Eideard

It’s a common tale: a grandparent’s health begins to fail and, realistically, their death is imminent. Often those older patients are rushed to hospital, taken out of their homes for treatment that will likely only extend their life by a few days.

University of Alberta researcher Donna Wilson is hoping this can change and already has seen some drastic changes in where Canadians are choosing to die.

Wilson looked at mortality data of Canadians dating back to 1950. Up until 1994, 80 per cent of Canadians were choosing to pass on in a hospital bed. But since the mid-’90s there’s been a drastic change in the number of people going to hospital to die. The number is now down to 61 per cent.

“So after years of [the numbers] going up, we have completely reversed that and are now at the 1960 level, before there was free hospital care in Canada,” said Wilson, who adds the decrease in numbers of people dying in hospital has happened without direct health policy or government planning.

Her next study she wants to find out why this trend is happening. But she already has some ideas on the huge swing.

“My guess is that a lot of it has to do with the fact that death is no longer unexpected,” said Wilson. “A lot of people are dying at an advanced age and you begin to accept that fact that it’s going to happen and it [can be] a dignified event. If you take the person to the hospital . . . care is by strangers rather than family members.”

She’s calling on government to help support the trend of people dying at home.

“We need to start putting more money in to home care and develop some hospices, have some courses for families and maybe build a few more nursing home beds,” said Wilson, who adds this not only helps the health-care system but also can provide a more dignified and potentially less painful death for the patient.

Certainly appeals to me. My only concern would be for the hassles this might put my wife through.

But, I’m confident she’d be happier – as I would be – to die where we’ve lived happily together for so many years.

A pea-sized seahorse, the world’s longest insect, a “ghost slug” and the world’s smallest snake were among the top 10 species discovered in 2008. These unusual critters were among thousands of species found last year, many in remote or tropical regions of the planet, that hint at the breadth of the Earth’s undiscovered biodiversity.

“Most people do not realize just how incomplete our knowledge of Earth’s species is,” said Quentin Wheeler, director of the International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University, which announced the top 10 new species list.

“We are surrounded by such an exuberance of species diversity that we too often take it for granted,” Wheeler added.

The ASU institute and an international committee of taxonomists — scientists devoted to species exploration and classification — compile the top 10 list of new species each year.

Also on the 2008 list are a caffeine-free coffee plant, a snail whose shell twists around four axes, a palm that flowers itself to death and microscopic bacteria that live in hairspray.

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A man threatening to commit suicide by jumping from a Chinese bridge was approached by a passer-by who shoved him over the edge.

Lai Jiansheng, 66, said he was fed up with the desperate man’s “selfish activity” which caused huge traffic jams in Guangzhou, southern China.

Chen Fuchao fell 26ft onto an air cushion and is recovering in hospital, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Xinhua said Mr Lai was “taken away by police”, but gave no further details.

Traffic around the bridge was stopped for five hours while officers tried to coax Mr Chen to safety.

Retired soldier Mr Lai at first volunteered to try to talk Mr Chen down but was turned away by police, Xinhua said.

Mr Lai is said to have then broken through the police cordon, climbed to where Mr Chen sat, greeted him with a handshake – and then pushed him off the edge.

Mr. Lai saluted the crowd after Chen fell onto the emergency air cushion.

A North Carolina family has come under fire for abandoning their 96-year-old aunt on Sunday at the Manatee County Salvation Army and then heading to Disney World.

The Salvation Army said it agreed to take in Ruth Smith after receiving a call from her niece, Beverly Edwards, who seemed anxious to drop off Smith. “They (the family) said they could not wait to get back in the car,” said Ashley Butler of Aging Safely. A judge has appointed Butler as Smith’s guardian.

Butler said she talked to Edwards by phone at Disney on Wednesday. “She did not ask me once how she was doing,” Butler said. “She was more upset about the fact that it was raining at Disney.”

Butler described Edwards, a foster mom from Asheville, as nonemotional when explaining it cost too much to care for Smith and that the family needed Smith’s room.

“Last winter they had to spend $300 a month to keep the house warm because she’s always cold,” Butler said. “And they had a niece who graduated from college and needed Ruth’s room, and she could help care for the foster children.”

Granny dumping is as sleazy as any miserable low-life practice. Dumping a family member on charity because they’re in the way of your holiday is as despicable as it gets.

A woman with pancreatic cancer has become the first person to die under a law passed last year allowing doctor-assisted suicide in Washington, according to an advocacy group that pushed for the law.

The woman, Linda Fleming, 66, of Sequim, Wash., died Thursday evening after taking lethal medication prescribed by a doctor under the law, according to a news release by the group, Compassion and Choices of Washington. The release said Ms. Fleming received a diagnosis of Stage 4 pancreatic cancer a month ago, and “she was told she was actively dying.”

Ms. Fleming was quoted in the release as saying: “I am a very spiritual person, and it was very important to me to be conscious, clear-minded and alert at the time of my death. The powerful pain medications were making it difficult to maintain the state of mind I wanted to have at my death.”

In November, voters approved the Death with Dignity Act, 58 percent to 42 percent, making Washington the second state — after Oregon — to allow assisted suicide. The laws in both states have been deeply controversial, particularly among religious groups. Washington passed its law after the United States Supreme Court in 2006 rejected an effort by the Justice Department to block Oregon’s law, which took effect in 1998.

Ms. Fleming’s two children and her former husband “were involved and supported her choice.”

Right on, Linda Fleming. Thank you for your courage and caring.

