Free Republic

When Rick Perry jumped into the race, many of us expected his skill at retail politicking to swamp the field in Iowa and perhaps run away with the nomination. Instead, a series of debate blunders and a lack of engagement in Iowa produced a stalled campaign struggling in the second tier. Perry admits that a back surgery in July took a bigger toll on his campaign than previously acknowledged, but that’s no excuse for the errors: ______________________________________________________ Q: How is your back? A: My back is great. I’m back running again for the last six weeks. I think part of...

Silicone implants that enlarge the buttocks sound risque, but they're also illicit and potentially deadly. A woman accused of offering just that service was recently arrested in a downtown D.C. hotel, according to court records. Federal authorities say women wanted 45-year-old Kimberly Smedley to give them injections of liquid silicone to "increase the size and shape" of their buttocks. Smedley usually performed the injections in hotel rooms and was arrested on Oct. 11 at the JW Marriott near 14th Street NW and Pennsylvania Avenue, according to an application for a search warrant to search items she had with her when...

Please pray for my wife as she is having surgery today to repair a blocked ureter as a result of a botched c-section.

The bizarre rant from Illinois congressman Joe Walsh came after he was grilled during an informal surgery in a bar about the lack of regulation which ultimately allowed banks to bet against their own customers. Cutting off the man, the father-of-five yelled: 'I am tired of hearing that c**p. Don't blame the banks... that p***** me off.'

Father of all Glory; we ask for Your Favor and Care for Your Dear Daughter Kitty Mittens. Lord shine Your Face on her during surgery tomorrow, instill Your Skill and Tenderness in the surgeon's hand, speedily heal all evasive wounds, comfort and alleviate all pain, fill her with Your Love and Grace and convict her of how much she is loved by all the brethren. Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge. I say to the LORD, “You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.” As for the saints in the land, they are...

My wife is getting ready to have surgery. She is having 3 bladder stones removed. This is normally a simple procedure, but as many of you know my wife is a paraplegic. Because she had bladder reconstructive surgery about 15 years ago it is a bit more involved than normal. Besides, being her 15th time going under has made her more apprehensive about surgery's any more. Considering how anything can and does happen, I would appreciate some prayers for her. I am sure it will all go off without any problems, but prayers can never hurt. The who procedure...

A hospital in Shanghai was caught on fire, doctors and nurses all left the building, safe and sound, but a patient undergoing an amputation surgery was left on the operation table and died of asphyxiation. Spokesman of the hospital later confirmed the news. When the fire happened, doctors are performing an amputation operation. The patient, around 49 year-old, was sent hospital after a car accident. The operation began around 8 pm and was about to be finished when the fire happened. 6 doctors and nurses were in the operation room at the time. When they realized the next room was...

The National Health Service in England is increasingly rationing standard operations that patients may have normally taken for granted — in a move that worries bioethicists in the United States. A new report in The Independent reveals how hip replacements, cataract surgery and tonsil removal are among the many operations that two-thirds of health trusts in England are now putting on a “non-urgent” list in an attempt to help save the government-run health care program $20 billion over the next four years. The newspaper reveals one third of health trusts have already expanded the list of rationed procedures in the...

Te NHS has begun rationing common surgical procedures such as hip replacements and cataracts removal in an effort to save money, it was revealed yesterday. New figures have found one in three Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) in England are reducing access to treatment for “non-urgent” operations. Examples of rationing include knee operations only being allowed to go ahead where patients are in severe pain, overweight patients being made to lose weight prior to procedures, and cataract patients being denied treatment until their sight problems seriously affect their ability to work.

GLENDALE, Calif. (AP) -- Police say a Southern California man stuck a butter knife into his belly in a failed bid at self-surgery to remove a painful hernia. Glendale police Sgt. Tom Lorenz says officers called to the 63-year-old man's home Sunday night found him naked on an outside patio lounge chair with a 6-inch butter knife sticking out of his stomach.

A PIONEERING new form of keyhole surgery will be used to save the lives of dozens of unborn babies every year, Scotland on Sunday can reveal. The remarkable technique involves a 'fetoscope' about the width of three grains of sugar which is used to internally examine babies while they are still in the womb. The resulting images will allow Scottish doctors to perform surgical and other procedures on fetuses - many of whom would otherwise die - from as little as 24 weeks' gestation. At this point, the fetus would fit in the palm of an adult man's hand and...

