I have shared on the show how I am dealing with the fallout of some wild and crazy years when I was younger. This situation I now face with my health is requiring treatment that makes me physically ill – but will, in the long run, rid my body of this condition that is trespassing on God’s temple!
If you have watched our show, you know that Jim and I are not “religious” about the things of God, and we don’t put God in a box based on a certain way of thinking. That’s why we’re okay with however God chooses to deal with this affliction. God could heal me in a split second, but if He chooses the medicinal route, who am I to question His wisdom? He knows best in all things, and I trust Him with every aspect of my life, both now and forever.
I have always loved and trusted God, even in the crazy years. I know that sounds weird, but it’s true. God never left me, though I left Him for a season. He never stopped wooing me back, and He never stopped showing me that the path I was on was not what He intended for me. The prayers of my Mother and others came before the Lord constantly. Continue reading →
A hospital in Winston-Salem, North Carolina is apologizing for potentially exposing 18 patients to a rare and fatal disease.
Officials with Novant Health Forsyth Medical Center said Monday at a press conference that brain surgery patients have been exposed to Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease which kills 90 percent of patients within a year of showing symptoms.
“While the CDC categorizes such risks [of transmission] as ‘very low’, any risk of transmission is simply unacceptable,” Jeff Lindsay, president of the hospital, told reporters. “On behalf of the entire team, I apologize to the patients and their families for this anxiety.”
The instruments used in the brain surgery were sterilized using normal sterilization techniques but not the specialized procedures used for Cruetzfeldt-Jakob.
Amanda Morin, who had back surgery at the hospital and is one of the 18 potentally infected, told Fox News that she was “very, very angry something so little could cost me my life.”
The state Department of Health and Human Services said they are monitoring the situation.
It sounds like the plot of a thriller movie but it’s reality.
A “ghost ship” has been floating loose in the upper Atlantic Ocean and is believed to be heading to the British coast filled with aggressive, disease-ridden, cannibalistic rats.
The Lyubov Orlova was being towed by a second ship after it was seized from its previous owner because of unpaid debts. During the towing process, the boat broke free from the moorings and disappeared into the Atlantic. It has only been spotted from the air a few times and has sent out signals twice in March 2013 but then went silent.
Experts are now warning that the recent wave of severe storms throughout the region could be driving the ship directly into the British coast.
The belief comes from the fact the lifeboats attached to the ship have not activated indicating they have touched down in the ocean. If the ship had sunk, all the lifeboats would have had an emergency beacon activate.
If the ship were to make landfall, the disease infested rats could devastate the local rat population and be a major risk to humans for diseases like bubonic plague.
A new scientific report says that the toxic pollutants causing massive levels of smog in China has the ability to cross the Pacific Ocean and create air quality problems for the western United States.
The study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is the first time scientists have been able to quantify the amount of Chinese pollution making its way across the ocean. The study said that anywhere from 12% to 24% of the daily sulfate concentrations around Los Angeles is directly attributed to Chinese pollution related to exports.
The researchers say one of the biggest hazards is “black carbon.” Unlike other forms of air pollution, black carbon is not removed from the air by rain. The carbon has been found in valleys and holes in California. Black carbon is connected to asthma as well as cancer, emphysema and heart & lung disease.
Smog in China has reached levels that in parts of Beijing officials had to turn electronic billboards into replicas of the sun so that residents would know when dawn and sunset were happening around them.
The first death from the H5N1 Avian Flu in North America has been confirmed in Canada.
Canadian public health officials did not release the identity of the victim but said they had been in China before flying to Vancouver on December 27th. They had reported being ill when they were on the flight from Beijing.
The patient was admitted to the hospital on New Year’s Day and died two days later.
Officials have contacted everyone on the Beijing to Vancouver flight for immediate testing for H5N1 but believe there is a very low risk to the flight passengers because of the rarity of human-to-human transmission.
“The risk of getting H5N1 is very low,” Health Minister Rona Ambrose said. “This case is not part of the seasonal flu, which circulates in Canada every year.”
In addition to the flight passengers, close contacts of the victim and the healthcare workers that treated them are also being screened for the virus.
The Centers for Disease Control is focusing on a hospital in the Chicago suburbs were an outbreak of a deadly bacteria seems to be spreading.
The bacterium, called a “nightmare bacteria” by doctors, contains a special rare enzyme that allows it to break down antibiotics.
The bacteria is known as carbapenem-resistant enterobacteriaceae. The superbug lives in the intestines and can be spread by fecal matter.
The CDC reports they have only been able to document 97 cases of infection by the bacteria since 2009…but 44 have been connected over the last year to this one Chicago area hospital.
Officials say that as many as 250 patients were potentially exposed to the bacteria during an endoscopy procedure. Only 114 of the patients returned to be tested for the disease.
The Centers for Disease Control is reporting that flu is now widespread in over half the United States.
The CDC says that a majority of the cases is the H1N1 virus that caused a worldwide pandemic in 2009.
The flu peaks in the United States between October and March. The CDC said that the spread this year is quick with at least 25 states having confirmed cases.
The CDC says at least six children in the United States have died from H1N1 and cannot say how many adults may have died from it as they do not track adult deaths from the flu. Texas has been particularly hard hit with 25 deaths this flu season.
Texas officials have told health care providers in the state to begin anti-viral treatments even if rapid flu tests come back negative and a patient is showing signs of the flu.
Six new cases of the deadly MERS virus have appeared in the Middle East.
Five people in Saudi Arabia and one person in the United Arab Emirates have been infected with MERS according to the World Health Organization. One of the patients has died, bringing the death toll from the virus to 74 of 176 confirmed cases.
The WHO said the case in the United Arab Emirates was a woman married to a man who has been previously diagnosed with the disease. She is being kept in isolation in a hospital despite not showing any adverse symptoms.
Officials in the region are citing new research showing transfer between camels and humans in a warning telling people at risk for the virus to avoid barns and farms.
Twenty-four flights were canceled on Sunday and Monday after flu-stricken pilots and flight attendants working for Alaska Airlines called in sick.
According to Alaska spokeswoman Bobbie Egan, approximately 270 passengers were affected by canceled flights.
Off-duty pilots and flight attendants volunteered to work while their colleagues were out sick according to Egan.
The airline anticipates a less busy Tuesday, and says it probably won’t have to cancel any more flights due to illness.
A mutation discovered in a new strain of bird flu has rendered the virus resistant to treatment drugs without limiting its ability to spread.
Most seasonal flu strains often become less transmissible when developing drug resistance, but scientists discovered that the H7N9 bird flu does not lose any of its spreading potential even with drug resistance.
Researchers said they do not believe this will make H7N9 any more likely to develop into a pandemic, but do recommend that doctors should be careful in their use of anti-viral medicines and consider using other drugs instead of Tamiflu to treat H7N9 cases.
The H7N9 bird flu has infected at least 139 people so far in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, and has killed 45 people.