By Andrea Kane
CNNhealth.com Producer

Last winter, I was told that my young daughter had walking pneumonia. Walking pneumonia? My mind, fueled by alarm, raced: What is walking pneumonia? (A very mild inflammation of the lungs.) Is it serious? (While it can become serious, it is not usually a problem and often heals on its own.) Is she going to be alright? (Of course.) She had very mild symptoms – a cough, a fever – and she wasn’t all that uncomfortable. Her pediatrician said some people let the walking pneumonia resolve itself (that’s how mild it is!), but that I might want to opt for a course of antibiotics. Not wanting to risk complications, and wanting to ease her symptoms sooner rather than later, I quickly agreed (antibiotic-opposed husband be darned). Thanks to access to medical care, my daughter was well within a couple of days; she and I quickly put the episode behind us.

The story ends differently for the more than 2 million children who die of pneumonia – walking pneumonia’s much more deadly cousin - every year. Save the Children, an international humanitarian organization, reports that pneumonia (which can be cause by bacteria, viruses, fungi or parasites) kills more children under 5 worldwide than measles, malaria and AIDS combined. Pneumonia accounts for 20 percent of all deaths in this - the youngest and most vulnerable – age group. That’s one child dead from pneumonia every 15 seconds. The vast majority of deaths – 98 percent – occur in South Asia and sub-Sahara Africa.

A great many of these deaths could be prevented with existing inexpensive vaccines or treated with inexpensive antibiotics. But the families of children in the 68 countries most affected by pneumonia either don’t know about available vaccines and antibiotics, don’t have access to them or can’t afford them. And that’s a tragedy.

But the flip side of tragedy is hope. Global health authorities, including WHO and UNICEF, are recognizing November 2 as the first-annual World Pneumonia Day and have outlined a six-year action plan to take the first steps in beating back this beast. The GAPP plan, as it is called, includes education, protection, prevention and treatment efforts, targeting both governments and individuals.

Dr. Bill Frist (the former U.S. Senate Majority Leader and a trustee of Save the Children) and Dr. Richard Sezibera (Rwanda’s Minister of Health) write in this week’s edition of The Lancet, “… lives continue to be lost from this preventable and treatable disease, and, until recently, there was little outcry.”

I for one am glad there is new attention being brought to bear on an old adversary. No parent should have to mourn the death of a child from a preventable and treatable illness.

Editor's Note: Medical news is a popular but sensitive subject rooted in science. We receive many comments on this blog each day; not all are posted. Our hope is that much will be learned from the sharing of useful information and personal experiences based on the medical and health topics of the blog. We encourage you to focus your comments on those medical and health topics and we appreciate your input. Thank you for your participation.

By Andrea Kane
CNNHealth.com  Producer

September is National Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month. Each year in the U.S. about 21,500 women are told they have it; approximately 14,600 die of it. Detected early, it has a five-year survival rate of almost 94 percent, according to the National Cancer Institute. Unfortunately, only 15 percent of ovarian cancers are found when the disease is still localized.

A good friend of mine died of ovarian cancer six years ago. She was only 41. We weren’t talk-to-you-every-day best friends, but when we saw each other, we connected.

After I had a baby, we had less time to spend together. Still, she faithfully came out to visit the baby and me.

In 2000, shortly after my daughter turned 1 and my friend turned 39, her doctor found an ovarian cyst. Unfortunately, in the Russian roulette game of health and disease, she lost: Her cyst contained a malignant tumor – a one-in-a-hundred chance, she was told. The good news was that it was “only” stage 2 (In stage 1, the cancer is still contained in the ovary; stage 4 is considered terminal). But even stage 2 was not good enough.

Everyone agrees that ovarian cancer needs to be found earlier, but the question is how? Part of the problem is, the symptoms of ovarian cancer– bloating, increased abdominal size, changes in bladder and bowel function and a feeling of pelvic fullness or pain - can be also caused by a number of other maladies. And there is no accurate blood test.

For my friend, surgery was followed by chemotherapy, and more chemotherapy. Still, she found time to visit my daughter and me, and we found time to talk about motherhood, religion, relationships, life. Our parallel but sometimes intersecting lives went on.

