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News Columns

So much stress, even livesavers squirm

There are times when University Medical Center nurse Robin Parks wants to leave her patient’s room and howl in frustration.
“Some families just can’t handle the stigma of someone close to them having HIV, but pneumonia’s OK,” Parks says.

Hey kids, it’s OK to play. Fun, too

So now it’s come to this: We have to teach preschoolers that it’s good — and fun — to run and jump.
And, oh yes, we also must teach them to ask their parents if they can go out and play.

There’s no hiding from cancer

We were in the fifth grade when my friend David started feeling tired all the time. Instead of wanting to play ball, he wanted to sleep. He complained that his arms and legs hurt. David was dying of leukemia, a form of cancer.

Alzheimer’s has way of stealing moments

When she gave her husband a huge bear hug and told him how much she loved him, a breath escaped from his lips. “Are you sure he’s still not with us?” Jean Georges recalls asking a nearby medical attendant through her tears. A little more than a half hour earlier, Leonard Georges, had died from Alzheimer’s disease.

Pedaling the way to go for Las Vegas tailor

“It can be tough when you rely on a bike for transportation,” says Las Vegas tailor Michael Starks. “I ended up on the hood of a car when somebody turned on me,” he said. ” I got hurt pretty bad, just skinned and bruised, but it took me about a week to feel better.”
Even so, Starks says, he might never drive a car again.

THE LATEST
Fear of surgery haunts Las Vegas man with 100-pound scrotum

Wesley Warren Jr. stands in his living room with more than 100 pounds of scrotum hanging between his legs, but you can’t take your eyes off his haggard face.
The more he talks about what doctors might do wrong in surgical procedures designed to correct the scrotal elephantiasis that became part of his life three years ago, the more unfocused his reddened eyes become.

Warning from Las Vegas ER nurse: Always ask questions

She’s seen a lot in her 30 years as a registered nurse in hospitals in Las Vegas and elsewhere across the country.
Yet some of what she’s seen should make us all concerned.

Las Vegas doctor, producer fight cancer to the end

He could be attending medical conferences in Austria or London or Paris and he would always get back to them by email within a couple of hours.
No matter where Dr. Nicholas Vogelzang was, Roxane Quinn said, he never was too busy to call in prescriptions or to answer questions about the condition of her ailing husband.

UMC’s bottom line not whole story for Las Vegas doctor

It was about four months ago when the old man was found barely breathing on a sidewalk near downtown.
When he was brought to University Medical Center, he had second-degree burns over much of his body — and administrators say keeping him alive has already cost about $3 million.

Did state board go easy on Las Vegas doctor?

When the Nevada State Board of Medical Examiners undertook an investigation of his practice, Dr. Ralph Conti knew how to act in his best interest.
He thumbed his nose at the agency, not once but twice –in both 2008 and 2010.

Las Vegas woman chooses to go in peace rather than fight ovarian cancer

Tormented by disabling treatments, debilitating pain and relentless collection agencies, Ginger Fisher said last year that the interventions to keep her alive caused problems she wished neither she nor her family had to deal with.
Only 39 when she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, she was 42 when she died recently.

Lack of prescription heightens anxiety of Las Vegas woman

Crazy. Insane. Ludicrous. Scary.
Words 42-year-old Brenda Bertsch used as part of a monotonic description of her medical situation.
Her physician lost his license and now she couldn’t find another doctor to write her the same prescription for an anxiety medication.

Virus has Las Vegas police detective preaching precaution

Las Vegas police detective Kenny Nogle didn’t contract the hepatitis C on the job. But he is passing on the knowledge he has gained since contracting the virus to warn fellow officers of the risks of infection they face daily.

Las Vegas doctor all too familiar with pain

Dr. Dale Carrison, chief of staff and head of emergency at University Medical Center, grimaced as he dragged his legs behind a walker and entered the waiting room of neurosurgeon Dr. William Smith.
“Don’t let anybody tell you different, back operations hurt,” Carrison said.

Easy Rx for shortage of doctors in Las Vegas?

From him you can learn about Sjogren’s syndrome, the autoimmune disorder that caused tennis star Venus Williams to pull out of the recent U.S. Open. And from him you get a better sense of why Southern Nevada continues to have a shortage of doctors.