Happy Things

[RVInit]

[Foggy]

[sugar magnolia]

Sugar, lovely to hear your good news. Too often we have had bad news from you, poor thing! What is the device please? It's not applicable to me personally but I'm curious because a friend of mine also had a double mastectomy some years ago and has lymphedema annoyance especially in the arm where a large number of lymph nodes were removed. She often wears a compression garment of some sort, but I wonder if these machines offer extra relief?

I'll move into the compression sleeve when my PT is happy with my arm measurements. Mine is also a result of having most of the nodes removed during the surgery. The cancer had already spread to several of them so out they came. It has basically affected my entire left side so I have a wrap that goes around my chest and upper back and across my shoulder. I don't have a lot of pain except from the nerve damage from the surgery. Lymphedema isn't something you can actually feel as far as I know.

I think it's just called a lymphedema pump. I tried to look them up to give you an example, but none of the ones I can find look like mine.

[Sam the Centipede]

Thanks, I'll look around. Lymphedema definitely seems unpleasant and painful but when the alternative is not breathing one has to suck it up

Modern medicine is marvelous but perhaps in ten, twenty, thirty years' time they'll have techniques or therapies which avoid this nasty complication of the surgery. I hope so.

[sugar magnolia]

Thanks, I'll look around. Lymphedema definitely seems unpleasant and painful but when the alternative is not breathing one has to suck it up

Modern medicine is marvelous but perhaps in ten, twenty, thirty years' time they'll have techniques or therapies which avoid this nasty complication of the surgery. I hope so.

People who start the manual drainage immediately after surgery rarely develop it, but few surgeons are aware of it and usually wait until a patient develops it, by which time it is a bear to manage. I've never had any pain from it and no breathing problems either. Maybe I got off lighter than I thought.

Manual drainage and brushing are two relatively recent therapies, and they can also do node transfers or by-passes. Neither of which I'm interested in because it requires more surgery. Same reason I never got new boobs.

[raison de arizona]

Congrats Sugar!

[AndyinPA]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyl ... g-vincent/

There was something special about the green and burgundy striped vase selling for $3.99 at Goodwill that Jessica Vincent couldn’t put her finger on. She didn’t pick it up immediately, but circled back and planned to buy it — just as long as it wasn’t too expensive at $8 or $9.

After she bought it earlier this year from the store in Hanover County, Va., Vincent was curious about the small “M” mark on the bottom of the vase, and suspected it was made in Murano, an Italian island near Venice that is known for its high-end glass.

“It was so big and it stood out to me with its color, but I didn’t know what it was,” Vincent, 43, told The Washington Post on Monday. “I liked it and it was different, and I knew it would be part of my collection.”

But when the lifelong thrift-store shopper did some research, Vincent was stunned after she realized what she had purchased: An ultrarare piece from renowned Venetian architect Carlo Scarpa.

Months after the vase bought for a few bucks was officially identified as being part of Scarpa’s 1940s “Pennellate” series, the piece sold for $107,100 to an unidentified private art collector in Europe last week.

[RTH10260]

‘I knew nothing’: the Warsaw ghetto boy who found his family at 83
A DNA test has helped Shalom Koray find relatives in the US after escaping the Holocaust in a rucksack at the age of two

Daniel Boffey Chief reporter
Sat 27 Jan 2024 06.00 CET

In 1943, a two-year-old boy found wandering the streets of the Warsaw ghetto at the height of the Jewish uprising was smuggled out in a rucksack, probably by a police officer.

The identity of the child could not be known. There was no one to attest even to a first name. His early life would be spent hidden away in orphanages, still not safe from antisemitic persecution, and without any real understanding of what it was to have a parent.

Five months ago, that same boy, now 83, discovered a family thanks to the desire of an American woman to trace her ancestry, the curiosity of a Polish academic about the plight of those orphaned by the Holocaust, and an advance in DNA technology that has made the dogged efforts of a researcher possible.

Shalom Koray, the name the boy was given at the age of eight on emigrating to Israel in 1949, will this summer meet for the first time a blood relative beyond that of his own three children and eight grandchildren: Ann Meddin Hellman, 77, a cousin from Charleston, South Carolina.

It might be said to represent a defeat, however small, for the hate that destroyed so many futures, the consequences of which are being marked on Saturday’s Holocaust Memorial Day – the 79th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.



https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/ ... t-survivor

[RTH10260]

Sweet 116: town throws birthday bash for America’s oldest person
Parade honors Edie Ceccarelli, who says the secret to her longevity is a little red wine and minding her own business

Maanvi Singh in Willits, California
Tue 6 Feb 2024 13.00 CET

In the small, northern California town of Willits, the birthday of Edie Ceccarelli – the oldest person in the US – has become a bit of a holiday.

Well into her 100s, she would throw herself huge birthday parties at a local events hall, or at a senior center – and invite the whole town. But for the past few years, the town has taken over, organizing a parade in her honor.

On Sunday, for Ceccarelli’s 116th birthday party, a winter storm in the region had closed highways and felled trees. But the rain eased just in time.



https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... -turns-116

[AndyinPA]

[Annrc]

[RTH10260]

Lengthy story, read full article

Mom's love helps woman wake from coma after 5 years
Jennifer Flewellen was in a life-threatening car accident in 2017.

ByKatie Kindelan via logo
February 16, 2024, 10:04 AM

Doctors told Peggy Means her daug...Show More
Jennifer Flewellen was driving to work on Sept. 25, 2017, when her life changed forever.

Flewellen, then 35, had just dropped her three young sons off at school when she became lightheaded while on the phone with her husband, according to her mom Peggy Means.