At the end of 2001 I had a second daughter, and her cancer returned. I drove her to a couple of chemo appointments; she had more surgery and some radiation. We talked about dying, but only in the abstract – because neither one of us wanted to think it would happen to her.

But her worsening condition cracked our carefully constructed illusion. The drugs made her terribly sick — not that they were actually helping - and surgery was just a temporary fix. She knew her options were limited; she desperately looked to get into a trial for a new drug.

The last time she came to visit me, she told me that she recently had realized that this thing could actually kill her. But she still held some hope.

Then, before she could go into remission again, the complications started in earnest.

Her parents arrived from Florida to take care of her. The morphine made her sleep 20 hours a day. She stopped communicating with all but a very small group of friends; they gave the rest of us e-mail updates.

I desperately - and selfishly - wanted to see her, to talk to her one last time. And then I got my chance: My husband prepared some legal documents for her that required signatures. He asked her parents whether I could be the one to drop off the documents. They obliged.

I was nervous before seeing her; I didn’t know what to expect. On the appointed day, I headed over with my younger daughter.

Seeing her wasn’t exactly a shock, but she didn’t look like her old self: Her skin was yellow, her face looked gaunt and she sported a feeding tube. She didn’t smile – not even once. She and her mother both looked exhausted. I tried to be cheerful enough for the two of us.

After she signed the documents, we all sat on her back porch and chit-chatted about trivial matters: my daughter’s sandals, her nap schedule, my other daughter. Blah, blah, blah. We talked about everything except the pink elephant in the room. What I really wanted to ask was how she was doing emotionally: Was she afraid? Bitter? Angry? Or had she come to terms with dying? Was she at peace? I could not tell.

Impulsively, I asked her mother to take a photograph of us with a camera I saw sitting on the nearby table. Her mother snapped two photos and then my daughter and I left. The visit had lasted 15 minutes.

Maybe I couldn’t talk to her about the things that mattered most because her mother was there, or maybe because I didn’t want to upset her by openly acknowledging something she never had: She was dying. In any case, I will always feel that I missed my last chance to talk to her honestly and openly, to hold her close to me and whisper “Goodbye, I love you.”

Two weeks later Jennifer Lisa Bertoni died.

A while later I received an envelope in the mail: the two photos. As it turns out, they were the last ones taken of her. Surprisingly, in both of them, she gazes back at me, smiling.

Editor's Note: Medical news is a popular but sensitive subject rooted in science. We receive many comments on this blog each day; not all are posted. Our hope is that much will be learned from the sharing of useful information and personal experiences based on the medical and health topics of the blog. We encourage you to focus your comments on those medical and health topics and we appreciate your input. Thank you for your participation.

By Andrea Kane
CNNhealth.com Producer

Pssst: Come here… A bit closer. I have a confession to make: One of my daughters has L-I-C-E. And it is driving me crazy, because it just will not go away, no matter how much I cut, comb and nitpick her hair. And I’ve been doing a lot of nitpicking lately – at times, I feel like a mama chimp grooming her child (minus popping the “prize” into my mouth). My daughter gets cranky having to sit there for an hour (especially when I pull an individual hair strand to remove an egg - aka: nit - that is cemented on) and I get cranky, too.

According to the CDC, there are an estimated 6 million to 12 million head lice infestations each year in the U.S. among children 3 to 11 years old. Lice are usually transmitted through direct head-to-head contact. Less commonly, they can be passed on via a hat, comb, pillow or other personal object (contrary to our worst fears, lice don’t dive-bomb from one person’s head to another’s). Cleanliness and socioeconomic status have little to do with getting head lice, although race may have an impact; African-Americans are less likely to get them.

Aside from being icky and itchy, head lice are not known to transmit disease (although hard scratching can cause a secondary infection). That said, you don’t want them hanging around.

Our “ordeal” started in mid-May when I stopped by the school nurse’s office for her to have a look-see because her two best friends had it (that, and she was scratching an awful lot). “You see right there - those are nits,” she said, pointing to what looked like a bitty grain of salt on the hair shaft.

