More research needed on heart defects
To the editor:
As parents, few things are scarier than finding out something is wrong with your baby, but that’s the news we received six years ago before our daughter, Evalyn, was born. It was then that we found out Evalyn had a congenital heart defect.
Many people believe heart disease only affects the elderly. Yet by age 2, Evalyn had undergone two open heart surgeries, three cardiac catheterizations, a stent placement and countless other tests and procedures. While the journey is sometimes difficult, Evalyn is doing well thanks to breakthrough research funded by organizations, such as the American Heart Association and American Stroke Association.
But the need for more research is unquestionable. In the U.S., nearly 40,000 children are born with a heart defect each year. Many congenital heart defects are diagnosed in infancy and some, like Evalyn’s, can be detected prenatally. After diagnosis, there are medical treatments available to help the heart perform its best.
This year, Evalyn and our family will share our journey at the Central New Jersey Heart Walk. For the past four years, we have walked with the American Heart Association and American Stroke Association to raise funds and awareness for the nation’s No. 1 and No. 5 killers, heart disease and stroke. It is our hope that one day no family will need to learn their child has a heart condition.
Join us on Friday, Sept. 30, at the 2016 Central New Jersey Heart Walk at Arm & Hammer Park, home of the Trenton Thunder. For more information, visit www.CentralNJHeartWalk.org.
Fred and Mia Carella
Volunteers
American Heart Association
and American Stroke Association
Yardley, Pennsylvania
Offer anger regulation training in our schools
To the editor:
Tragic and horrific again and again with officers ambushed and gunned down in Baton Rouge as they were recently in Dallas. Sadly, we see people in movie theatres, schools and malls gunned down as well.
More and more of these types of mass killings are becoming a way of life in America. Experts look to prevention and explanation and emphasize that we cannot let this happen again, but no one, no one, has offered a solution to stop these killings.
That is because no one, for the most part, has identified what the root cause is of all these killings. As thought by many, it is not mental illness, nor just belonging to a terrorist organization or the availability of guns (when guns are outlawed as in Japan, 19 were killed by a man wielding a knife), the underlying cause of all these acts of violence, including becoming a terrorist, is the emotion of anger.
The most effective way to prevent these killings in the long run is anger regulation training in all our schools starting in kindergarten up through the 12th grade, so by the time that the student graduates he or she has 12 years of anger regulation training.
The goal in the long run is for our country to become more compassionate. Anger is the only emotion that can affect every organ and muscle at the same time. It blocks out rational thinking and produces an urge to attack.
Ronald J. Coughlin, Ed.D.
Hamilton
