Laura Ann

This is the best site that I have found regarding Hospice: www.hospicepatients.org There's alot of good info here. Laura

Jack, May your wonderful memories of 24 years together bring some comfort in this terrible time of unimaginable grief. No one can ever take that away. I am so sorry for the loss of your beautiful wife. Laura

Here is an article that was in the local paper when the judge was first diagnosed. I was surprised to read that he was having brain surgery. I have to wonder if it was really necessary...... Kentucky Supreme Court Justice McAnulty Recovering Following Surgery Brain Surgery performed July 11, 2007 at Jewish Hospital Louisville, KY (July 12, 2007)…Kentucky Supreme Court Justice William E. McAnulty, Jr., underwent brain surgery at Jewish Hospital on Wednesday, July 11. The 59 year-old Justice was diagnosed with lung cancer a little more than two weeks ago, which had also spread to the brain.The surgery, which lasted a little more than one hour, was performed by neurosurgeon Wayne G. Villanueva, M.D. “A ‘gross total resection’ was performed on Justice McAnulty to remove a lesion from the base of the cranium,” said Villanueva. “It was metastasis to the brain from the lung cancer. He came through the surgery extremely well. We moved him to our intensive care unit following surgery, which is normal for this type of procedure. We plan to move him to a regular patient room today.”Following recovery from his July 11 surgery, medical oncologist Jeffrey Hargis will be coordinating planned chemotherapy and radiation therapy. “The next phase of his treatment should be starting later this month,” said Hargis.His wife Kristie said, “We appreciate the kind thoughts and prayers from everyone and are especially thankful for all the support we have received from family and friends. We also want to thank all the wonderful doctors and nurses involved for the great care he is receiving at Jewish Hospital.” McAnulty has four children, two grown children from a previous marriage and two younger children, ages four and 12. The McAnulty family will not be providing media interviews at this time.

This is the best site I found. www.hospicepatients.org Laura

Here is a good place to start: www.hospicepatients.org Hope this helps. Laura

Check and see if your mother's insurance has an annual "maximum out of pocket expense", most insurance policies do. After that amount has been reached, usually insurance pays 100%. Hope this helps. Laura

Obama trying to quit smoking—again By Christi Parsons and Manya Brachear Tribune staff reporters Published February 5, 2007, 9:46 PM CST After struggling to quit smoking in the past, Sen. Barack Obama is trying a cessation aid not available over the counter: public attention. Obama (D-Ill.) resolved to quit his cigarette habit over the winter holidays, just weeks before his expected presidential campaign would make photographers and reporters an even more regular part of his life. He said in a Monday interview that, although he has never been a heavy smoker, he has quit for periods over the last several years but then slipped back into the habit. On the cusp of a potential presidential bid seemed the right time to quit for good, he said. "I've never been a heavy smoker," Obama said. "I've quit periodically over the last several years. I've got an ironclad demand from my wife that in the stresses of the campaign I don't succumb. I've been chewing Nicorette strenuously." The incentive to quit is great for any office seeker, as increasingly negative attitudes about smoking translate into political pressure not to do it—or at least not to be caught doing it publicly. At a time when most willing public figures also are expected to serve as role models, those with unhealthy habits face intense pressure to leave them behind. Americans haven't elected an open and unabashed cigarette smoking president since Franklin D. Roosevelt, though others such as Lyndon Johnson smoked on occasion. The rules seem also to extend to political spouses such as First Lady Laura Bush, who found it necessary to quash her habit, or at least take it underground. In Obama's case, the pressure isn't just political. His wife has always been concerned about his smoking and, over the holidays, according to family friend Valerie Jarrett, the two of them agreed that he "should stop now." "He began the process of quitting over Christmas," Jarrett said. "I have not heard of him smoking over the last several weeks." There's a little hedge room in the time frame, allowing for the possibility that Obama's resolve might have slipped a time or two. Obama didn't clarify the point. Kicking the habit is good for just about any politician's image, said Irving Rein, a Northwestern University communications studies professor and author of "High Visibility," which examines the marketing of celebrities. Attitudes toward smokers have changed dramatically since FDR's triumphal display of his ivory cigarette holder in an era when smoking made a person seem elegant and powerful. Back then, Hollywood glamorized cigarettes almost as fashion accessories. Attitudes had radically changed by the late 1990s, when First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton criticized actress Julia Roberts for portraying a movie character with a compulsive smoking habit. For Obama, it's an especially smart play to grind out his last cigarette, Rein said. "Brand has become so big with personalities. It includes the kind of suit he wears and the shoes he chooses," said Rein. "Smoking is part of that package. It doesn't go with the social, environmental message of reform he would like to project. His image would be impacted by it." Regardless of whether his image has suffered, his lungs most likely have. Longtime friends say Obama was a smoker when he was in his first two years of college at Occidental College in California, from 1979 to 1981. He said Monday that he has never smoked more than 10 cigarettes a day, and usually only four or five. He said the number usually went up when he was either writing or campaigning. He said he isn't using the patch because he worries that they're too strong for him. "I'm not somebody who's all that hooked," he said. "I didn't want more nicotine coming to me than I had been ingesting." While quitting during such a stressful period as a presidential campaign may be difficult, public health advocates count it as a victory for them. "I hope he makes it a public fight," said Mark Peysakhovich of the American Heart Association, who used to lobby Obama on anti-smoking policies and other public health issues when Obama was a member of the Illinois Senate. "If he's got a nic fit and he's in a bad mood, I hope some of that comes out. Maybe it will encourage other people to be brave enough to try." It might even score some political points for Obama, he said. "It could make him more human to people," said Peysakhovich, "if he's got the same kind of struggles the rest of us have."

