What Makes the End-of-Life Experience Peaceful?

HealthDay – 4 hrs ago MONDAY, July 9 (HealthDay News) -- Dying patients face their final days better if they are not in the hospital, not on a feeding tube or chemotherapy and feel that they have a trusting relationship with their doctor, a new survey of terminally ill cancer patients reveals.

Other factors that helped them find peace in the end, the survey showed, were prayer, meditation, a pastor's visit and freedom from excessive worry or anxiety.

The survey involved about 400 U.S. patients with advanced cancer who were told they had less than six months to live, and their closest caregiver, usually a spouse. The cancer patients, whose average age was 59, were surveyed an average of four months before they died. Their caregivers were then surveyed about the end-of-life experience.

Several factors determined how the patients and their caregivers rated their quality of life at the end. Among the most important: not dying in the intensive care unit or hospital; not having to endure aggressive, life-prolonging treatments at the end, such as feeding tubes or chemotherapy; and feeling their doctor saw them as a whole person and treated them with respect, said lead study author Holly Prigerson, director of the Center for Psychosocial Epidemiology and Outcomes Research at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

"What the results suggest is that attention to patients' psychosocial needs, their spiritual needs, their comfort, their worries, their need to not be abandoned by their health care team and to feel valuable and significant are the things that matter most to the patients and their families," Prigerson added.

"It's not . . . how much chemo or what procedures are performed or heroics. In fact, it's the opposite. It's the human connection that seemed to be the most important

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YoArt Makes New York City Debut at The Plaza Food Hall

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2012Frozen Yogurt Boutique Offers Guests an Upscale DIY Experience.

New York, NY (1888PressRelease) June 06, 2012 - Memorial Day weekend marked the grand opening of YoArt, the newest shop to open in The Plaza Food Hall. YoArt is a frozen yogurt boutique where guests can taste various flavors before they pick up a cup and create their own edible masterpieces.

YoArt at The Plaza Food Hall offers 12 flavors including non-fat/low-fat flavors, a no-sugar- added option, a sorbet, an original tart, a Greek yogurt and Eloise Strawberry, an exclusive Food Hall flavor in honor of The Plaza's favorite guest. Most flavors are gluten-free and all are teeming with four strains of probiotics, which help maintain a healthy digestive system. YoArt also offers over 90

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Botswana makes new pitch for circumcision in AIDS fight

"A board promotes male circumcision in a public area in Gaborone, Botswana. Three years ago Botswana launched a drive to convince 460,000 men -- about one quarter of the national population -- to cut off their foreskins. (AFP Photo/Monirul Bhuiyan)" title

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Anti-AIDS pill makes cash sense for some gays: study

Anti-AIDS pill makes cash sense …

Gay men who have five or more sex partners per year are part of a high-risk group that could benefit from a daily pill to ward off HIV, said a cost-benefit analysis by US researchers on Monday.

The study by experts at Stanford University, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, looked at the costs involved with prescribing a $26 a day pill to men who have sex with men.

The pill, Truvada (tenofovir-emtricitabine), was shown in a landmark 2010 trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine to prevent HIV infections in as many as 73 percent of gay men who took it regularly.

Gay men account for the more than half of the 56,000 new cases yearly of human immunodeficiency virus in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

However, questions have been raised about whether it would make financial sense to recommend that large populations of gay men take a daily pill as prevention, or a technique known as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP).

"Promoting PrEP to all men who have sex with men could be prohibitively expensive," said Jessie Juusola, a PhD candidate in management science and engineering in the Stanford School of Engineering and first author of the study.

"Adopting it for men who have sex with men at high risk of acquiring HIV, however, is an investment with good value that does not break the bank."

Prescribing the pill generally to men who have sex with men in the United States would cost $495 billion over 20 years, but targeting those at highest risk only would bring costs down to $85 billion, said the study.

Looking out over the next two decades, researchers calculated a total of 490,000 new infections if PrEP is not used.

But if 20 percent of gay men take the pill daily, there would be nearly 63,000 fewer infections.

And if just 20 percent of high-risk men took the drug, 41,000 new infections would be prevented over 20 years at a cost of about $16.6 billion.

Researchers used a measure of how long people live and their quality of life, valued at $50,000 per year, versus the average costs of the pill and doctor visits totaling about $10,000 per year.

"However, even though it provides good value, it is still very expensive," added Juusola.

"In the current health-care climate, PrEP's costs may become prohibitive, especially given the other competing priorities for HIV resources, such as providing treatment for infected individuals."

Previous research has found the pill as prevention would not make financial sense if taken for life, but the Stanford team said its formula differed because it presumed just a 20-year period of pill-taking.