The nurse instructed me to shampoo my daughter’s with an over-the-counter pediculicide (lice-killing) shampoo, then comb out all the nits because OTC shampoos do not kill all the eggs (only the heavy-duty, super-toxic, prescription shampoo does). The third step (after shampooing and nitpicking) is to delouse personal objects.

At the drug store, the choices were many: popular OTC shampoos (with either pyrethrins – derived from chrysanthemums - or their synthetic cousin permethrin), homeopathic treatments (that promise to kill lice without harsh chemicals), gels to help with the nitpicking– even an electric comb that electrocutes the lice.

I ended up buying the store brand, partially because it offered the most shampoo at the cheapest price (the shampoos are expensive and we are - except for my husband - a household of long, curly-haired females, so we needed quantity, especially since we didn’t want to skimp). I slathered it on my daughter’s hair, waited 10 minutes, then rinsed and, with a fine-toothed comb, I combed… and combed… and combed, trying to get all of the nits out. Have I mentioned that she has long curly hair? A lot of it? A thick underbrush of it? Well, it took a long time to through it all. Except that I didn’t get it all: We both grew impatient before I was done.

Then, I threw all of her bedding into the wash, boiled all the combs and hairclips, and quarantined her stuffed animals and brushes. And for good measure, my husband and I shampooed our hair and washed our linens (as luck would have it, there had been a thunderstorm the night before and we played musical beds). I also checked her sister’s hair: Nothing! Mom 1, lice 1.

The next day, the lice were gone. And for a few glorious days, I thought we had dodged a bullet.

With most of the OTC shampoos, you have to retreat between seven and 10 days after the initial treatment, when the eggs that the shampoo failed to kill the first time finally hatch and repopulate the hair - but before the nymphs can grow into adults capable of reproducing. The life cycle of lice is about three weeks.

But before we could get halfway to retreatment time, they were back. So I cut off six inches of my daughter’s hair and we tried another brand of OTC shampoo; this one did not work at all (lice can become resistant to a particular pediculicide). So I went back to the first shampoo and I bought the electric comb (which was pretty cool and did electrocute some lice, but apparently not all). When that failed, I tried the homeopathic shampoo that works by dehydrating the lice and their eggs (this one you have to leave on for at least an hour, instead of 10 minutes). At the time of each treatment, we washed linens, boiled hair accessories all over again. The stuffed animals never made it out of quarantine.

But still the lice returned.

After about a month, at wits end, I called my pediatrician’s office. The nurse on call told me I could try the prescription shampoo (did I detect hesitation in her voice or was that me projecting?) or I could try one more “weird” treatment. Since I wasn’t particularly excited about the prospect of using poison so close to my child’s growing brain, I chose the latter. She recommended “Dippity-do.” Yup: The pink or green hair gel popular in the ’50s and ’60s. (It now comes in other colors too.)

But, she warned, I’d have to wrap my daughter’s hair in plastic wrap and a shower cap and leave it on for 12 hours. Similar to other home remedies - like mayonnaise and olive oil - the idea is to smother the lice in a thick coat of glop. The advantage of Dippity-do over the oily foodstuff is that it is much easier to wash out of hair (and doesn’t stink like unrefrigerated mayonnaise).

If this doesn’t work, I’ll be tempted to pull out the big guns: No, not the prescription shampoo but the electric razor – and give my daughter a buzz cut.

Have you or a family member had lice? How did you finally defeat it? Did using harsh chemicals on a small child worry you?

Editor's Note: Medical news is a popular but sensitive subject rooted in science. We receive many comments on this blog each day; not all are posted. Our hope is that much will be learned from the sharing of useful information and personal experiences based on the medical and health topics of the blog. We encourage you to focus your comments on those medical and health topics and we appreciate your input. Thank you for your participation.

By Andrea Kane
CNNhealth.com Producer

Two articles have recently come out tackling the twin pink elephants in the room: one is an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine in favor of taxing sugary drinks (to reduce consumption and possibly raise revenue for anti-obesity programs), the other is a story in Time magazine making the case for an outright ban on cigarettes.