The Canadian Council of Muslim Women (CCMW) plans to investigate just how common it is for women to have their hymens repaired. "I am hoping to do this research, but now it is just in the initial stages," Alia Hogben, executive director of the CCMW, said. On Thursday, QMI Agency reported a story about Dr. Dimitrois Giannoulias of Toronto, who performs the surgery. Giannoulias has a private clinic and performs the surgery for women who have arranged marriages in the Middle East, where brides need to be virgins or they can face severe consequences. When he was contacted again, he...

CAST YOUR VOTE for the recipient of our 2nd Annual GIVE BACK WEEK taking place September 12-17, 2011! Our goal is to raise $15,000 by way of a silent auction, a donation from Ashka and a Beauty-A-Thon all taking place that week. The following causes have been recommended by our Team Members and we need your help in determining the recipient! Scroll down to view the candidates for this year. Voting can be done at the bottom of this page and will close June 20, 2011.

In a grueling, 20-hour operation, a 30-member surgical team under the leadership of Dr. Bohdan Pomahac at Brigham and Women's Hospital performed a full face and double hand transplant....

Note from: Mrs. Chief Engineer PLEASE PRAY FOR CHIEF ENGINEER WHO UNDERWENT SURGERY AT THE HUNTSMAN HOSPITAL in Salt Lake AT 9;45 am today to remove his voice box which cancer had spread and replace the voice box with an artificial one. He believes he will be home in two weeks while Mrs Chief believes he will begin speech therapy and learn how to eat again. He has not been able to speak at all since this past April and hasn’t been able to eat since last year having had a feeding tube and using a special dose of Glucerna.

... and I wanted any tips anyone has for the first few days of recovery. I know the foot has a lot of nerves in it and I am worried about the pain. I have visited "Dr. Google" and people recovering from the same surgery mention the word AGONY a lot. Mama wants to minimize the pain for her kid! He is 14, the surgery is to remove an accessory navicular bone that has grown on his foot in the last two years and since he is a competitive athlete, it's causing him a lot of pain. So he really...

New York - A representative for Mary Tyler Moore says the veteran sitcom star will have surgery to remove a brain tumor. Spokeswoman Alla Plotkin says Moore's doctors recommended the elective procedure after monitoring the tumor for some time. Plotkin did not say when the surgery would take place. It would remove a meningioma (meh-NIN'-jee-OH'-muh), a slow-growing tumor in the membranes that cover the brain. Meningiomas usually occur in older adults and are mostly benign.

A 7-year-old girl named Samantha Shaw got plastic surgery because her mother feared bullies. The young girl has cup ears that protruded, and one of which also exhibited the condition known as lop ear. Did the family go too far? The little girl had been teased over her ears, and her parents finally decided that surgery to 'fix' the issue was the only solution. The procedure is called otoplasty where the ears are pinned back. This is extreme at such a young age, and going under the knife is not exactly completely safe. There are many complications that can occur,...

In Washington, D.C., a culture that embraces regulatory oversight and rule-making and where bureaucracies are everywhere, no federal agency is more warren-like than the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates the safety and efficacy of food, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and medical devices. The health and well-being of every American depends on the FDA's rigorous collecting, sifting and interpreting of data to approve products ranging from those that cure nail fungus to devices that electronically zap the brain to relieve anxiety. FDA regulators are scientist bureaucrats who tirelessly navigate the tedious but essential world between reports and medicine in a poorly lit...

A hospital in China has sewn the left foot of a patient on to his right leg in a bid to save both the foot itself and his left limb. The patient, named as Mr Ma, had the surgery in Zhengzhou, in central China, following a work accident two weeks ago which badly damaged his left leg. It appears that doctors felt that the infected wound in the leg would have ultimately led to amputating the foot and leaving the limb 7in shorter - so decided to make their radical decision. They decided to attach the left foot to the...

