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AVON, Colorado / Vail Daily / Man-to-Man / November 20, 2009

Man is 65, in great health, married for over 40 years, successful in business and miserable

Vail Man-to-Man:

Never too late to do what you want

By Wayne Levine




Q: I am 65 years old, in great health, married for over 40 years, successful in business and miserable. It has taken me a long time to admit it. Though I have been faithful to my wife, our marriage has had little passion for longer than I can remember. My wife is a nervous wreck and her anxieties have kept her from enjoying life with me. As a direct result, I spend most of my time either catering to her anxieties, or finding reasons to stay away from her.

You might think that the time I have alone would be enjoyable. It is not. I feel guilty, no matter what I am doing, even exercising. She is always on my mind. I have always tried to be compassionate. Now I am beginning to sense my resentment. After all these years, one tends to be resigned to one's circumstances, dismal as they may be. I want more. I want to be happy. I hope it is not too late.

A: It's never too late to be the man you've always wanted to be. With your good health, you still have many years ahead of you. The question is, will they be happy years, or just another couple of decades trapped in the same self-imposed prison? That's right. This is your doing.

Regardless of your wife's emotional challenges, she is not responsible for your current state of affairs or state of mind. But because you have held her responsible all these years, you have never been able or willing to consider your options. We call this being the problem rather than the solution. So let's start working on the solution.

If you've been blaming her for keeping you from doing the things you want to do, your best course of action is to simply start doing what you want to do. But for a guy who has been imprisoned by his emotional co-dependency with his wife (meaning, what she feels, you feel or react to in debilitating way) this independent action will prove challenging.

First, you'll have to make a commitment. Whatever it is you've been wanting to do (sailing, rock climbing, joining a square dancing group, or taking a trip by yourself,) make the commitment, put it on your calendar and don't ask for permission. Now try to breathe.

You may not fully enjoy the process or even the activity right away. But the only way to build this new muscle is to get into action. Eventually, you'll find your groove and begin to enjoy this newly found freedom to pursue your interests.

Now back to your marriage. You may just be beginning to sense your own resentment, but I guarantee that you are positively full of resentment. And if you weren't such a good little boy — even at age 65 — you'd be screaming out your anger for all the world to hear. In fact, if it had been acceptable for you to acknowledge your resentment and anger years ago, you might have been motivated to make changes then.

I wonder what would happen if you were to silence that little boy, begin to run the sex and romance in your marriage, learn to express without defending your feelings, and be the rock for her so she can talk to you without you taking things personally and feeling as if you need to fix everything.

I suspect you'd see a world of difference in your wife, in your marriage, and in your own ability to enjoy yourself. Give it try. All you have to lose is the potential of enjoying the rest of your life. [rc]

Wayne M. Levine, M.A., is a life coach and mentor for men, women, couples and families.
E-Mail: MantoMan@BetterMen.org
www.BetterMen.org

Source: Swift Communications, Inc.

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NEW YORK, NY / Bloomberg News / November 20, 2009

By Pat Wechsler, Alex Nussbaum and Nicole Gaouette

A medical debate over breast-cancer screening that has turned political may set the tone for a battle over President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul that will resonate for years.

The furor over a federal panel’s recommendation against mammograms for most women in their 40s shows the obstacles the U.S. may face trimming costs in a $2.5 trillion health system, even when research suggests the cuts may be appropriate, said Uwe Reinhardt, a Princeton University economist.

U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at a town hall style meeting with university students in Shanghai, on Nov. 16, 2009.

Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg

With a health-care overhaul nearing a Senate vote, Republicans said the recommendations by the panel, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, for fewer mammograms proved Obama’s agenda will lead to rationed care. Democrats, fearful of antagonizing a key voting group in women, said the U.S. won’t change federal reimbursements to support guidelines that most women shouldn’t get regular mammograms until age 50.

The panel’s suggestions provided “the perfect place to throw a bomb into the health-care debate,” said Representative Lynn Woolsey, a Democrat of California and co-leader of the 82- member Congressional Progressive Caucus, in an interview. “We’re not going to ration anything. We’re going to give people choices based on science.”

