Isabella Rosario Blum was wrapping up medical school and considering residency programs to become a family practice physician when she got some frank advice: If she wanted to be trained to provide abortions, she shouldn’t stay in Arizona. Blum turned to programs mostly in states where abortion access — and, by extension, abortion training — is likely to remain protected, like California, Colorado, and New Mexico. Arizona has enacted a law banning most abortions after 15 weeks. “I would really like to have all the training possible,” she said, “so of course that would have still been a limitati...
California Healthline
Wade Trammell recalls the time he and his fellow firefighters responded to a highway crash in which a beer truck rammed into a pole, propelling the truck’s engine through the cab and into the driver’s abdomen. “The guy was up there screaming and squirming. Then the cab caught on fire,” Trammell says. “I couldn’t move him. He burned to death right there in my arms.” Memories of that gruesome death and other traumatic incidents he had witnessed as a firefighter in Mountain View, California, didn’t seem to bother Trammell for the first seven years after he retired in 2015. But then he started cry...
California Healthline
Bill Thompson’s wife had never seen him smile with confidence. For the first 20 years of their relationship, an infection in his mouth robbed him of teeth, one by one. “I didn’t have any teeth to smile with,” the 53-year-old of Independence, Missouri, said. Thompson said he dealt with throbbing toothaches and painful swelling in his face from abscesses for years working as a cook at Burger King. He desperately needed to see a dentist but said he couldn’t afford to take time off without pay. Missouri is one of many states that do not require employers to provide paid sick leave. So, Thompson wo...
California Healthline
HOUSTON — Patients admitted to Houston Methodist Hospital get a monitoring device about the size of a half-dollar affixed to their chest — and an unwitting role in the expanding use of artificial intelligence in health care. The slender, battery-powered gadget, called a BioButton, records vital signs including heart and breathing rates, then wirelessly sends the readings to nurses sitting in a 24-hour control room elsewhere in the hospital or in their homes. The device’s software uses AI to analyze the voluminous data and detect signs a patient’s condition is deteriorating. Hospital officials ...
California Healthline
James Lemons, 39, wants the bullet removed from his thigh so he can go back to work. Sarai Holguin, a 71-year-old woman originally from Mexico, has accepted the bullet lodged near her knee as her “compa” — a close friend. The Injured They Were Injured at the Super Bowl Parade. A Month Later, They Feel Forgotten. A Kansas family remembers Valentine’s Day as the beginning of panic attacks, life-altering trauma, and waking to nightmares of gunfire. Read More Mireya Nelson, 15, was hit by a bullet that went through her jaw and broke her shoulder, where fragments remain. She’ll live with them for n...
California Healthline
President Joe Biden counts among his accomplishments the record-high number of people, more than 21 million, who enrolled in Obamacare plans this year. Behind the scenes, however, federal regulators are contending with a problem that affects people’s coverage: rogue brokers who have signed people up for Affordable Care Act plans, or switched them into new ones, without their permission. Fighting the problem presents tension for the administration: how to thwart the bad actors without affecting ACA sign-ups. Complaints about these unauthorized changes — which can cause affected policyholders to...
California Healthline
When doctors began using the drug sotorasib in 2021 with high expectations for its innovative approach to attacking lung cancer, retired medical technician Don Crosslin was an early beneficiary. Crosslin started the drug that July. His tumors shrank, then stabilized. But while the drug has helped keep him alive, its side effects have gradually narrowed the confines of his life, said Crosslin, 76, who lives in Ocala, Florida: “My appetite has been minimal. I’m very weak. I walk my dogs and get around a bit, but I haven’t been able to golf since last July.” He wonders whether he’d do better on a...
California Healthline
When dermatologist Adewole “Ade” Adamson sees people spritzing sunscreen as if it’s cologne at the pool where he lives in Austin, Texas, he wants to intervene. “My wife says I shouldn’t,” he said, “even though most people rarely use enough sunscreen.” At issue is not just whether people are using enough sunscreen, but what ingredients are in it. The Food and Drug Administration’s ability to approve the chemical filters in sunscreens that are sold in countries such as Japan, South Korea, and France is hamstrung by a 1938 U.S. law that requires sunscreens to be tested on animals and classified a...
California Healthline
Every day, the scene plays out in hospitals across America: Older men and women lie on gurneys in emergency room corridors moaning or suffering silently as harried medical staff attend to crises. Even when physicians determine these patients need to be admitted to the hospital, they often wait for hours — sometimes more than a day — in the ER in pain and discomfort, not getting enough food or water, not moving around, not being helped to the bathroom, and not getting the kind of care doctors deem necessary. “You walk through ER hallways, and they’re lined from end to end with patients on stret...
California Healthline
Miguel Divo, a lung specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, sits in an exam room across from Joel Rubinstein, who has asthma. Rubinstein, a retired psychiatrist, is about to get a checkup and hear a surprising pitch — for the planet, as well as his health. Divo explains that boot-shaped inhalers, which represent nearly 90% of the U.S. market for asthma medication, save lives but also contribute to climate change. Each puff from an inhaler releases a hydrofluorocarbon gas that is 1,430 to 3,000 times as powerful as the most commonly known greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide. “That abso...
California Healthline
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