Terrazzano the 'voice of lung cancer' BY JAMIE TALAN jamie.talan@newsday.com Lung cancer kills more women every year than any other cancer. In 2007, that will mean an estimated 72,000 deaths. One in five of them has never smoked, according to a new study by Stanford University scientists. Still, the continued stigma about lung cancer -- the belief that people are somehow to blame because of the link to tobacco and smoking -- has allowed federal research dollars to lag behind other cancers, said Susan Mantel, executive director of the Manhattan-based Joan's Legacy. And the fact that most people are diagnosed in later stages, she said, means lung cancer patients die sooner and their voices are heard less often. Lauren Terrazzano made her voice heard. Her column, Life, With Cancer, tackled issues of living with the disease, from stingy research funding to how to laugh in the face of pain. "The lung cancer community is really tracking her story," Mantel said Monday. "Not just because she is writing about lung cancer, but she is writing about patients and about bridging the gap between cancers. I get e-mails from people all the time. It makes a tremendous difference." "She has given a voice to lung cancer," said Mantel, whose organization honored Terrazzano for her work. Regina Vidaver, head of the National Lung Cancer Partnership in Madison, Wis., agreed. "It helps immensely. This is a disease that still has a lot of stigma attached to it." Indeed, if 15 percent of 200,000 men and women who develop lung cancer every year have no history of smoking, and 50 percent had a past history but had given up smoking years or decades earlier, "that is a lot of people," Vidaver said. Regardless of someone's smoking habits or history, she said, "Nobody deserves cancer." What's more, a form of lung cancer known as Bronchioloalveolar Carcinoma (BAC) whose incidence is rising worldwide, has no link to smoking, said Dr. Rob McKenna, head of thoracic surgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Women seem to be at increased risk, for unknown reasons, McKenna said. About 20 percent of his patients have BAC. When caught early, most lung cancers respond to available treatments. Still, 60 percent of lung cancer patients die within the first 18 months of the illness. McKenna and others who treat it are trying to spread the word on the importance of screening by diagnostic technique equivalent to mammography for breast cancer. Today, 80 percent of lung cancer patients are diagnosed in the later stages, McKenna said. Earlier screening, whether a chest X-ray or a CAT scan of the lungs, could, according to one study by Weill Cornell Medical Center doctors, reverse that so that 80 percent of cases are diagnosed in earlier, more treatable stages. "We would like to see screening for lung cancer," McKenna said, though his colleagues are embroiled in controversy over whether screening could improve survival rates. The increase of lung cancer in women, some experts say, is parallel to the steady increase in men that was identified decades ago, and has now declined. Women started smoking later than men, and studies show that men stopped smoking sooner -- factors that could account for the increase in women. But that is just part of the story. The Stanford University study, led by Dr. Heather Wakelee, suggests that almost twice as many female lung cancer patients have never smoked, "and we need more research to figure out what is going on," said Wakelee. For more information on lung cancer: Joan's Legacy National Lung Cancer Partnership National Cancer Institute American Lung Association National Cancer Institute Smoking Quitline Lung Cancer Online, founded by Karen Parles, a Long Island woman diagnosed with lung cancer.

