BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

One thing 15 years of an unpredictable. excruciating disability has taught me - is to prioritize. Get straight what is important and what isn't. As a single, divorced mom and an advocate for abused women I get overloaded with requests. Of course my children come first. That is something I make very clear. But I am good at my advocacy. And being good at something can be a blessing and a curse. Very often I tend to overload myself with work. However, in the years since I was paralyzed on the left side and couldn't walk to the last few years where I have been extricating myself from a very abusive & controlling partner - I've learned to say NO. I don't ask much for myself. Like I said, my children are my primary focus and then my health. The latter tends to DEMAND I pay attention or it literally makes me sicker than the white noise of physical pain and feeling lousy I do most of the time. My friends are always telling me to do more nice things for myself and to...

Wish Away Cancer! Get A Lunchtime Face-Lift! Eradicate Autism! Turn Back The Clock! Thin Your Thighs! Cure Menopause! Harness Positive Energy! Erase Wrinkles! Banish Obesity! Live Your Best Life Ever! by Weston Kosova and Pat Wingert In January, Oprah Winfrey invited Suzanne Somers on her show to share her unusual secrets to staying young. Each morning, the 62-year-old actress and self-help author rubs a potent estrogen cream into the skin on her arm. She smears progesterone on her other arm two weeks a month. And once a day, she uses a syringe to inject estrogen directly into her vagina. The idea is to use these unregulated "bio-identical" hormones to restore her levels back to what they were when she was in her 30s, thus fooling her body into thinking she's a younger woman. According to Somers, the hormones, which are synthesized from plants instead of the usual mare's urine (disgusting but true), are all natural and, unlike conventional hormones, virtually risk-fre...

As a person who has been disabled for 12 years now, even with insurance - I can attest to the tremendous and unmanageable burden health care costs have put on myself and my family. It's nothing less than a basic human rights violation. It's torture, it adds to the illness burden mentally & financially. As an American, a mother and a human being, there is something fundamentally wrong with this picture. By RALPH NADER This is a tale of pay or die that recurs again and again all over our country and only in our country in the entire western world. Advised by her physician to go to M.D. Anderson for urgent treatment of her leukemia, Mrs. Lisa Kelly was told she had to pay $105,000 up front before being admitted. The hospital declared her limited insurance unacceptable. Sitting in the business office with seriously advanced cancer, she asked herself – “Are they going to send me home?” “Am I going to die?” Time out from her torment for a moment. M.D. Anderson started this upfr...