Several times a month I find myself delivering bad news to a patient: “You have diabetes.” The follow-up isn’t much better. The patient asks how to make it go away, and my response, often with a wistful sigh, is: “Right now, there’s nothing.” But that’s not quite the case any longer. Evidence is accumulating that bariatric surgery—an extreme measure for the very obese that involves reducing the size of the stomach to promote weight loss—may “cure” diabetes.

Dr. Victor Grigoriev had good news for Georganne Mumm's worried family when he emerged from the operating room. The surgery was a success, Mumm says he told her family. He had removed her cancerous kidney and her outlook was good. Mumm said her family embraced Grigoriev, a University of Nevada School of Medicine professor and a leader in the Las Vegas medical community. But that wasn't the complete story of what had happened in a MountainView Hospital operating room on Sept. 4, 2007, records show. Grigoriev mistook part of the 53-year-old's pancreas for a cancerous mass and cut it out,...

Italy's health minister has apologised to a woman for a fight between two doctors in the delivery room as she was about to give birth. Laura Salpietro, 30, had her uterus removed and her baby boy suffered heart problems and possible brain damage at birth on Thursday in Messina, Sicily. After a heated exchange of words, one of the doctors seized his colleague by the neck and shoved him into a wall, according to Mr Molonia's account to police, reports said. The other doctor reacted by punching a window, which shattered, injuring his hand, they said. Prosecutors have placed five...

LOS ANGELES (AFP) – Zsa Zsa Gabor, the 93-year-old Hollywood star who had been hospitalized due to complications from a broken hip, refused a new operation and was released from hospital and allowed to go home, her publicist has said. John Blanchette said doctors were ready to perform a liver operation, but gave up on the idea after the actress insisted she wanted to return to her Bel Air home...

On 23 April I had a routine colonoscopy, and found out that I had cancer. I knew then I’d have to write this column once I knew the outcome. I had 25 days of chemotherapy, simultaneous with radiation therapy, followed by surgery on 11 August. The pathology reports came back yesterday. They were, as my surgeon said, ‘the best possible, given the circumstances.” They were clean margins and clean lymph nodes. The margins are the areas all around the site of the surgery. The lymph nodes are where cancer usually spreads first, from its original site. In laymen’s terms, I...

Former Vice President Dick Cheney is still in the hospital after heart surgery in early July. Daughter Liz Cheney says her 69-year-old dad is out of intensive care and hopes to return home this week. She tells "Fox News Sunday" that he's already planning trips for fly fishing and hunting later this year. Dick Cheney has had five heart attacks since he was 37. In his recent surgery at a northern Virginia hospital, Cheney had a small pump installed to help his heart work.

NHS bosses have drawn up secret plans for sweeping cuts to services, with restrictions on the most basic treatments for the sick and injured. Some of the most common operations — including hip replacements and cataract surgery — will be rationed as part of attempts to save billions of pounds, despite government promises that front-line services would be protected. Patients’ groups have described the measures as “astonishingly brutal”. An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has uncovered widespread cuts planned across the NHS, many of which have already been agreed by senior health service officials. They include: Š Restrictions on some of...

A waitress who works on a Baltic Sea ferry is suing her employers after they refused to give her sick pay while she was recovering from cosmetic breast surgery. The waitress, who was born in 1981, took two weeks off from work last autumn to recover from the operation, which she admits was not for medical reasons. When the ferry company, Viking Line, found out why she had taken sick leave, bosses refused to give her sick pay and docked the time from her holiday allowance. Now, union bosses are taking Viking Line to the labour court. Documents submitted to...

The eldest daughter of Warren Beatty and Annette Bening is living as a young man after changing her name. Kathlyn Beatty, 18, is now known as Stephen Ira and is said to be planning a sex-change operation. According to reports in the U.S., Hollywood veteran Beatty, 73, is 'crushed' by his child's determination to change her gender. Meanwhile Miss Bening, 52, who starred in American Beauty, is trying to support her daughter as best she can, despite finding the situation heartbreaking. The National Enquirer reported that the teenager was currently attending college dressed as a man. 'Warren Beatty is beside...

