Posts in Health

East End Hospice Turns Bereavement Support Group Toward COVID-19

In my 10 years of reporting, this is one of the most heartbreaking stories I have ever experienced.

I cried over and over again writing it. My editor cried reading it.

As I’ve learned, the bereavement and trauma coming out of the COVID-19 crisis is unprecedented, but the stories of loss are eerily similar, marked by a sudden illness and a rapid decline — their family and friends left behind in the chaos.

To Maribeth Edmonds, and Lauren and Eileen Weinclawski, the way in which you shared your stories, with such raw honesty and openness, was staggering. You will help others understand the weight of this pandemic, opening their eyes and hearts to a world that is impossible to understand — unless you’ve lived it.

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Out of the Darkness, And Into the Light: Beloved Director Breaks Silence on Health Struggles

It was three days after the final performance of his March 2018 production, “Beauty and the Beast,” at Southampton Cultural Center that Michael Disher first met with a neurologist about the loss of sensation in his left arm. The director had assumed it was a pinched ulnar nerve, and would ultimately correct itself.

He never imagined it would be a malignant brain tumor the size of a baseball.

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GREEN GOLD: Farmers and Health Professionals See Benefits of CBD

As part of a state-funded pilot program, David Falkowski planted his first crop in 2017, yielding a couple thousand pounds of cannabis to help him produce cannabidiol products, or CBD — a chemical compound, or cannabinoid, found in hemp extract that has witnessed a dramatic growth in sales over the past five years, marking the end of the prohibition of cannabis and the birth a $1-billion industry.

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B. Smith, Dan Gasby Pen Honest, Revealing Account Of Their Struggle With Alzheimer’s

In 2013, B. Smith was diagnosed at age 64 with Alzheimer’s disease, a brain disease that slowly destroys memory and thinking skills and, eventually, the ability to carry out simple tasks. Of the 5.2 million people living with Alzheimer’s today, two out of three are women, and African-Americans are twice as likely to suffer from the disease.

Ms. Smith and her husband, Dan Gasby, spoke candidly about how they would proceed, and one decision was certain: it would be in the public eye, as her life had been thus far. She would be a spokesperson for all Americans struggling with Alzheimer’s, but especially for black women.

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