The views in each make plain old sense: Ban or tax that which we KNOW is bad for our health to improve health and cut runaway health care costs.

In the case of cigarettes, the writer notes that cigarette smoking costs an “estimated $100 billion in health-care costs… annually.” In the case of sugary beverages, the authors write, they “may be the single largest driver of the obesity epidemic” (pointing out that the only studies that found no link between sugary-drink consumption and obesity are – surprise! – those funded by the beverage industry).They estimate obesity-related problems cost about $79 billion annually – about half of which is footed by the American taxpayer (you and me).

On the one hand, their arguments make me morally uncomfortable: Who are we to tell other people what to do? Isn’t it too “Big Brother”? Too paternalistic - especially when we are talking about taking steps that will affect the so-called underclass (aka: “the poor”) most? But in both cases, the writers note that poor people have the most to benefit from cutting back on sugary soft drinks and quitting smoking. This is especially true in the case of smoking since “[c]igarettes, to an extent, have become an indicator of lower socioeconomic status.” Yet, nobody likes to be told how to live or wants to feel coerced into any course of action – however “good for you” it might be.

But on the other hand, why can’t we just admit that advocates for taxing and banning these vices have a point? Banning smoking WILL reduce cancer and cardiovascular (and a whole host of other) deaths. Making soda expensive WILL force people (especially poor people, who presumably also can’t afford all the lifelong medications they’ll have to take for diabetes, high blood pressure, etc.) to drink water and thus cut out 250 to 300 empty calories a day, which over the course of a year – not to mention a lifetime - really do add up.

What also adds up are the costs: the costs associated with caring for the sick and the costs associated with lost productivity due to illness. Make no mistake, the American taxpayer (you and I) will have to pay one way or another - via higher health-care costs, the inability to get affordable insurance, or perhaps through cuts to programs such as Social Security, public education, work training programs (or the arts, national parks, etc.) in order to fund the ballooning costs associated with Medicaid/Medicare.

So what is the right answer? Where do your rights (to smoke, to drink liquid calories, to do what you want with your own body) end and my rights (to breathe clean air, to not have to pay for someone else’s problems) begin? I want to hear what you think.

Editor's Note: Medical news is a popular but sensitive subject rooted in science. We receive many comments on this blog each day; not all are posted. Our hope is that much will be learned from the sharing of useful information and personal experiences based on the medical and health topics of the blog. We encourage you to focus your comments on those medical and health topics and we appreciate your input. Thank you for your participation.

By Andrea Kane
CNNhealth.com Producer

The other day, I stumbled across an article about Cerrie Burnell, the co-host of a British TV show for toddlers. Turns out she has an incomplete right arm, which some parents fear might scare their children. Other parents thought that the BBC was trying to be too politically correct, too inclusive, in the name of diversity by featuring her so prominently.

After my initial flash of incredulity (what, scare kids??!! pish!) it got me thinking: How would my children react?

If past experience is any indication, their first response would be wide-eyed amazement: Are they seeing what they really think they are seeing? This would be followed by intense curiosity (What happened to that person? Why is she like that? How does she tie her shoelaces?). If they could, they would (much to my embarrassment) certainly want to touch, examine and ask.

Last summer, there was a boy with one arm (or, rather, like Burnell, an incomplete arm that ended just below the elbow) who appeared at their day camp. While he was not in either of their groups, the girls (who are 7 and 9) got plenty of chances to peer at him as their paths crossed throughout the day. By the time that same boy showed up at another camp they attended later that summer, he was old news. They didn’t much like him, my youngest confided - not because of his missing arm, but because he was mean.

Their eventual comfort with him is not to say that my eldest didn’t struggle. She would get a bit haunted at night when he popped into her thoughts. I think it was equal amounts of fear and pity and empathy. But she and I talked about him, and how he looked to be happy and to be enjoying himself, despite his “disability” (which I suspect didn’t stop him much). And we talked about how he is loved by his parents, just as she is loved by hers.

