Larry McMahon, who turns 80 this month, is weighing whether to undergo a major surgery. Over the past five years, his back pain has intensified. Physical therapy, muscle relaxants, and injections aren’t offering relief. “It’s a pain that leaves me hardly able to do anything,” he said. Should McMahon, a retired Virginia state trooper who […]
Nearly 1 in 7 older adults die within a year of undergoing major surgery, according to an important new study that sheds much-needed light on the risks seniors face when having invasive procedures. Especially vulnerable are older patients with probable dementia (33% die within a year) and frailty (28%), as well as those having emergency […]
I woke up in a strange bedroom with 24 electrodes glued all over my body and a plastic mask attached to a hose covering my face. The lab technician who watched me all night via video feed told me that I had “wicked sleep apnea” and that it was “central sleep apnea” — a type […]
On a Friday evening at a call center in southeastern Pennsylvania, Michael Colluccio stirred his hot tea, put on his headset, and started up his computer. The screen showed calls coming in to the suicide prevention lifeline from around the state. Colluccio, 38, said he knows what it’s like to be on the other end […]
Robin Bolduc isn’t the type of person who takes “no” for an answer — particularly when it comes to fixing her husband’s wheelchair. Her husband, Bruce Goguen, 69, is paralyzed from multiple sclerosis. And without his chair, he would be stuck in bed, at risk of developing pneumonia or pressure sores that could lead to […]
On a snowy January morning, Luis Portillo stood in line on the side of a busy road in Silver Spring, Maryland — a suburb just north of Washington, D.C. — with about 200 other people, waiting for his turn to get tested for covid-19 at Mary’s Center, a federally qualified health center. Portillo, a 65-year-old […]
Editor’s note: The article below, first published by Kaiser Health News, reports on the effect of delays in medical care caused by the pandemic during the past year. That effect garnered immediate concern from many quarters last spring. I reported on it here in late May 2020, and, in hindsight, am taken aback to see how I failed […]