Newsday columnist loses battle with cancer Lauren Terrazzano, longtime Newsday reporter and 'Life, With Cancer' columnist dies. She was 39. BY JOE HABERSTROH joe.haberstroh@newsday.com May 16, 2007 Lauren Terrazzano, a tenacious Newsday reporter whose wide-ranging work documented lapses in society's treatment of the elderly and foster children and finally explored her own battle with lung cancer, died late Tuesday night at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan. She was 39. News of Terrazzano's death shortly after 11:30 p.m. rocked the newsroom staff of Newsday, where she had worked since 1996. In a memo to the staff put out Wednesday morning, Newsday editor John Mancini described Terrazzano as a reporter "whose grit and diligence routinely shed light on the stories of those who may not have the means to illuminate readers on their own." Only last month, Terrazzano was honored for her column, Life, With Cancer, by the Society of the Silurians, an organization in New York of veteran journalists. Eve Berliner, chairwoman of the group's awards committee, called the columns "moving and honest, personal, strong and funny." Readers agreed. Dozens responded to her April 10 column where she announced that she had two to three months to live. She denied neither anger nor regrets, but she also pledged to live as normally as possible. She would get up in the morning, go for a walk and try to write. "What matters most is the present moment," she wrote. "Not two to three months. Or two to three years. Or two to three hours. Just now." Since being diagnosed in August, 2004, Terrazzano underwent several surgeries and was her own best health advocate. She battled back from the disease, only to learn that it had returned in March of last year -- just days after returning from her honeymoon with husband Al Baker, a former Newsday reporter who now works for the New York Times. A few months later, she started writing about her illness. "She brought to the column her reporting zeal and an unflinching determination to describe her situation accurately. This doggedness was no news to her doctors," Mancini said. Current and former colleagues, many of whom had attended her wedding last spring in Manhattan, expressed deep sadness. For many of them, Terrazzano was "a big-hearted softie and a hard-boiled detective at the same time," in the words of former Newsday reporter Brian Donovan. Day to day, she was a blunt defender of her copy, a specialist in the journalistic art of wedging one's foot in almost-closed doors, a skilled reporter who used her investigative talent to highlight injustices against the most vulnerable, in particular children. "Lauren was a wonderful reporter and a wonderful person," said Anthony Marro, who was Newsday editor when Terrazzano was hired. "We all knew from the minute she walked into the newsroom just how much passion and tenacity she had. Some of us didn't know until her fight with cancer just how much courage she had." Her final Life, With Cancer column, about a fund-raiser for lung-cancer research, appeared online Tuesday. From the start, the column, like its author, was never to be pigeon-holed. In one column, she took people to task for insensitive comments toward those with cancer; in another, she emoted about a Cheez-Doodle gorge-out after a treatment setback; in still another, she shared her New Year's resolution: "To live." Friends recalled a life-loving woman who did not miss opportunities to travel -- to Cuba, to Spain with her husband, to Central America, where in 2005, during a vacation, she reported on deadly mudslides in Guatemala and took photographs later exhibited at a gallery in Huntington. Closer to home, she relished walks in Central Park, often with the cap of her beloved Boston Red Sox pulled low on her head and her little white dog Bartufalo on the leash. For weeks, readers debated the mutt's lineage (its face suggested a bichon, many wrote, and also possibly, a Wheaten). Her highly personal column represented a departure from her previous work. Her Newsday career had first been marked by her resourceful reporting in the newspaper's Pulitzer-winning coverage of the crash of TWA Flight 800 in July 1996 off the South Shore of Long Island. For 24 hours, she and Baker were the only reporters inside the Coast Guard rescue center at East Moriches. Soon, she became one of the go-to general assignment writers at the newspaper. "She could get anyone to talk to her, whether it was families of victims, learning disabled children, or social services bureaucrats," recalled Miriam Pawel, who hired Terrazzano when she was an assistant managing editor at Newsday. "I think that talent