But angry surgeons claim some patients have already deteriorated as a result of the fiasco. The error has also made politically sensitive hospital performance figures - much vaunted by the health department - look better than they are. A spokeswoman... Full Article at Sydney Morning Herald

The patient needed just a nip and a tuck — nothing three experienced plastic surgeons couldn't handle. But the patient in this case was a 12-foot Pacific giant squid, and already dead. On Friday, surgeons hunched over a gelatinous carcass, laid out like a wet dress on a stainless steel table outside the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology. Their mission: Stitch up its battle wounds and reattach its head. OIMB's director, Craig Young, said the goal was to make the creature a presentable attraction at the future Charleston Marine Life Center. Plans call for a 6,000-square-foot, two-story public museum and...

Cancer patient forced by judge to have surgery A cancer patient is to be forced to undergo life-saving treatment against her wishes after a landmark ruling by a judge. Doctors will be allowed forcibly to sedate the 55-year-old woman in her home and take her to hospital for surgery. She could be forced to remain on a ward afterwards. The case has sparked an intense ethical and legal debate. Experts questioned whether lawyers and doctors should be able to override the wishes of patients and whether force was ever justified in providing medical care. Treatment was ordered by Sir Nicholas...

Bariatric surgery may appear to cure diabetes based on measurements such as fasting plasma glucose and hemoglobin A1c, but postprandial glucose may tell a different story, researchers here said.

New silken brain implants that mold to the organ's grooves and crevices like shrink-wrap could lead to better devices for monitoring and controlling seizures. "They can also serve as advanced brain-machine interfaces for control of prosthetics and other devices," said John Rogers, a professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. The new implants could transmit signals from the brain to the prosthetic, Rogers and his colleagues explain in the April 18 issue of the journal Nature Materials.

Six city women seeking backside enhancements have been hospitalized in the last two months after getting injected with mixtures of hardware-grade caulk, silicone and petroleum jelly

I have been fostering a black tabby, Marble and his brother (orange tabby, Pumpkin) for a local animal rescue. Unfortunately, Marble ingested something he should not have 2 weeks ago. The foreign body perforated his small intesting in three places, requiring removal and resection of about 50% of the organ. He is currently home and recuperating after 10 days in ICU. While he is progressing, he's not out of the woods, yet. The surgery requires tube feeding every 6 hours for the next couple of weeks, along with numerous medication. Pancreatitis is his biggest obstacle, at this time. He's a...

Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams was released from a U.S. hospital on Friday after having to flee his own dysfunctional government-run health care system in order to obtain a critical heart surgery...

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Severely obese teens who had surgery to limit what they could eat lost more weight and enjoyed more health benefits than those who did an intensive lifestyle program, researchers said on Tuesday. They said 21 of 25 severely obese teens aged 14 to 18 who underwent a form of gastric banding lost more than half of their excess weight compared with just 3 out of 25 who did a diet, exercise and behavior modification program. "In this study, gastric banding proved to be an effective intervention leading to a substantial and durable reduction in obesity and to...

Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams is set to undergo heart surgery this week in the United States. CBC News confirmed Monday that Williams, 60, left the province earlier in the day and will have surgery later in the week. The premier's office provided few details, beyond confirming that he would have heart surgery and saying that it was not necessarily a routine procedure. Deputy Premier Kathy Dunderdale is scheduled to hold a news conference Tuesday morning. She's expected to provide more details about Williams's condition, as well as how the provincial government will function during his absence. CBC reporter...

Nov. 13, 2009 - Premier Danny Williams is photographed at at the Newfoundland legislature in St. John's, Nl. Newfoundland Premier leaves province for undisclosed location south of the borderThe heart and soul of Newfoundland politics is in for repair – and it's not in his home province or even in Canada, for that matter. Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams is scheduled for heart surgery in the United States, a move that throws into question his province's and his nation's health-care system. A source confirmed to The Globe and Mail late Monday that Mr. Williams has left St. John's for an undisclosed...

DALLAS – Jan. 18, 2010 – Can you catch appendicitis? And if you do, is it necessarily an emergency that demands immediate surgery? Yes and no, according to a new study by UT Southwestern Medical Center surgeons and physicians. The researchers evaluated data over a 36-year period from the National Hospital Discharge Survey and concluded in a paper appearing in the January issue of Archives of Surgery that appendicitis may be caused by undetermined viral infection or infections, said Dr. Edward Livingston, chief of GI/endocrine surgery at UT Southwestern and senior author of the report. The review of hospital discharge...

