Free eZ DeTeCT ™ colon cancer kit

SUDDEN RAPID HEART RATE. DIZZINESS. POUNDING PULSE.

If it’s not love, it may be atrial fibrillation.

50 or over? More than 90 percent of people diagnosed with colorectal cancer are in your peer group. To help find out if you have this disease, Doctors Hospital at White Rock Lake is offering free EZ DETECT™ colon cancer kits* in March, which is Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month. The kit is simple, sanitary, and can be done in the privacy of home.

Atrial fibrillation, or Afib, is a common heart disorder that occurs when electrical signals in the heart become irregular, making the heart’s upper chamber beat out of rhythm. It can cause blood to pool and clot inside the heart and increase the risk for heart attack and stroke.

The Electrophysiology Lab at Doctors Hospital at White Rock Lake is dedicated to treating Afib. We perform minimally invasive ablation procedures to help stop the abnormal electrical signals that cause an irregular heartbeat.

Call 866-764-3627 today for your free EZ DETECT™ colon cancer kit*.

No lab processing or stool handling is necessary, and there are no dietary restrictions before or during the testing period.

For more information about Afib, visit DoctorsHospitalDallas.com/Afib or call 800-887-2525 for a free physician referral.

Q&A: Philip Kingston

On June 24 Philip Kingston, an attorney specializing in commercial litigation, was sworn into office as our new District 14 councilman, replacing longtime city council lightning rod Angela Hunt, who served her maximum of four consecutive terms in the East Dallas district. Kingston represents a sizable section of East Dallas, from Northwest Highway past La Vista. Kingston says he believes in the power of city politics, although not in the way you might think. “I think everyone has visions of elected leaders as being powerful people who say what should happen and that’s how it goes, but that is not what a city council person does or should try to do,” he says. Instead, Kingston is a big believer in hearing everybody out and finding consensus, which is something he’s learned from years of listening to city leaders before him, including his predecessor, Hunt.

Why was it important to you to run for city council?

I knew I could do this job well. I don’t mean to sound arrogant about it, but I’ve spent an awful lot of time prepping for this, in doing neighborhood volunteer work and in engaging with the city staff and city political bodies. I recognized that I’d honed a set of skills that allowed me to really take grassroots concerns and convert them into outcomes — that’s what people want.

And by “grassroots concerns,” you mean … “Grassroots concerns” is such a shortcut term. It means details of life, and that’s a big part of what the campaign was, that we wanted to improve basic quality of life for our citizens. It’s a really simple concept, but there are a million details that go into that. It’s not real easy, and the first thing you have to do is reach a political consensus on what that means and which of those concerns have priority. Where are we going to spend our money, where are we going to spend our time and our resources? Those are all political questions that take a lot of time to figure out, to get everyone’s input, and everyone needs to be heard. And if you don’t take the time to get it right, then you won’t be giving people what they want.

If you could describe your leadership style in one word, what would it be?

I’m going to hyphenate and claim it’s one word: consensus-seeking. Everybody needs a seat at the table. Everybody needs to be heard. It doesn’t mean that everybody gets everything they want all the time. Obviously that can’t happen, but that’s not the point of the process. You win some, you lose some, you compromise. That process is really healthy, I think.

What’s your vision for East Dallas?

Dallas at its best attracts the most capable, creative, effective people from around the country to come and live in these neighborhoods. When you draw in people like that and you give them great places to live, I think people who want to serve those people — businesses and investors follow along, and you get this terrific cycle of growth. In East Dallas, in terms of detail, I think that means we’re going to see continued improvement of our established neighborhoods. They need stability and protection. They need excellent public safety. That’s really a given in any neighborhood, but people are very concerned about that in East Dallas. They need their infrastructure improved. The infrastructure is really poor in East Dallas, and we’re going to address some of that. This last bond package has a lot of streets money in it, and a lot of drainage money in it.

Could you briefly sum up why you were endorsed by Angela Hunt?

The short answer is, we have a similar philosophy for city government. All of that blather that I just gave you about my vision for East Dallas, I didn’t come up with that on my own. Angela might’ve put it in different words — those are my words — but those are things that I learned from her and a hundred neighborhood leaders here over the last 14 years. She has a real strong commitment to that smallscale, from-the-bottom-up view of how a city ought to serve its citizens, and that includes an energetic pursuit of transparency and accountability at City Hall, and that’s where she’s developed some of her reputation as a fighter.

Do you plan to follow in her footsteps, or do you hope to deviate from her style and establish your own?

Yeah, I’ve been asked that a lot. The main