stemmed from two things. She had a fierce, single-minded devotion to writing the best possible story at all times, and she radiated a natural empathy with people that made them trust her to tell their stories. And she never betrayed that trust." Ben Weller, Newsday business editor, noted that Terrazzano frequently was asked "to interview people who've experienced a great loss and many of those people stayed in touch with her over the years. That's a testament to the way she treated them: with concern, respect and dignity." In the newsroom, Terrazzano was the picture of intensity. She spoke in low tones into the telephone receiver glued to her ear, smile flashing with the demands of the assignment, her expressive eyes framed by a swept-over mane of long brown hair that appeared buoyed by its own private gust. All the while she sat cross-legged in her office chair, her feet off the floor. Like many in the trade, she papered an unkempt workstation with world-weary quotes and rude cartoons. One belied her feistiness: "Some Days, It's Hard to Know Who to Hate." Another, more prominently displayed, captured her spirit of high ambition and higher idealism: "The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do." Not infrequently, her stories forced local governments to acknowledge missteps, or prompted readers to offer help to the subjects of her articles. In 2004, not long before her diagnosis, she worked with Newsday reporters Amanda Harris, Dawn MacKeen and Eden Laikin on an investigative series that revealed widespread problems at Long Island's assisted living centers. The series won first place in the "Depth Reporting" category from the New York State Associated Press Association. Legislation to toughen inspections was introduced a month after the series appeared and later that year, then-Gov. George Pataki signed into law the Assisted Living Reform Act. Motivated by what former Newsday Editor Howard Schneider called "a highly calibrated sense of outrage," Terrazzano took few pains to hide her joy when her stories hit their mark. At about time the assisted-living home series' impact became clear, she sought out Schneider. As he recalls the moment, she had a glint in her eye: "A half smile crossed her face. 'We did it,' she said." By the time of the assisted-living series, she had spent years laying the foundation for a beat covering social issues on Long Island. Overloaded county caseworkers, homeless people, kids stuck with abusive parents: These were her subjects. Over time, individuals' tales of trouble knit together in an authoritative portrait of Long Island's have-nots and the often overwhelmed agencies that serve them. "She didn't spend her life writing about celebrities in rehab or rich guys buying oceanfront estates or who won 'American Idol,'" said Alex Martin, a former assistant managing editor at Newsday who now works at the Wall Street Journal. "Instead, Lauren would spend her time in homeless shelters and rooming houses and juvenile detention centers -- all the places where the people who society would rather forget can be found." Terrazzano grew up in Massachusetts, graduating from the high school in Tewksbury. She was the only child of Frank and Virginia Terrazzano, of Hull, Mass., and they survive her. In 1990, Terrazzano earned a bachelor's degree in communications, with a concentration in Italian and art history, from Boston University. She earned a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University in 1994. She took her first reporting job with the Patriot Ledger in Quincy, Mass. From there, she went to Trader's Magazine in New York; then the Daily News in New York for a one-year reporting internship; then to the Record in Hackensack, N.J.; and, in March 1996, to Newsday. Terrazzano and Baker were married March 11, 2006, at the Roman Catholic Church of the Holy Name of Jesus in Manhattan. A reception followed at Columbia University, where Terrazzano worked as an adjunct professor. In March, she and her husband marked their first anniversary with a hike up Bear Mountain, in the state park 50 miles north of New York. Eighteen months earlier, Terrazzano had led 40 of her colleagues and friends up the mountain in a charity walk for cancer research. It was a sunny day of triumph. When she made the hike this year, the weather had cooled and her prognosis had darkened. The steps came slowly. "In a sweep of melodrama," she wrote in her column of March 20, "I sat on a dry log and told them to go on without me. Perhaps the illness had simply taken its toll. But more than two hours later, we did, in fact, make it to the top. The icy, cold top. Victory." Copyright 2007 Newsday Inc.