I think this struggling is good for her. It allowed her to work through uncomfortable feelings – of pity, of fear, or fascination, or whatever - and eventually came to peace with them - and with the boy, and with his difference.

At the risk of sounding Pollyanna-ish, I think it is good for kids and grown-ups to struggle against what they fear just because it’s different. It helps us grow and grow-up as human beings. Think about the strong public reaction, 50 years ago, to interracial couples. Or 10 years, ago to gay couples. The more visible they are, the less unusual - and less threatening - they become. It's about perceiving others, including their differences, as ordinary people, just like you and me, which is what they are, after all, aren't they?

Some may think that making Burnell co-host is a bold move. But it is only by making such a move that we can show kids that people who are “different” have just as much right to be visible as anyone else.

Should people be forced out of their comfort zone? I’d like to hear what you think.

Editor's Note: Medical news is a popular but sensitive subject rooted in science. We receive many comments on this blog each day; not all are posted. Our hope is that much will be learned from the sharing of useful information and personal experiences based on the medical and health topics of the blog. We encourage you to focus your comments on those medical and health topics and we appreciate your input. Thank you for your participation.

By Andrea M. Kane
CNNhealth.com Producer

A small drama is unfolding in Minnesota. Five cases of Haemophilus influenzae type B (known as Hib) disease were documented in 2008 – the most since 1992. But this is more than just five individual tragedies. It’s tragedy times two – because a vaccine exists to prevent Hib disease, and it has been routinely given to children in this country as part of the standard vaccine schedule since 1991.

Hib is a serious bacterial infection that usually occurs in infants and children under 5. It can lead to meningitis (infection of the brain and spinal cord coverings); pneumonia; infection of the blood, joint, bones and covering of the heart; and severe swelling of the throat. Sometimes, it results in death. Before the vaccine, there were about 20,000 cases of Hib disease each year and Hib was responsible for up to 60 percent of all cases of meningitis (resulting in death 2 to 5 percent of the time, and producing lasting brain damage and deafness 15 to 30 percent of the time).

Part of the problem is that there has been a national shortage of the Hib vaccine since November 2007, and Minnesota has been particularly hard hit. The other part of the problem is that some of the parents did not immunize their children (admittedly, I have no knowledge of their motivation). According to Minnesota officials, three of the five cases - including the one death - occurred in unimmunized children (in the other cases, one child was too young to complete the four-dose series and the other child had an underlying condition).

I am a parent. I have two young girls, now 7 and 9. And, like every parent, I like to believe that I am doing the best I can to protect them. And for me, part of that is to make sure they are vaccinated.

But I’d be lying if I said that, when it came time to immunize them during their toddler years, I didn’t worry that they might  develop autism.

Stories suggesting a link between vaccines and autism are very pervasive  and proponents of the theory are vocal. But even though there is no scientifically sound research to support it, the speculation persists. Despite the emotion inherent in this debate, I am a medical writer who has read many studies finding no connection between autism and vaccines– including a recent one from California showing that the incidence of autism had actually gone up despite the removal of the mercury-based preservative thimerosal from most vaccines and an earlier study from Denmark.

Still, in the back of my mind, a little voice whispered, “What if one of my girls is genetically predisposed, and this is the environmental trigger…” Or “What if one of my girls receives one too many vaccines today, and it pushes her immune system over the edge.”

But all I had to do was take a look at my own mother, who has lived with the consequences of polio, a disease she contracted when she was 2 – way before the polio vaccine ever existed - and my resolve was hardened. Growing up, I heard stories (never from her) about how she spent months at a time in a body cast, and how my grandparents were at first heartbroken and then sought to shelter her from life’s daily insults. I know intimately the criss-cross of scars on her legs, the clippity-clop sound of her particular gait, and the swift hand-on-knee movement she makes to manually move her leg in and out of a car. And I can see where her quiet-but-unyielding determination, and her dignity in the face of adversity came from. And her ordeal is not over: she now gets to worry about post-polio syndrome.