1/13/2010 - RANDOLPH AIR FORCE BASE, Texas (AFNS) -- Mike Porter is about half the man he used to be. His weight reduction is due in large part to an Air Force bariatric surgery program, plus eating healthy, weightlifting and running. Surgery changed the retired master sergeant's life. "I'd been trying to lose weight for about four years," said Mr. Porter, who's shrunk from a peak of 334 pounds and a 46-inch waist down to 198 pounds with a 34-inch waist. "Nothing was working. I'd lose five pounds, just to gain back 10." He was doing aerobic exercises, but his...

In a study published in January 7, 2010 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, researchers from four Department of Veterans Affairs medical centers and two non-VA hospitals found preoperative cleansing of patients’ skin with chlorhexidine-alcohol is superior to cleansing with povidone-iodine for preventing surgical-site infection.

Hello my dear FRiends ... First, I'd like to thank you so much for your prayers for my mom, who passed suddenly yesterday. I can't tell you how much it meant to me and my family. While I was talking with my sister, she mentioned that a friend of hers in the South will be undergoing serious surgery tomorrow morning ... and that her friend is caring for her young son by herself. Her name is Teresa, and I ask that you lift her and her son up in your prayers, and that her surgery is successful. God bless you...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 17, 2009 – Doctors from Walter Reed Army Medical Center here and the University of Miami collaborated to perform the first pancreas islet cell transplant Thanksgiving Day on an airman whose pancreas was injured so severely in Afghanistan that it had to be removed. Army Col. (Dr.) Craig D. Shriver, chief of general surgery at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., describes groundbreaking pancreas islet cell transplant surgery performed Nov. 26, 2009, to reporters during a Dec. 15, 2009, news conference. Dr. Pascal Goldschmidt, dean of the Miller School of Medicine at the University of Miami,...

Bunches left this prayer request in the Spurgeon chapel today: "Wednesday, December 09, 2009 4:06:25 PM · 2 of 3 bunches to alpha-8-25-02 I respectfully request prayers from my Freeper friends. I have breast cancer and am undergoing a mastectomy tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. (Arizona time). I believe it is Stage II but it is also in the aggressive category. I read FreeRepublic daily and think the world of all the folks I have met here. If you could think of me tomorrow morning and say a prayer, I would be most grateful. Bunches." Please hold our dear bunches up...

Less than 24 hours ago, I lay prostrate on an operating table while surgeons aided by a robot (da Vinci) made six deep cuts in my belly area and carved out my oversized cancerous prostate. The robot allegedly made such precise cuts that important nerves and muscles were protected from damage so my functionality would be maintained. Makes one wonder if you can rent it for carving turkey — Hmmmm.

Less than 24 hours ago, I lay prostrate on an operating table while surgeons aided by a robot(da Vinci) made six deep cuts in my belly area and carved out my oversized cancerous prostate. The robot allegedly made such precise cuts that important nerves and muscles were protected from damage so my functionality would be maintained. Makes one wonder if you can rent it for carving turkey— Hmmmm.

NOVEMBER 21, 2009 The Henry Ford of Heart Surgery In India, a Factory Model for Hospitals Is Cutting Costs and Yielding GEETA ANAND. BANGALORE -- Hair tucked into a surgical cap, eyes hidden behind thick-framed magnifying glasses, Devi Shetty leans over the sawed open chest of an 11-year-old boy, using bright blue thread to sew an artificial aorta onto his stopped heart. As Dr. Shetty pulls the thread tight with scissors, an assistant reads aloud a proposed agreement for him to build a new hospital in the Cayman Islands that would primarily serve Americans in search of lower-cost medical care....

Today my wife is having surgery on her neck. The procedure is called an anterior cervical discectomy and fusion (ACDF). It is a surgical procedure performed to remove a degenerative disc in her neck. She has been living with an excruciating pinched nerve for almost two years. About three Months ago I had posted an inquiry a question for some information on the shots in her neck that they tried. Well, the shots did not work for her and they decided to do surgery. You can check this link out for an idea of what they are doing for her....