Nothing can "stop cancer", but not smoking cigarettes can reduce your risk of lung cancer and other smoking related diseases. Laura

fanfan wrote Is this supposed to be a joke?

I looked this up and I think it is important to note that this study was sponsored by the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. Laura

For Snowflake, who gives COURAGE a whole new meaning for me and everyone here. A special thank you to Welthy, Larry, and Nick so I don't have to be on that side of the fence alone . Laura Ann

Mary, What city and state do you live in? Maybe there is someone here who lives near your area and can offer you advise on some local resources. Laura

March 29, 2007 The Tony Snow I Know By Cal Thomas Nobody dislikes Tony Snow. By acclamation, people who know him say the White House press secretary is the most decent, kind and encouraging human being they have ever met. Speaking from personal experience, I can testify not only to his inner warmth and outer kindness, but also to the goodness of his wife, Jill, and their three children. The return of Snow's colon cancer comes only days after Elizabeth Edwards announced the return of her breast cancer. Snow was quick in his warm comments about the wife of the presidential candidate, which came just days before the discovery that cancer had moved to his liver. He can identify with Elizabeth Edwards. At a Jan. 31 dinner for media people in conjunction with the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, Snow revealed his soul to the 100-plus hardened journalists and others in a hotel banquet room. He told us, "In many ways, having cancer was the very best thing that ever happened to me, other than marrying my wife." He said the death of his mother from colon cancer produced a "shadow that follows you." He said he wasn't afraid of dying, but is afraid of leaving his wife and kids. These are human emotions with which everyone can identify, whether or not they have had to deal with a potentially fatal disease. Snow spoke about the importance of "faith and attitude. You have to make a choice about whether you want to live." Speaking of a friend who had cancer in several parts of her body, he said faith and attitude are not decisive in whether you will live, "but they certainly are a great help, because those who give up, or give in to self-pity about how awful things are, a lot of times they don't make it." He said the disease caused him to ask where he would go with faith: "For a lot of us as kids, having faith is like sitting on Santa's lap; you pray because you want things and you want outcomes. But instead when you're faced with death, you don't really die, you get to go to a cooler place with maybe a sterner teacher. It's not that big a leap and you're going to see a lot of friends there." Now there's a sermon! So, how do you approach God, he wondered? Do you ask for favors, or do you do something that is very hard in the modern era, "which is learn how to give yourself to God, to surrender. It's not just saying 'God, it's in your hands,' but understanding whatever may come afterwards is a matter of not trying to get God to do stuff for you, except maybe to mow down some of the barriers that separate you from God, because for all of us, our vanities get in the way." Snow says his deepening faith didn't happen overnight. It began with realizing "how many people loved me." He said a lot of life is figuring out you're not in charge and figuring out who is. He started to pray, he said, and began to sense a growing presence of God in his life. He said after his first cancer surgery many people sent him letters that included Bible verses. Among his favorites was Psalm 91:2-3: "I will say of the Lord, 'He is my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust. Surely he will save you from the fowler's snare and from the deadly pestilence.'" After his first cancer surgery, Snow said he had to stay in bed and he began reading the Bible more, "learning to pray" and to ask God to "draw me closer, please, (which) develops a hunger that is also a form of joy." He said colleagues frequently ask him what he will do after the White House? He says he might have had an answer before, but now he has no clue. "I put everything in God's hands." President Bush asked the country to pray for Tony. It was the right request. Knowing Tony Snow, he would also ask for prayers for his wife and children and, oh yes, for Elizabeth Edwards and her husband. One thing Tony is not is stingy in his love for God and for others. He is an authentic Christian in faith and in works. CalThomas@tribune.com