Via Telephone, Doctor Gets Instructions on Brain Surgery Using a Household Drill

A doctor in rural Australia used a handyman’s power drill to bore a hole into the skull of a boy with a severe head injury, saving his life.

Nicholas Rossi fell off his bike on Friday in the small Victoria state city of Maryborough, hitting his head on the pavement, his father, Michael, said Wednesday. By the time Rossi got to the hospital, he was slipping in and out of consciousness.

The doctor on duty, Rob Carson, quickly recognized the boy was experiencing potentially fatal bleeding on the brain and knew he had only minutes to make a hole in the boy’s skull to relieve the pressure.

But the small hospital was not equipped with neurological drills _ so Carson sent for a household drill from the maintenance room ….

Carson called a neurosurgeon in the state capital of Melbourne for help, who talked Carson through the procedure _ which he had never before attempted _ by telling him where to aim the drill and how deep to go….

“It was pretty scary. You obviously worry, (are) you pushing hard enough or pushing too hard, but then when some blood came out after we’d gone through the skull, we realized we’d made the right decision,” Tynan told Australian Broadcasting Corp.

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I also liked this quote from a BBC video:
“This is a once in a career thing that happens to very few people.”

Prepare yourself to see nearly $100 million go up for grabs in a single game of sport next week — a match worth more than any Superbowl or World Cup final.

In fact, international accountancy firm Deloitte say it is the richest single game in any sport.

The prized event is actually a game of football — but it’s not the showpiece European Champions League final which is being held in Rome on Wednesday night. So don’t expect to see big name football stars like Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo.

Instead, the stars in this lucrative show will be players like Steven Thompson and Darius Henderson — men you’ve probably never heard of.

Yet, these players, from English football’s second-tier clubs Burnley and Sheffield United, will be charged with the responsibility of winning the Championship play-off match at London’s Wembley Stadium on Monday May 25 — a game worth nearly $100 million to the winning club…

The other prize for the 90-minute ‘all or nothing’ game is entry into England’s top-flight Premier League — the most lucrative division in the sport. For the loser there is only the profits made from turnstile gate receipts.

RTFA. Interesting stuff. I would have thought the winner would be the World Cup Final; but, the point is the difference between what the winning club gets as reward – versus what the losing team must settle for.

Like Neil Warnock, BTW, I’ll be cheering for Sheffield United. Something has to further make up for the way they were screwed over when they were relegated from the Prem.

UPDATE: Final score Burnley 1 – 0 Sheffield United. And they deserved it.

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“A smile is just a frown turned upside down and skewed a bit.”

A new national poll suggests that favorable opinions of the former vice president are on the rise….

But the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey, released Thursday morning, indicates that a majority of Americans still have an unfavorable opinion of Cheney.

Fifty-five percent of people questioned in the poll say they have an unfavorable opinion of the former vice president. Thirty-seven percent say they have a favorable opinion of Cheney, up 8 percentage points from January when he left office….

“Former President George W. Bush’s favorable rating rose 6 points in that same time period”….

The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll was conducted May 14-17, with 1,010 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey’s sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

I only post this because the reporters won’t be able to figure out why the figures are up: People are starting to miss the cartoons:

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University of Delaware researchers in Sweden have launched a giant balloon taller than a football field that is now flying at the edge of space to collect data on cosmic rays — the most super-charged particles in the universe. You can follow the flight’s path online.

The balloon, which is 396 feet tall and 459 feet in diameter when fully inflated, was set aloft at 4:34 a.m. on May 17 from Esrange Space Center near Kiruna, Sweden, in the Arctic Circle. It is flying at a speed of more than 40 knots and an altitude of nearly 27 miles. Its payload of cosmic ray detectors, housed in a pressurized shell, will be cut free in northwestern Canada and float back down to Earth on a parachute, and then secured and recovered, likely by helicopter…

“The bulk of cosmic rays are likely produced by strong shock waves from Supernova explosions within our galaxy,” said John Clem, research associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Delaware’s Bartol Research Institute. “It is well documented that these high-energy particles can threaten the health of astronauts in space and expose airline workers to radiation,” Clem noted…

Clem says about a thousand cosmic rays strike every square meter of Earth’s atmosphere each second, depending somewhat on the location. The data from the balloon flights will be used to study solar modulation, the variation in cosmic ray intensity that is correlated with solar activity…

According to Clem, the level of solar activity rises and falls over a period of approximately 11 years and influences cosmic ray intensity. As solar activity rises, cosmic ray activity decreases. Currently, solar activity is low, and we are in a period of high cosmic ray intensity.

RTFA for more details, link to university study. Fascinating work.

Manmohan Singh and his wife Gursharan Kaur
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

India’s new government, with Manmohan Singh as prime minister, has taken the oath of office in the capital, Delhi. Mr Singh is taking charge for a second time, only the second PM after Jawaharlal Nehru to be returned to power following a full five-year term.

The Congress party won a decisive mandate in the recent polls and Mr Singh has emerged politically stronger…

Mr Singh and a 19-member cabinet took the oath of office from Indian President Pratibha Patil at a ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan, the presidential palace, in Delhi…

On Friday, Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari sent a message congratulating Congress.

“May I also take this opportunity to assure you that Pakistan remains committed to peace and prosperity in South Asia and will continue to work with India to resolve all outstanding issues between the two countries peacefully and in a just manner.”

Another of the rare times when and where I support a centrist government. To oversimplify, circumstances, events do not allow for a qualitatively different initiative to create and maintain consensus.

Certainly, the chance at peace and redirecting budgets to goals of security and safety in common with Pakistan – allows for domestic focus on the economy and education.