"She just veered off the road and she hit a pole, and from there, everything changed," Means told "Good Morning America." "I was at work ... and the phone just kept ringing and I answered, and she'd had an accident."

Means said she and Flewellen's then-husband rushed to the hospital, where they learned Flewellen was injured and in serious condition after the accident.

Flewellen, whose kids were in elementary school at the time, was quickly transported to a larger hospital, where she was placed on life support and put in a medically-induced coma.



https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Wellness/mom ... =106610493

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

Wow!

[John Thomas8]

A dad and daughter sharing a laugh:

[AndyinPA]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... n-new-york

A New York City medical school plans to be tuition-free for students after a $1bn donation from a wealthy donor.

The Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx borough received the sizable donation from Dr Ruth Gottesman, a 93-year-old former professor at the school, the New York Times first reported on Monday.

“I’m happy to share with you that starting in August this year, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine will be tuition free,” Gottesman announced to rapturous applause in a video posted to X on Monday.

While teaching at Einstein, Gottesman developed new diagnostic modalities and treatments for children with learning disabilities. She also ran an adult literacy program.

The donation is among the largest to date for an educational institution in the US, the Times reported.

Gottesman received the money from her late husband, David Gottesman, who went by Sandy, the Times reported.

[raison de arizona]

Dressed in the trademark red and white polka dots, more than two dozen women representing the iconic Rosie the Riveter received recognition with a Congressional Gold Medal for working on the homefront in shipyards and factories during World War II.

[AndyinPA]

Much-needed post today! Thanks.

[raison de arizona]

Be the change.

Sometimes that's all it takes...

[raison de arizona]

Faith in Humanity Restored!!

[RTH10260]

Missouri woman who served 43 years in prison is free after her murder conviction was overturned

BY HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH AND JIM SALTER
Updated 3:22 AM CEST, July 20, 2024

CHILLICOTHE, Mo. (AP) — A woman whose murder conviction was overturned after she served 43 years of a life sentence was released Friday, despite attempts in the last month by Missouri’s attorney general to keep her behind bars.

Sandra Hemme, 64, left a prison in Chillicothe, hours after a judge threatened to hold the attorney general’s office in contempt if they continued to fight against her release. She reunited with her family at a nearby park, where she hugged her sister, daughter and granddaughter.

“You were just a baby when your mom sent me a picture of you,” she said. “You looked just like your mamma when you were little and you still look like her.”

Her granddaughter laughed. “I get that a lot.”

Hemme had been the longest-held wrongly incarcerated woman known in the U.S., according to her legal team at the Innocence Project. The judge originally ruled on June 14 that Hemme’s attorneys had established “clear and convincing evidence” of “actual innocence” and he overturned her conviction. But Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey fought her release in the courts.

“It was too easy to convict an innocent person and way harder than it should have been to get her out, even to the point of court orders being ignored,” her attorney Sean O’Brien said. “It shouldn’t be this hard to free an innocent person.”




https://apnews.com/article/sandra-hemme ... bf0408dc5d

[RTH10260]

Six-year-old abducted from California park in 1951 found alive after seven decades
Niece locates her uncle Luis Armando Albino living on other side of the country after search sparked when she took online DNA test ‘just for fun’

Associated Press
Mon 23 Sep 2024 05.18 CEST

A man who was abducted as a six-year-old while playing in a California park in 1951 has been found more than seven decades later thanks to the help of an online ancestry test, old photos and newspaper clippings.

The Bay Area News Group reported on Friday that Luis Armando Albino’s niece in Oakland – with assistance from police, the FBI and the justice department – located her uncle living on the US east coast.

Albino, a father and grandfather, is a retired firefighter and Marine Corps veteran who served in Vietnam, according to his niece, 63-year-old Alida Alequin. She found Albino and reunited him with his California family in June.

On 21 February 1951 a woman lured the six-year-old Albino from the park in West Oakland, where he had been playing with his older brother, and promised him in Spanish that she would buy him candy.

Instead, the woman kidnapped the Puerto Rico-born boy, flying him to the east coast, where he ended up with a couple who raised him as if he were their own son, the news group reported. Officials and family members didn’t say where on the east coast he lives.

For more than 70 years, Albino remained missing but he was always in the hearts of his family and his photo hung at relatives’ houses, his niece said. His mother died in 2005 but never gave up hope that her son was alive.

Oakland police acknowledged that Alequin’s efforts “played an integral role in finding her uncle” and that “the outcome of this story is what we strive for”.


https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... land-found

[AndyinPA]

[RVInit]

It's a bit dusty here in my house.

[neonzx]

What a great ending to a long story!

[AndyinPA]

https://wapo.st/4eJZBvA Gifted

The table was set. The pastries arranged. A white tablecloth dangled placidly in the early morning mist, surrounded by 12 golden-hued high-backed chairs.

Five decades ago, a dozen friends gathered here, on the National Mall, for breakfast. They wore morning coats and floor-length dresses, dined on oysters, drank champagne and danced together as a string quartet played in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial.

The extravagant scene on July 19, 1974, drew in a Washington Post photographer, who captured the moment in an image that would ricochet around the country in newspaper reprints.

But the people and circumstances at the center of that famous picture remained a mystery to those who admired it, bought it, hung it on their office walls. They didn’t know who those young people were or why they had gathered for such an ornate affair near the Reflecting Pool. They didn’t know that the specter of death had loomed over the rousing celebration or that the people at its center would go on to have a hand in many pivotal facets of American life — the civil rights movement, gender equity in schools, advocacy for blind and disabled people.