States expand childrens health coverage
Sun, 29 Apr 2007 09:09:44 GMTBy KEVIN FREKING, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Many states are making more children eligible for government-funded health insurance even as http://ccf.georgetown.edu
State Children's Health Insurance Program: http://www.cms.hhs.gov/home/schip.asp
Va. Tech wounded may heal slowly
Sat, 28 Apr 2007 22:34:58 GMTBy ADAM GELLER and VICKI SMITH, Associated Press Writers
BLACKSBURG, Va. - Senior Kevin Sterne will see the scar on his thigh every time he pulls on his pants. Freshman Hilary Strollo will have to decide whether to bare her stomach in a swimsuit. And on the day someone slips a wedding band on her finger, junior Katelyn Carney will see the healed-up hole that a Virginia Tech gunman put in her left hand.
Most of the dead from the April 16 massacre on campus are buried, their families learning to live with loss.
Those who survived will have their own struggles, from physical scars to deep wounds of the psyche, trying to figure out how to stop the most dramatic event in their lives from overshadowing everything else that happens to them.
Anne Lynam Goddard, whose son Colin was shot three times during the attack on his French class, sees his trauma the way doctors see the shrapnel embedded in the tissue of his wounded leg: trying to remove it would cause more pain and might make matters worse, so it's best to leave it be.
"Your body forms a cocoon, so it will always be part of you, but it won't hurt. That's how I started thinking about this early on," she said. "My biggest hope is that this is how my son will remember this. I hope he can form a cocoon around it and not let it be his defining moment."
The terror of those moments is nightmarish. After sneaking into a dorm and killing two students with two shots from a 9 mm handgun, Seung-Hui Cho took his time, heading to a post office to mail a package of video and writings expressing his anger.
Then he chained the doors of Norris Hall, stormed several classrooms and unloaded more than 170 rounds over nine long minutes. Students — some wounded, some not — cowered, played dead and listened in horror as 30 of their classmates and teachers died.
Cho then put a bullet through his head and dropped to the floor amid his victims.
Most of the 25 people hurt in the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history are healing in private, declining or ignoring interview requests.
Justin Klein, a junior from Catonsville, Md., who survived three gunshot wounds, issued a statement saying he is progressing physically and emotionally. He's back on campus, with friends forming a buffer around his wheelchair, shielding him from reporters.
"My place is here, with my friends," Klein wrote. "The Hokie community is strong and resilient, we will persevere, we will go on and we will heal."
It will not be easy. As the weeks and months unfold, the wounded could experience depression, survivor's guilt, thoughts of suicide, anger, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Physical injuries and painful follow-up surgeries could slow students' academic progress and keep them feeling somewhat isolated, said Melissa Brymer, a clinical psychologist with the UCLA-Duke National Center for Child Traumatic Stress.
"Their scars can be reminders to themselves and to others, so this may impact their peer relationships. Their peers might not be able to cope with those reminders. They might distance themselves," she said.
There is no single way for victims of a tragedy to recover and adapt to what has happened, said Mark Lerner, a clinical psychologist and traumatic stress consultant.
"For some people, getting back on the horse, getting back on the bicycle and exposing themselves to this difficult environment where this has occurred, being back on that campus will be a really good thing for them," Lerner said. "For others, it may be more than can be expected, too much for them to handle."
Patrick Strollo, brother of injured freshman Hilary Strollo, said there is no doubt she will return to campus after recovering at home in Gibsonia, Pa., from three gunshot wounds.
"What are the other options? She's not the only one who had something happen to her. Every single person who goes to that school has had something happen to them," he said. "She has a ton of friends there and she needs to stick to the people she can relate with, and they're going to get through this together."
Strollo faces a struggle similar to that of Sterne and Carney. Sterne was wounded in the leg, the image of him being carried out of the building captured in a now-famous photograph. Carney was hit in the hand during her German class, but helped fend off the gunman by barricading the door to stop him from getting back into the room.
The bloodbath at Virginia Tech was singular in its horror. But in many ways, the path the wounded must follow is not so different from the one others have traveled.
In January 2000, Alvaro Llanos was a freshman at New Jersey's Seton Hall University when two students set fire to a dormitory. Three classmates died. The flames left the upper half of his body with painful and — for some time — obvious scars.
He went through physical therapy and took a year off from school. When he returned, he found support — and scrutiny.
"I figured I'd feel more comfortable being back at school. Especially when people know what happened, it would be easier than going to a different school and having to answer questions," Llanos said.
But after walking into a Spanish class the first day back, he quickly realized it wasn't going to be that easy.
"I felt like everyone was staring at me," he recalled. "I didn't feel like one of the regular students anymore."
That was six years ago, and Llanos has not graduated. He has made a new life, different from the one he'd envisioned.
Instead of pursuing a computer science degree, his recovery process persuaded him to train as a physical therapist. He married, has a toddler daughter and expects a second child soon.
And he has found in himself an energy and positive outlook; he rarely tolerates self-pity.
Some of the Virginia Tech wounded may find it hard to summon patience, but eventually, they must push forward because so much awaits them, Llanos said.
"You have to move on. You can't be stuck because if you stay stuck you're never going to be happy," he said. "Be happy and fulfill your life."
Sitting in her son's hospital room the day after the shootings, Anne Goddard tried to pre-empt the most difficult question Colin could ask himself.
"There is no answer to the question of why some people got shot and died and why some people got shot and lived," she told him. "There is no answer to that question. Don't go looking for it."
"Yeah," he said. "You're right."
