Category: Health

Keely Larson Katie Beall was diagnosed with breast cancer on March 1, 2022. Two days later, doctors told her the chemotherapy she needed would make her infertile. The next day, she started looking into how she could freeze her eggs, which would give her the option of becoming a mother in the future. Twenty-three days […]

Friends sitting around a table, talking and laughing. A touch on the arm, as one of them leans over to make a confiding comment. A round of hugs before walking out the door. For years, Carole Leskin, 78, enjoyed this close camaraderie with five women in Moorestown, New Jersey, a group that took classes together, […]

When Glenn Janssen decided to file a claim for disability benefits with the Veterans Affairs Department last year, he dreaded the prospect of dealing with federal bureaucracy and paperwork. Janssen, 57, lives in Portugal with his wife and has worked as a government contractor since leaving the Army in 2004. The Gulf War-era and Louisiana […]

Fred Clasen-Kelly After spending 38 years in the Alabama prison system, one of the most violent and crowded in the nation, Larry Jordan felt lucky to live long enough to regain his freedom. The decorated Vietnam War veteran had survived prostate cancer and hepatitis C behind bars when a judge granted him early release late […]

It was Labor Day weekend 2021 when Sara Walsh, who was 24 weeks pregnant with twins, began to experience severe lower-back pain. On Wednesday, a few days later, a maternal-fetal specialist near her home in Winter Haven, Florida, diagnosed Walsh with twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome, a rare complication that occurs when fetuses share blood unevenly through […]

(Oona Tempest / KFF Health News Illustration) Sadé Lewis of Queens, New York, has suffered migraines since she was a kid, and as she started college, they got worse. A recent change in her insurance left the 27-year-old looking for a new neurologist. That’s when she found West 14 Street MedicalArts in New York. MedicalArts […]

The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work. The big idea Years-old tissue samples from armadillos in museum collections may harbor Mycobacterium leprae, the bacteria that causes Hansen’s disease, also called leprosy, according to recent research my colleagues and I conducted. Leprosy can cause nerve damage that, without early effective treatment, can […]

Joel Wakefield isn’t just an armchair epidemiologist. His interest in tracking the spread of covid is personal. The 58-year-old lawyer who lives in Phoenix has an immunodeficiency disease that increases his risk of severe outcomes from covid-19 and other infections. He has spent lots of time since 2020 checking state, federal, and private sector covid […]

WESLEY CHAPEL, Fla. — In BayCare Hospital Wesley Chapel’s 86 private rooms, patients can use voice-activated Alexa devices to dim the lights, play music, or summon a nurse. BayCare boasts some of the latest high-tech equipment. Yet, the company said, its $246 million facility that opened here in March doesn’t provide any health care services […]

Disability rights advocates sued Tuesday to overturn California’s physician-assisted death law, arguing that recent changes make it too easy for people with terminal diseases whose deaths aren’t imminent to kill themselves with drugs prescribed by a doctor. California’s original law allowing terminally ill adults to obtain prescriptions for life-ending drugs was passed in 2016. Advocates […]