Truvada is currently available as a treatment for people with HIV in combination with other anti-retroviral drugs.

Drug maker Gilead Sciences Inc. of California has filed a supplemental new drug application to market it for prevention purposes.

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Anti-AIDS pill makes cash sense for some gays: study

"Gay men who have five or more sex partners per year are part of a high-risk group that could benefit from daily pill Truvada to ward off HIV, said a cost-benefit analysis by US researchers on Monday. (AFP Photo/Justin Sullivan)" title

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From One Direction to Hanson: What makes a boy band a boy band?

Mad Men’: Choose your own adventureHarper’s: Don’t eat this magazineKim Jong Il painter Song Byeok to exhibit in D.C.Entries By CategoryAboutJacqueline TrescottJazzNational Endowment for the Artsnational endowment for the humanitiesStories By DateFull Monthly Archive Posted at 02:25 PM ET, 03/22/2012TheWashingtonPostBy Maura Judkis

Backstreet may not be back, but the boy band trend certainly is, with British group One Direction’s new album debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard charts. But when the Style team was putting together Thursday’s package about the return of the boy band, there was some debate over who would be included in the photo gallery chronicling the genre below.

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‘Friends With Kids’: A comedy that makes marriage post-kids look tragic

Dad Test’ campaignTechnology’s benefits for teens vs. YouTube fights, cyber-harassment, webcam spyingD.C. public schools: Lottery results reveal a new set of popular kidsMaclaren files for bankruptcy and a stereotype goes down with itStories By DateFull Monthly Archive Posted at 10:58 AM ET, 03/09/2012By Janice D'Arcy

After seeing a new comedy ostensibly about parenting that opens today in the region, I propose a new movie rating: RPK or Restricted to adults Post-Kids.

“Friends With Kids” is hilarious for viewers who have already survived the harrowing first years of parenthood and, if married, have remained so. For those married folk who haven’t had kids and plan to some day, it might be better considered as a horror flick. Or birth control.

The story premise is that marriage, kids and happiness cannot all existence together, at least not for a few years. The trailer is here:

The movie’s two main characters, one portrayed by Jennifer Westfeldt who wrote and directed the film, witness their closest friends try to juggle their kids and their marriages. It scares the bejesus out of them.

The best and worst part of this scenario is that it’s a pretty honest depiction. These couples have every cultural advantage and they still strain terribly under the pressure. No amount of money, education and wit can save them from insomniac bickering.

Overall, the movie reminded me of the day I, fully pregnant at the time, approached a mother overseeing two kids and asked if she had any advice for an about-to-be-new mom.

The mother looked at me with two earnest, pleading, bagged eyes. “It’s hard on the marriage,” she said. “It’s hard to be nice to each other when neither of you is sleeping.”

Gulp.

Now, imagine you’re pregnant or plan to be and sitting through a two-hour version of that answer.

Without giving away too much, the movie follows our heroes as they experiment with a novel child-rearing approach designed to circumvent the marriage-sucking burdens of the traditional love-marriage-baby path.

Last week, I joined Westfeldt, who does not have children and has been in a long-term relationship with Mad Men’s Jon Hamm — who also stars in the movie and gives a particularly sobering depiction of post-kid married life — for a Q&A after a screening of the movie.

She was asked by a member of the audience if she plans to have kids.

“We don’t know. We don’t really don’t know. We love kids. We love our friends’ kids. Our lives are so crazy …. That might happen. I don’t know,” she said, her voiced trailing off.

What do you think if the “Friends With Kids” premise? Is it honest or is it too cynical to suggest that the notion of romantic love has to take a back seat to kids, at least for a few years?

Related Content:

Going Out Guide Critic Review: ‘Friends With Kids’

“Marriage Confidential”: Is parenting killing our marriages?

Parents describe sex life as ‘Bored to Death’ in Web forum: Reasons to rethink Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day: Parents should celebrate, no matter how busy their schedules

By Janice D'Arcy 

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Huggies makes a mess with its new ‘Dad Test’ campaign

Technology’s benefits for teens vs. YouTube fights, cyber-harassment, webcam spyingD.C. public schools: Lottery results reveal a new set of popular kidsMaclaren files for bankruptcy and a stereotype goes down with itWhat parents can learn when a child is rejected from schoolStories By DateFull Monthly Archive Posted at 07:00 AM ET, 03/08/2012By Janice D'Arcy

The diaper giant Huggies has made a mess this week by rolling out an advertising campaign that portrays fathers as hapless and helpless in the face of a child’s needs.

The campaign, called “The Dad Test,” comes with this tag line: “To prove that Huggies diapers and wipes can handle anything, we put them to the toughest test imaginable: Dads, alone with their babies, in one house, for five days.”

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