Life

Doctors and nurses who love Max’s “The Pitt” remember the moment they realized it wasn’t like other medical shows. Caitlin Dwyer, a charge nurse in Milwaukee, took note of a character’s decision — counterintuitive but medically correct — not to defibrillate a patient with a particular type of heart failure. Dr. Elizabeth Rempfer, an attending…

In January, during a congressional hearing on his way to becoming secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. got basic details wrong about Medicaid — a program he now oversees. He said that Medicaid is fully funded by the federal government (it’s not) and that many enrollees are unsatisfied…

A 77-year-old man’s mysterious symptoms, fever, and frequent falls due to fatigue left doctors puzzled for days until they diagnosed him with a potentially fatal Legionnaires’ disease, linked to his vacation swimming in an Iowa lake. According to the case published in CMAJ, the unidentified patient was admitted to a Winnipeg hospital with fever, cough,…

You get a full night’s sleep but still wake up feeling groggy, while a short nap leaves you feeling refreshed. Ever wondered why? It could be because your sleep schedule is disrupting your body’s natural rhythm, either by going to bed at the wrong time or waking up in the middle of a sleep cycle….

Could an inexpensive generic drug help improve autism symptoms? The parents of a nonverbal autistic boy in Arizona believe so. They say their son, then three years old, spoke his first words within days of taking a medication derived from folic acid, given to chemo patients to relieve side effects. Mason Connor, now 5, showed…

When Colleen Henderson’s 3-year-old daughter complained of pain while using the bathroom, doctors brushed it off as a urinary tract infection or constipation, common maladies in the potty-training years. After being told her health insurance wouldn’t cover an ultrasound, Henderson charged the $6,000 procedure to her credit card. Then came the news: There was a…

Jim Jones, the director of the Food and Drug Administration’s food division, resigned on Monday, citing what he called “indiscriminate” layoffs that would make it “fruitless for him to continue.” In his resignation letter, Mr. Jones estimated that 89 people of the 2,000 in his division were fired over the weekend, many of them freshly…

Collection agents for the state of Iowa have sent letters seeking millions of dollars from the estates of at least two people with disabilities who died after spending most of their lives in a state institution. The amounts represent what Medicaid spent covering the residents’ care when they lived at the Glenwood Resource Center, a…

McMINNVILLE, Tenn. — Each month, Michelle Shaw went to a pain clinic to get the shots that made her back feel worse — so she could get the pills that made her back feel better. The clinic claimed the injections were steroids that would relieve her pain, Shaw said, but with each shot her agony…

You may never realize how often water touches our lives until you have a disorder like the 25-year-old young mother from the U.K. who describes simple daily activities such as washing hands, drinking water, or taking a bath as “excruciatingly painful”. An extremely rare condition called aquagenic urticaria makes the life of Kendall Bryce, from…