.
Next month’s Home Life theme is Alzheimer’s disease awareness. In 2015, health-related foci will include mental health (January), heart health (February) and high blood pressure (May). Once each month, members of the Woman’s Club wear ribbons of a color that corresponds with the current issue and walk the trail at Brewer Park.
WARNING SIGNS
High blood pressure is usually a symptomless condition. However, in cases of hypertensive crisis, such as Crosby’s on the day of the health fair, symptoms might include:
• Severe headaches
• Severe anxiety
• Shortness of breath
• Nosebleeds
Contact Catherine Sinclair at csinclair@plantcityobserver.com.