Colin Goddard is already looking ahead. In the emergency room the day he was shot, the child who was born in Bangladesh and raised in Somalia and Egypt wanted to know if he could still do his internship on a development project this summer in Madagascar.
"Some parents would be afraid to let their kid go. I'm not," said Anne Goddard, a veteran aid worker who directs the Richmond-based Christian Children's Fund. "I want him to come back in August talking about something very different."
Vegan eateries not just for hippies
Sat, 28 Apr 2007 18:02:03 GMTBy KELLI KENNEDY, Associated Press Writer
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - The fake meat at this upscale vegan eatery doesn't taste like mystery meat. Depending on the night it's more like hearty meat loaf with a mushroom sauce, pork tenderloin or Mediterranean grilled chicken skewers.
At Sublime, cascading waterfalls trickle from 10-foot windows in a low-lit dining room filled with live palm trees and customers sampling $19 caviar — made of seaweed, not fish eggs.
Once a network of grungy, obscure cafes, the vegetarian and vegan experience in some cities has blossomed on par with its carnivorous counterparts, complete with Zagat ratings and celebrity clienteles.
There are between 1,000 and 1,200 vegetarian restaurants in the U.S., almost double the number seven years ago, according to Dennis Bayomi, president of VegDining.com, an online guide to vegetarian restaurants. Besides Sublime, he estimates there are more than a dozen fine dining vegan eateries nationwide, though that number is harder to track.
Part of the transformation owes to advances in cooking that allow chefs to prepare proteins like tofu with a taste and texture similar to meat. They can do the same thing with tempeh, which consists of fermented soybeans with a more grainy texture, and seitan, a concentrated wheat gluten.
Experts also credit the rise to an expanding global pantry, where vegetarian dishes are no longer relegated to the back of a menu, but have become main-plate specials.
"The door is wide open," said Eve Felder, associate dean for culinary arts at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y. "It's been going on in pockets for years, but it's much more of a trend across restaurants now."
Chef Rich Landau and his wife Kate Jacoby opened Horizons in the Philadelphia suburbs 11 years ago with low-key plans. He expected to be serving coffee and hummus to college kids, and was surprised when his restaurant filled with suits and ties.
Now they've moved downtown, where diners wait an hour for a table on the weekends to sample pan-seared tofu with hearts of palm, poblano cream and agave baked beans, wasabi-glazed tempeh or a maitake and smoked eggplant empanada.
"I wanted to open up the doors to the mainstream public and give them foods they could relate to," Landau said.
New York-based Candle 79 has carved a profitable niche among vegetable-loving foodies with New York Times reviews, a popular cookbook and takeout items sold at Whole Foods Market. Paul McCartney, Alicia Silverstone and Woody Harrelson are all regulars, said owner Bart Potenza. One zealot flew two Candle chefs to Arizona recently just to cater his birthday bash.
"We've taken it to a whole other level. It couldn't have happened 5 or 10 years ago," Potenza said.
They've sold 3 million vegan meals in the last 20 years and do about $3 million in annual business, serving up seitan picatta with lemon caper sauce and ancho-seared tempeh with roasted sweet potato puree and pomegranate reduction.
No matter how sumptuous the stir fry, Potenza admits vegan restaurants can have more trouble becoming cash cows.
"They say it's harder to change people's food habits than their religion or politics," he said.
It's also more expensive. While the "meat" may be cheaper, Potenza says it costs 40 percent more to serve organic products.
Sublime owner Nanci Alexander has never turned a profit since opening in 2003 and doesn't receive a paycheck. The animal rights activist has no experience in the restaurant business, and says she only opened Sublime to help carnivores stop eating meat. All proceeds, if there are any, would go to the Animal Rights Foundation of Florida.
"They can't stop if they don't have someplace to go," she said. "I thought, 'How else can I help the animals?' I never wanted to be in the restaurant business."
Mexico City abortion foes vow action
Sat, 28 Apr 2007 23:35:20 GMTBy MARK STEVENSON, Associated Press Writer
MEXICO CITY - Abortion foes vowed Saturday to print posters bearing the names of Mexico City lawmakers who voted to legalize the procedure while uncertainty lingered over whether doctors at city-run hospitals could refuse to perform them.
Mayor Marcelo Ebrard said that doctors at city-run hospitals could not refuse to perform the procedure because of moral objections, apparently contradicting earlier statements by the city's health secretary.
"We have to serve the public, that is what the law orders us to do," Ebrard told reporters on Friday.
On Saturday, abortion opponent Guillermo Bustamante of the National Union of Parents told government news agency Notimex that his group planned to display posters with photographs and names of city legislators who voted to legalize abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy in a campaign to get the law overturned. The pictures would be next to a photo of an aborted fetus.
The law, which was approved on Tuesday, applies only to city-run hospitals in Mexico City and would not require doctors in federal hospitals or private clinics to perform abortions. It opens the way, however, for private clinics to perform them.
Ebrard, whose leftist Democratic Revolution Party supported the law, did not indicate whether doctors who refused to perform abortions would be asked to resign.
Mexico City Health Secretary Manuel Mondragon on Thursday said doctors could not be forced to perform abortions that strictly are elective.
The text of the law does not address whether city doctors can refuse to perform the procedure.
Abortion in the case of rape, severe deformity of the fetus or if the mother's health is at risk has long been legal in Mexico, and doctors have been required to perform them under those circumstances, although some have defied the law.
The city apparently is still working out the procedural details of the measure, the first of its kind in Mexico. Ebrard said a list was being drawn up of facilities that would offer the service.