‘Worst-Case Scenario’

The new guidelines would reduce annual mammograms by more than half under a “worst-case scenario,” said Junaid Husain, a Boston-based analyst at Soleil Securities, in a note to investors Nov. 17. Senator Sam Brownback, a Republican of Kansas, said the task force’s recommendations represent the start of an Obama administration plan to ration health care to pay for its overhaul.

“There are other ways to reduce costs,” Brownback said in an interview. Data show that 17 percent of breast-cancer deaths occur in women from ages 40 to 50, he said. Those statistics mean the panel “is effectively saying 17 percent wasn’t high enough to warrant spending the money to save lives.”

Democrats active in supporting the health-care overhaul legislation sought to distance themselves from the panel’s advice. Woolsey said resources will have to be used more efficiently, “but we’re not going to start with women.”

Medical economists said the U.S. will have to prepare itself for these kinds of decisions if it wants to cut health- care costs. Health-care legislation calls for comparative effectiveness research, as a way to determine whether treatments and procedures aren’t being overused.

Political Science

The new guidelines for mammograms are based on the same kind of science that told the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that Merck & Co.’s painkiller Vioxx posed more dangers than benefits. The Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, company withdrew Vioxx in 2004 after studies showed it increased the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

“You wouldn’t want to see every drug approved,” Reinhardt said in an interview. “The FDA makes judgments on what is effective. If the science kills it then you shouldn’t have to get into the politics.”

Americans want low costs, access to all procedures and technological advances without regard to income, all of which can’t co-exist, said Reinhardt, one of 23 economists who urged Obama in a letter Nov. 17 to make sure Congress includes “additional funding for research into what tests and treatments work and which ones do not.”

‘Russian Roulette’

“In this case, the doctors are saying the risks are too high of getting mammograms every year, so why should we use taxpayer money to play Russian roulette,” Reinhardt said.

The breast cancer test suggestions were followed today by guidelines released by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists on cervical cancer. That group said women should begin cervical cancer screenings at age 21 rather than an earlier age, and most women younger than 30 can get the exam every two years instead of annually.

The cervical cancer guidelines were not immediately challenged by the American Cancer Society, women’s groups and other doctors, as the mammogram suggestions were.

Kathleen Sebelius, the U.S. health and human services secretary, said Nov. 18 the recommendations of the task force, which operates under the umbrella of her department, “won’t determine what services are covered by the federal government” and she would be “very surprised if any private insurance company” changed its coverage decisions. The recommendations “have caused a great deal of worry and confusion among women,” she said in her statement.

AARP Support

Sebelius’s department also administers Medicare, the government insurance program for the elderly, which pays about $94 for a mammogram. Obama, praising the House-passed version of health-care legislation on Nov. 7, cited the Washington-based AARP, the advocacy group for retirees, as one of the vital supporters to his cause.

Insurers led by UnitedHealth Group Inc., the top company by sales, said they are maintaining present policies, which generally cover annual breast screening for women older than 40 if ordered by a doctor.

WellPoint Inc., of Indianapolis, Indiana, Aetna Inc., of Hartford, Connecticut, and Philadelphia-based Cigna Corp. joined UnitedHealth in saying they rely on more than the task force’s recommendations in deciding coverage.

‘Close Look’

“What’s happening here is exactly what should be happening: a close look at what the evidence supports and a reminder that this is a decision women need to talk about with their doctors,” said Tyler Mason, a spokesman for Minnetonka, Minnesota-based UnitedHealth.

This week’s debate has devolved into “a whole lot of hype” about women losing coverage, Mason said by telephone. “I don’t know of one health plan nationwide that’s doing anything with their guidelines as a result of this.”

Insurers generally follow the lead of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, a nonprofit alliance of 21 schools that study the disease, Mason said. The Fort Washington, Pennsylvania-based group said in a statement Nov. 16 it would continue to recommend annual mammograms for women starting at age 40.

