Much as you don’t want anyone to have to go, but I do love to hear the success stories from people’s encounters with modern medicine.
This young lady, for example, lost four fingers in a car crash. Now she has a working hand again. Three decades ago this was only television and a sound effect, but she may still be playing softball:
Two weeks ago, Higdon received a $112,000 myoelectric prosthetic hand that will enable her to do many of the things she did before.
She’s already learned how to pick up a cup and pick up a softball – a sport near and dear to her heart, and she’s eager to learn how to do more.
Higdon and her mother said they’re thankful for the opportunity she’s been given by the generosity of the Inner Wheel USA Foundation, a Rotary affiliate that has picked up most of the tab for the advanced prosthetic hand.
“My insurance paid next to nothing on this,” said Higdon’s mother, Judie Cummings.
Naturally there is video:
Speaking of hospitals, a new law shows you which ones to watch out for:
The law also honors the memory of Denton’s son, Mike, who died at age 42 from an infection acquired after knee surgery in 2002.
Mike Denton never really healed after that surgery, his father said; he would eventually spend seven weeks at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital before he died.
“It was a traumatic experience, to say the least,” Denton said from his home recently. “At least we got to be with him that long. They never could turn it around.”
The experience moved Denton to sponsor legislation to require Alabama’s hospitals to collect and report healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). The Alabama Department of Public Health is responsible for analyzing the data and making the results available to the public.
“It ought to give the public information that they should know about the track record of infectious diseases in the facilities,” Denton said.
First they came for the money and electronics. And then they came for the copper. And now … I try to attach some larger meaning, some economic indicator, to stories like these
Missouri Farm Bureau president Blake Hurst says thieves are actually targeting those big bundles of hay that are left out in fields prior to being harvested, hauling them off and selling the valuable commodity.
“Of course, no one brands their hay so if you hook onto it with your tractor or your pickup and make it out the gate, then it’s impossible to prove where the hay came from,” Hurst said.
With winter approaching and grass dying out, the price for fresh hay to feed livestock is on the rise, and Hurst says that makes unguarded bales a tempting target.
Of course, without hay being branded in some way, it is also only a matter of time until someone commits hay fraud.
You might have noticed the story of the New York police officer Lawrence DePrimo giving shoes to the homeless man. Well, turns out that Jeffrey Hillman isn’t homeless. (Don’t worry. He didn’t build that.)
Also, he’s shoeless again. All weather shoes get in the way of panhandling, you know:
Mr. Hillman, 54, was by turns aggrieved, grateful and taken aback by all the attention that had come his way — even as he struggled to figure out what to do about it.
“I was put on YouTube, I was put on everything without permission. What do I get?” he said. “This went around the world, and I want a piece of the pie.”
God bless America.
