Health & Wellness

Buried Alive? There's an App for That

batch — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 04:05:05 -0600

Aid worker Dan Woolley was buried under rubble of the Hotel Montana as a result of the earthquake in Haiti, bleeding from his head and leg.

Lying there, he remembered he had previously downloaded an application on his iPhone called Pocket First Aid & CPR, made by the American Heart Association.

Woolley read how to use his shorts as a bandage for his leg and tie his belt around the wound, according to CNN. He used a sock to stop the bleeding from his head.

Empty Pew?

test_1 — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 18:11:40 -0600

My five-year-old daughter, Teresa, came into my bedroom Sunday morning. “Mommy, are you going to church with me and Daddy?”

I groaned. I’d woken up with every muscle and joint aching—another flare-up of my rheumatoid arthritis. I didn’t want to get out of bed, let alone go to church. “Oh, sweetie, I don’t feel well.”

Hope for the Hurting

admin — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 13:52:29 -0600

Doctors define chronic pain as pain that persists unabated for more than three months and cannot be alleviated completely with medication. For the 50 million chronic pain sufferers in the United States, coping with this kind of daily discomfort can seem hopeless—but it doesn't have to be. Norman J.

Day by Day

admin — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 14:07:02 -0600

Two o'clock in the morning—I woke up with nausea and a searing headache, as if a hammer were banging against my eye sockets and temples. My stomach convulsed. As I watched the luminous numbers on my bedside clock flip over, seemingly in slow motion, I asked myself how I could possibly bear the agony that was ahead. Minutes, hours, days of excruciating pain, the kind that reaches you even when you're asleep.

Our Best Medicine

admin — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 13:09:44 -0500

I suffer from post-polio syndrome and have to cope with pain every day. Sometimes the ache in my legs and joints is so bad I can barely get out of bed. But I have to. I have a job with the Veterans Administration as a social worker, and I have a caseload of 150 nursing-home patients. I make sure they're well taken care of and their bills are paid. They're counting on me. Every month I put a thousand miles on my car visiting all of them. To keep going I use something I discovered long ago: humor. It's my own best medicine.

Rheumy Toad

admin — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 11:57:25 -0500

I have lived with Rheumy Toad for more than two years. Doctors use another term for him—rheumatoid arthritis. But I like the name I've given him better. And I've decided I'm not going to let this bug-eyed, sad-faced, warty old amphibian get me down.

When I was first diagnosed, I failed to see anything funny. My body stiffened and twisted. My shoulders hurt, my hips and knees balked at moving. In my distress, both physical and emotional, it occurred to me to give my illness a name. That's how Rheumy Toad was born.

The Right Path

admin — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 16:48:22 -0500

It was a perfect day for flying. My helicopter was pounding the air above Hafner's blueberry farm in upstate New York, and I was just finishing my first crop-dusting spray of the summer season. It felt good to be in the air, doing the work I loved. But then, helicopter crop dusting never really felt like work to me. Especially on days like this when the sky was an endless stretch of blue, like the berry fields below, and it seemed as if I could see clear across the world.

Closer to Him

admin — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 11:38:34 -0600

By age 22, I'd experienced various kinds of pain—everything from family bereavement to root canal surgery without anesthetics. But there was one kind of suffering I'd never imagined...the pain of feeling betrayed by God.

Coming Back

admin — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 14:53:53 -0600

The dirty clothes did it. I slumped on my bed, unable to escape them. They had been mounting in the comer of my bedroom for weeks, a symbol of the gloom overshadowing me. I'd always been a positive, independent type of person, but for four long months since the accident, I had been falling deeper and deeper into depression. Lying on my bed in my darkened room, I knew something had to be done about that mountain of clothes. But what could I do, encased as I was in casts on my lower legs and right arm?

Grant of Time

admin — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 13:05:58 -0600

On an October afternoon nearly 34 years ago, I was quilting with other ladies in the basement of our small church. My husband, Charles, and two of our sons were home working on the farm. Suddenly the pastor called down the steps, "Ruth, Charlie's had an accident. You're needed at home immediately!"