Interesting Stuff

I hope to learn something new every day. This article actually taught me two things.

It gave me an awareness of the disease - pulmonary hypertension. This was a disease I had never heard of before.

Pulmonary hypertension is a rare blood vessel disorder of the lung in which the pressure in the pulmonary artery (the blood vessel that leads from the heart to the lungs) rises above normal levels and may become life threatening.

Symptoms of pulmonary hypertension include shortness of breath with minimal exertion, fatigue, chest pain, dizzy spells and fainting. When pulmonary hypertension occurs in the absence of a known cause, it is referred to as primary pulmonary hypertension (PPH). This term should not be construed to mean that because it has a single name it is a single disease. There are likely many unknown causes of PPH. PPH is extremely rare, occurring in about two persons per million population per year.

You can learn more about the disease at the Pulmonary Hypertension Association (PHA) website.

The second thing I learned from the article is that Condoleezza Rice's first name has its roots in an Italian music term:

Rice, whose first name is a variation on the Italian musical term "con dolcezza," which is a direction to play with sweetness, learned to read music at the age of 3.

Hat tip to Betsy's Page