If insurers are going to cut coverage, they aren’t likely to admit it in the current political environment, as lawmakers consider new restrictions on the industry, said Therese B. Bevers, chairwoman of the network’s panel on breast-screening guidelines and medical director of the Cancer Prevention Center at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

Insurers may find the lower costs of policies without mammograms irresistible, as will small businesses struggling with soaring premiums, Bevers said by telephone. “That’s a huge factor for them,” she said.

Known for Conservatism

The task force is known for its conservatism in recommending procedures, and its statistical analysis may have missed the calculus women make in their own minds, Bevers said.

“If you ask the women in my clinic, most of them would tell you they’d be willing to undergo an unnecessary biopsy so some other woman, not even them, may not die of breast cancer,” she said.

The task force was formed in 1984 to give advice on screening, counseling and preventive medicines based on an impartial assessment of scientific evidence. The panel has been supported by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality since 1998.

Sixteen academic and practicing doctors make up the group, according to the panel’s Web site. They have published guidelines on more than 100 topics and are reviewing 11 more, including cervical cancer screening, preventive medicine for osteoporosis and skin cancer counseling.

2002 Recommendation

The recommendation that 40-year-old women should get mammograms to detect breast cancer was first issued by the task force in 2002 with a grade of ‘B,’ meaning there was “at least fair evidence” that it “improves important health outcomes.”

Health-care policy analyst Henry Aaron said the timing couldn’t be worse.

“This was a scientific recommendation, but at the same time dealing with women’s breasts provokes real sensitivity,” said Aaron, who works at the Brookings Institution, a Washington foundation that does policy research. “I know I heard an earful from my wife at the breakfast table this morning.” [rc]

Alex Nussbaum in New York
E-Mail: anussbaum1@bloomberg.net

Pat Wechsler in New York
E-Mail: pwechsler@bloomberg.net

Nicole Gaouette in Washington
E-Mail: ngaouette@bloomberg.net

Copyright Bloomberg LLC

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BAKU, Azerbaijan / Trend News / World / November 20, 2009

A Mexican once put forward for the title of world's oldest woman has died at 119, government officials said Thursday, AP reported.

Ana Maria Perez died of pneumonia Tuesday at a hospital in the Pacific state of Colima, said Dora Yanez, an official with the Colima state Institute for Attention to the Elderly.

Perez has a valid birth certificate stating she was born June 22, 1890, in western Michoacan state, Yanez told The Associated Press.

State authorities applied about three years ago to have Perez declared the world's oldest woman by the Guinness Book of World Records, but the attempt foundered when officials could not raise enough money for a Guinness judge to visit and confirm the claim, Yanez said.

Yanez said her institute first learned about Perez through her granddaughter. Institute officials were visiting the granddaughter - then 77 - to offer their services. They were shocked when the elderly woman said she had a grandmother who could also use help.

"We said, 'Ay caray! Well, where is your grandmother?'" Yanez said.

Although Perez never got the world title, she received a visit last year from President Felipe Calderon, who awarded her a special recognition.

Gertrude Baines, declared the world's oldest person by Guinness last January, died in September in Los Angeles at 115. Japan's Kama Chinen, 114, now holds that title, according to Gerontology Research Group, which tracks claims of extreme old age.

Guinness says the oldest person ever known with an authenticated birth date was Jeanne-Louise Calment, who was 122 when she died Aug. 4, 1997, in Arles, France.[rc]

© TREND News Agency

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TORONTO, Ontario / The Globe and Mail / Globe Life / November 19, 2009

Facts & Arguments Essay

They had 10 brooms, six mops and expired tins of tomatoes. But emptying their house, I got to know them

By Demetra Samaras
From Thursday's Globe and Mail




My husband and his siblings were still coming to terms with the 2007 death of their father when their mother died last year.

After dealing with their elderly parents' deteriorating health – their father succumbed to the soul-crushing effects of Alzheimer's disease and their mother to the misery of cancer – the thought of cleaning out the house with all its memories was too daunting. So the task fell to my sister-in-law and me.