I love my mother and I wouldn’t change anything about her but I would do anything - especially vaccinate my kids - to avoid my children having to go through anything like what she experienced and continues to go through. Vaccines were developed to spare our children pain, damage, disfigurement and death. It seems ridiculous not to avail myself of the tools I have been offered to protect them from diseases we know can and will hurt them.

Did you, will you vaccinate your children? Tell us why or why not.

Editor's Note: Medical news is a popular but sensitive subject rooted in science. We receive many comments on this blog each day; not all are posted. Our hope is that much will be learned from the sharing of useful information and personal experiences based on the medical and health topics of the blog. We encourage you to focus your comments on those medical and health topics and we appreciate your input. Thank you for your participation.

By Andrea Kane
CNNhealth.com Producer

I am sure that I am not the only one who is going to be glad to see 2008 in the rearview mirror, receding in the distance - what with all the financial turbulence, the foreclosures, the layoffs, the generally gloomy mood.

And for me, the economic downturn was mirrored by a downturn in my husband's health. Neither one is permanent (I hope!) but both served to cast a pall over the year. It started in May, with the quite sudden discovery of kidney cancer. From discovery to diagnosis to surgery to release from the hospital took a week and a day. My parents came down from New York City to help with the girls, neighbors and friends brought food, helped with daily stuff.

My husband recovered from his surgery (with an excellent prognosis) and gradually life returned to normal. In two months, he had returned to work part-time.

Part-time slipped to full time until... the end of September when he developed a tear in his retina after a jump from a climbing wall; by the following week, despite laser treatment, it had detached.

He had to have real cut-open-your-eye surgery (including stitches!) –the kind that required him to lie with is head at a 30-degree angle for 20 out of 24 hours. This lasted two weeks. Then, he was able to move around for two hours a day. This lasted another two weeks. And, just when we began to see the light at the end of the tunnel (so to speak), we got devastating news: he was among the 5% that developed proliferative vitreoretinopathy (PVR), a catastrophic complication to the surgery. Basically it means that his eye produced too much scar tissue, which stuck to the retina and then contracted, and redetached the retina all over again.

Another surgery to reattach. Another two weeks of immobility. Then a third surgery to replace the gas bubble in his eye with the stronger silicone oil in the hopes of keeping his retina as "flat as a pancake" against the eye's back wall.

Throughout this whole time, there were countless early morning doctor's appointments I had to drive him to and from (plus get myself ready for work, and get the girls to school in a timely manner), groceries to buy, kids to tend and a household to run. Friends, neighbors and family were kind and understanding, but because it happened on the heels of the other crisis, because it wasn't life-threatening and because I didn't expect it to drag on, I didn't get my support system in place.

I turned away general offers of help ("Oh, we're just fine, thanks!") until... a perfect stranger knocked on my door. Or, rather, rang up my cell. Until that moment, I hadn't realized how overwhelmed I felt.

The unknown neighbor heard about our situation  - through the ever-present neighborhood grapevine - and called: she wanted to bring me dinner and would Sunday be okay to drop it off?

I fought off tears. Her kindness touched my heart and made me realize how desperate I was for... what? Relief from the drudgery of every day household tasks like cooking? While the dinner, for food's sake, was certainly appreciate, it went so much deeper than that. While I had been trying to keep it all together, keep it all inside, here was someone who without even knowing me had extended - unasked, unbidden - a helping hand. And by reaching out, she had unleashed a gush of gratitude.

Studies out of Kent State University and University of California at Davis have shown that gratitude, or being thankful, can increase a person’s happiness levels. People who count their blessings are more satisfied with their lives overall, more optimistic about the future.

In 2009, I resolve that when someone has a baby, gets sick, or has some kind of difficulty, I will remember this lesson: Don't ask, just do. So strange that it took a stranger to remind me of the power of a random act of kindness, and the heart-warming pleasure of gratitude.

What are you grateful for? Tell us.

Editor’s Note: Medical news is a popular but sensitive subject rooted in science. We receive many comments on this blog each day; not all are posted. Our hope is that much will be learned from the sharing of useful information and personal experiences based on the medical and health topics of the blog. We encourage you to focus your comments on those medical and health topics and we appreciate your input. Thank you for your participation.