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Understanding: Diseases of despair

Despair. The very word brings visions of sadness and sorrow to empathetic people who can feel deeply the emotions of others. Despair is “the complete loss or absence of hope.” When you think of the most despairing moments in your life, does it give you any insight about others who struggle in a sea of depression and hopelessness? From where do you draw on the well of hope? How do any of us find our way out of the darkness and into the light? Recently I was given a “final report,” “Appalachian Diseases of Despair,” which was prepared for the Appalachian Regional Commission ...

Getting enough sleep?

Tonight, we turn the clocks back an hour, as if we all grumble enough about not feeling rested when our feet hit the floor in the morning and we begin another day. How many of us will take several days to get our internal clocks reset? Several years ago my husband and I wrapped up a visit with friends and family in North Carolina. We decided to make the 9-1/2-hour drive home overnight to avoid the heavy daytime traffic. We did not rest before we set out for home. We wanted every possible minute with the people we were leaving behind. We both felt wide awake, ready to turn north on ...

Elderly at risk of prescription abuse

Editor’s note: The following column was previously published Dec. 27, 2019 Thanks to breakthroughs in medicine and nutrition in recent years, we are living longer than ever before. But this increase in life expectancy also brings an increase in the number of diseases, injuries and impairments that affect older adults. With this in mind, we at the local Visiting Angels office in Salem have created this series of articles to keep our older population and their families informed and to offer some practical advice for meeting the challenges faced by seniors and those who care for them. ...

We said we would never forget: Will we?

For the first time in 20 years, we will celebrate Veterans Day in relative peace. On November 11, 1918, Ralph Lindsey wrote from his hospital bed in France “Armistice signed at 11 o’clock. Grand celebration all over France. War is at last over and I am still alive!” Later in life if you asked him about the scars on his chest he would simply respond with a shrug and say, “I zigged when I should have zagged.” Ralph was my great-grandfather, and now, nearly 103 years after he wrote those words, our nation once again finds ourselves celebrating the contributions of our veterans ...

Help: Families Anonymous reaches out

You never conceived of the notion that addiction could happen in your family, or that any of your friends would become dependent on harmful substances, or become alcoholic. Now you realize it could happen to anyone. You are a firm believer in tackling problems head-on as soon as you are aware of them, but this situation is not so easy to manage. In fact, you aren’t sure you can control any of it, no matter how hard you try. Confused, hurt, lost … what are you going to do? Addiction affects everyone around the person with the substance misuse problem. How are you going to protect ...

Danger: Alcohol misuse in women

Do you remember the television commercial: “I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in the pan. And never let him forget he’s a man”? If there is one thing that women don’t need to compete with men about in the pursuit of equality, it would be alcohol use/misuse. Early this past summer an NPR report informed the public of a very real problem: “For nearly a century, women have been closing the gap in alcohol consumption, binge drinking, and alcohol use disorder,” the article says. “What was nearly a 3-1 ratio for risky drinking habits in men vs. women is closer to 1-1 ...