Coping with crushed minds
/The Boston Herald
May 3, 1996
A screening that would save lives
/She is angry, but who can blame her? Her sister - "my beloved sister" - died of lung cancer, writes a reader named Barbara.
Her sister was diagnosed in April 2004 with lung cancer. She thought she had a cold. She died two years later.
Whatever the cause - radon? cigarettes? asbestos? pesticides? pollution? - nobody knows.
Read MoreFernald fight all about money
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For the state it's about money. The Fernald School sits on hundreds of acres of prime property just off Route 128 in Waltham. It's a gold mine waiting to be tapped.
For the families of Fernald residents, it's about a place they've called home for 30, 40, 50 years. It's their son's home, their sister's, their daughter's.
Read MoreALS mustn't paralyze us with fear
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I didn't know him, had never even heard of him until I read about his death in Monday's paper. ``Francis A. Carlson, at 30, of Franklin, ALS activist.''
ALS is amyotrophic lateral sclerosis - Lou Gehrig's disease. Of all the diseases you don't want to get, this ought to top the list. It paralyzes the body but leaves the mind intact. People think it's rare, that it strikes only older people. But in the United States alone, 30,000 people have it, 15 people a day die from it and 15 more are, every day, diagnosed with it.
Read MoreCouple finds reason to hope
/Boston Herald
Time to repay a giving coach
/The Boston Herald
Caring friends help prevent a free fall
/
The pain started last December, but he didn't recognize it as pain. He had a funny feeling in his jaw as he danced and he was breathless. So he stopped dancing and muttered to himself that he was 46 and he was getting old.
It happened two months later, again on a dance floor. This time he registered the discomfort, made the association with dancing and modified his behavior. He gave up dancing and the pain went away.
Read MoreAfter the mammogram comes the fear
/Two years ago, it looked like a rich grandparent's parlor. The carpet was thick, the upholstered couches and chairs, elegant. Everything matched: furniture, drapes, end tables, lamps. The room evoked a sense of calm and comfort.
And yet it was all pretense, mental Valium, because the Sagoff Center at Faulkner Hospital was never a parlor. It is, and always was, a waiting area for women who've come for mammograms. A door opens and on the other side of a designer wall women sit in thin, cotton hospital robes on hard, armless chairs, waiting to be X-rayed and told they can go back into the land of the living - at least for a while.
Read MoreThanks for all the good folks
/I love this story: A Colombian scientist who has developed the first vaccine against malaria announced last week he is refusing offers of millions of dollars from American drug companies and giving his vaccine to the world.
Dr. Manuel Elkin Patarroyo has turned over all legal rights for the vaccine to the World Health Organization. His is a selfless act in a selfish world.
Read MoreAIDS cards: just another child's plaything?
/Cat made it sound quite aboveboard. Purely educational. AIDS Awareness Trading Cards, featuring people with AIDS, hotline numbers, plus a condom instead of bubble gum in each package, she explained long distance from Eclipse Comics in Forestville, Calif., were designed to educate people and to help stop AIDS.
Cat edited these cards, and she's proud of them. There are 110 in all and they sell for just 99 cents for a pack of 12. They don't just feature people who've died of AIDS. There are AIDS Facts cards, and AIDS Myths cards, and cards showing the Demographics of AIDS, the effect of AIDS on the world, descriptions of other sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis and herpes, as well as the AIDS hotline numbers for 25 major U.S. cities.
They are not, as you can see, kid's play.
Read MoreEven a miserable cold couldn't dim the joy of Thanksgiving
/It begins with a tickle in the back of the throat. Nothing to worry about. Just a tickle. Probably a dog or cat hair lodged in the esophagus. There are dog and cats hairs all over this house. I drink orange juice and hot tea to dislodge it. I say it is nothing, that it will go away.
"No it won't. You're getting a cold," the chorus around me sings. "There's a terrible cold going around and you're getting it."
Read More`CARETAKERS' ALWAYS ON CALL
/A social worker would call her the "primary caretaker." You probably know someone like her.
She's the one daughter in a family of five, six, ten who, when her mother gets sick, packs up her pre-school kids - even if they have colds, even if they're in the middle of a birthday party - to drive her mother to a doctor, pick up a prescription, stop at a market, then go back to her mother's house and whip up something for dinner.
Or she's the one with the full-time job who visits her father every day on her way home.
Read MoreFriends celebrate a life well lived
/They came to talk about their friend. Fifteen women drove from Dorchester to Braintree last Wednesday evening after a day of tending to their children, their homes and their jobs to sit in another friend's home and try to explain to a stranger how special Michelle Kennedy was.
"No matter what was going on in her life, she'd always say, "But what about you? How are you doing?"
"She was always there for me."
"She was my best friend."
Read MoreFatal cancer couldn't kill his passion for saving other lives
/I didn't know he was sick. Not that I should have. Why would he have told me? He had no reason and no opportunity.
We didn't know each other. We were voices on the phone. I talked to him many times over the years, but I met him only once.
Read MoreLewis: beyond pity or fear
/Pity gets in the way. You know people don't want pity, so you stay away.
Discomfort is a problem, too. Yours. Theirs. Should you go up and say hello? Would a hello be mistaken for pity? What would you say after hello? What would you talk about?
Someone is in a wheelchair and you'd like to ask, "How come you're in a wheelchair? What happened?" Only those sound like the wrong words and because you don't know the right ones, you say nothing.
Read MoreWeld policy hurts the elderly
/The facts exclude the faces - old, lined, frightened, weary, faces; gums smooth where teeth used to be; thin hair; knotted hands; parched skin; frail, fragile bodies.
The facts ignore the feelings - feelings of people at the end of their lives, dependent upon others, too poor and too ill to take care of themselves.
The facts are terse and cold.
Read MoreNew Medico: One tale of greed and of sorrow
/Complaints about New Medico Health Care System of Lynn, the nation's largest chain of head-injury rehabilitation facilities, have led to investigations by the United State's Attorney's office in Boston, the New York State Health Department and a congressional sub-committee. Adelaide Powers is a patient at Lenox Hill, one of New Medico's 36 facilities.
Her voice is a rasp on the phone. "Can you come?" she whispers. "I have things to tell you."
Read More