Longer Looks: Interesting Reads You Might Have Missed
Each week, KFF Health News finds longer stories for you to enjoy. Today's selections are on water cremation, terminal cancer, gender-affirming care, measles, and more.
The Washington Post:
In Maryland, Water Cremation Offers A Greener Way To Handle Dead Bodies
Inside a white brick building in West Baltimore, a long silver chamber full of water seesawed back and forth over a platform. Within it, a body dissolved. Skin, flesh and organs turned into amino acids and sugars with each tip of the chamber. In a matter of hours, all that remained were bones and the leftover watery solution. This process, which is called alkaline hydrolysis, but is known more colloquially as water cremation, has been gaining popularity across the country since it was first used in the funeral industry in 2011, according to the Cremation Association of North America. (Munro, 8/18)
The Wall Street Journal:
A New Reality For Terminal Cancer: Longer Lives, With Chronic Uncertainty
Gwen Orilio didn’t know how long she had to live after her stage-four lung cancer diagnosis. The disease had already infiltrated her eye, so the 31-year-old didn’t bother opening a retirement account. Ten years later, Orilio is still alive. And she still has metastatic cancer. Keeping her going is a string of new treatments that don’t cure the disease but can buy months—even years—of time, with the hope that once one drug stops working a new one will come along. (Abbott, 8/17)
NPR:
The Transitions Of Aging: How Parents And Adult Children Can Adjust
As people age, they may be surprised to find that younger folks don't understand what they're going through, but adult children or caretakers can do a lot to help older people adjust to a new reality. (Milne-Tyte, 8/21)
The 19th:
He Graduated Early To Get Gender-Affirming Surgery Before College. Then His Hospital Cut Him Off.
Months before his first class at Carlow University, Lee, a 17-year-old in Pennsylvania, found himself without a provider. (Kaufman, 8/21)
The New York Times:
A 1990 Measles Outbreak Shows How The Disease Can Roar Back
Few expected a major return of measles to the United States this year, a quarter-century after it was declared eliminated here. But return it has, with more than 1,300 confirmed cases this year and three deaths. Public health officials say they have seen nothing like it since the winter of 1990 to 1991, when measles last swept the country. For some, like Justin Johnson, who was 12 in that epidemic year, it was an eerie time. (Kolata, 8/20)
NPR:
He's The First -- And Only -- Neurosurgeon In Sierra Leone
Morie Abibu, a 56-year-old father of three, lies on a hospital bed in the humid Sierra Leonean heat. He is paralyzed from the neck down. After months of immobility, his soft muscles sag and pool on the bed, barely hanging onto bone. A mass is growing at the base of his skull, pressing against his spinal cord. And as it grows, it obstructs the nerves that control his breathing. He is slowly suffocating to death. Abibu needs neurosurgery to remove the deadly pressure. (Li, 8/17)