How do you begin taking apart the household of a couple who were married almost 60 years? My sister-in-law Rosemary, a whiz at organization, took control. With military precision she laid out the plan for sorting through the large back-split home. We'd work from the top down, starting with the bedrooms, the bathrooms, then on to the living room and dining room, the kitchen and then down to the basement. The garage, which contained my father-in-law's workshop and tools, would be left to the men.

My father- and mother-in-law, in true Italian fashion, kept an immaculate household. Everything had its place. Always on top of repairs, they were early adopters of recycling and repurposing, not because it was fashionable but because frugality is what they knew. They threw nothing away.

Maybe it was the poverty they experienced in Italy that made them want to never be without, but my in-laws had multiples of everything. And I mean everything: Ten brooms (six of them brand new); a half-dozen mops (as I said, the house was clean); and enough tape measures, tools and nails to start their own hardware store (each grandchild will be getting a toolbox filled with their nonno's tools).

Every shelf, every nook, was used as storage. We found paint and oil cans dating to the pre-bilingual 1960s, postwar appliances, parts of old vacuum cleaners and more than two dozen tins of whole tomatoes long past their expiry date.

It was as if, despite their prosperous life in Canada, they were always preparing for the flood, the earthquake, the next calamity that might take it all away.

The first weekend of cleaning left me overwhelmed, tired and dirty. I couldn't believe the scale of the task at hand. The master bedroom alone took five hours to clear and that was after my husband's sister had already removed most of the clothing. From the four bedrooms we sent 15 bags of clothes to Goodwill and generated a dozen bags of garbage and recyclables.

As soon as I got home I called my mother. “You have to start cleaning out your house! Now!” I yelled into the phone. I may have sounded hysterical.

“Are you free later so we can go to the Bay?” my mother asked.

“You're not listening,” I said. “I don't want to have to deal with all your stuff too.”

“I know I have too many things,” she said, “but I'm not planning on dying tomorrow.”

Too many things? She had to be kidding. As a retired seamstress, my mother has fabric dating back 40 years, shoes from the seventies that she's kept for her daughters, hoping they would come back into style (they did, for about five minutes, but of course by then they didn't fit my sisters or me) and every towel she's ever purchased since arriving in Canada from Greece almost 50 years ago.

“I'm just giving you a 20-year head start,” I said, “because that's how long it's going to take you to get rid of all your junk.”

I know I'm right in more ways than one. In 20 years I'll be in my 60s. I won't have the same energy to deal with my parents' things that I have today. And I'm not being generous with time either. Longevity runs in my family. My mother's parents are alive and kicking and into their 90s; her grandmother lived to 105. So it's possible I could be in my 80s when I have to deal with my mother's things. Of course, by then my robot housekeeper Rosie will do most of the work.

Four months after we started, my in-laws' house was emptied and scrubbed clean of its former inhabitants. The only reminder of my mother- and father-in-law is the backyard. Their love of gardening will be felt by the new owners as they discover a patch of strawberries just beside the shed. The pear tree, heading into its winter sleep, will erupt with fruit next year. And when it's hot next summer, the grapevine growing over the pergola will provide shade (and grapes).

I'm glad my in-laws' house was full. Had they followed the advice I gave my mother, we would never have found the chest that came with my father-in-law to Canada in 1951, or my husband's baby shoes, or their mortgage discharge papers from 1974. At the end, disease robbed them of their identities. Going through their home helped me get to know them again.

It was only after their house was sold this year that I realized I shouldn't be pushing my mother to empty hers just to make it easier for me and my sisters. Once she and my father are gone – when they are really, really old – sorting through the house will be part of the grieving process. My sisters and I will cry and laugh and reminisce our way through the place. (So many shoes! So many towels!) More tears and laughter when no one takes her ugly dining-room set.

And when the time comes, I promise not to complain. [rc]

Demetra Samaras lives in Toronto.

Illustration by Kate O'Connor.

© Copyright 2009 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc.