Get Healthy

Tips to have a flu-free party this holiday season

Is it safe to party when swine flu threatens to crash your bash?

It’s a question many revelers may be asking this year as the holiday party season coincides with an anxiety-provoking flu season.

The good news is that while it is true that mingling over punch and canapes can help spread the H1N1 virus, health and entertaining experts say it’s possible to throw a holiday party without making everyone wear surgical masks and hazmat suits.
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Federal task force counters American Cancer Society’s long-standing recommendation

A 33-year cancer survivor, Ann Peters recalls finding a malignant lump in her breast herself. Now 66, Peters was shocked Monday to hear a government task force is advising not only that women wait until age 50 to get mammograms but that breast self-exams are of no value.

“I can’t imagine not doing it,” Peters said. “I don’t know a woman who wouldn’t share my thoughts.” Peters is president of the Pink Ribbon Society, which provides services to scores of breast cancer patients and their families throughout Northwest Indiana.

The new guidelines were issued by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, whose stance influences coverage of screening tests by Medicare and many insurance companies. The panel recommends getting a mammogram every other year after age 50. The advice is a major reversal that conflicts with the American Cancer Society’s long-standing recommendation of annual screening starting at 40.
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Settings, 120 S. Main St., is sponsoring a drive to supply new pajamas for women and children at St. Jude House.

By picking an ornament off the giving tree in the store’s window, shoppers will buy and wrap a new pair of pajamas for the nonprofit that provides services to victims of domestic violence.

Pajamas can be brought to Settings now through Dec. 20. The store will have a holiday open house Nov. 21 and 22. Those who bring wrapped pajamas will be entered in a drawing for a $100 gift certificate.

For more information, call Brenda Matz at 219.662.7062.

From the Get Healthy Inbox—We’re committed to keeping you informed on health care news and ideas throughout the region and nation. Here’s today’s recommendation, submitted by Community Hospital:

Community Hospital Sleep Diagnostics Center invites the public to an open house from 5 to 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 17 to view the expanded, state-of-the-art facility at its new location, 10110 Donald S. Powers Drive, Suite 201B in Munster.

Offering advanced medical equipment and qualified professionals to assist with the proper diagnosis and treatment of sleep disorders, the new Sleep Diagnostics Center has expanded its evaluation capabilities to a 10-bed facility. Each evaluation bedroom mimics a more relaxing, home-like environment and has been designed to provide ultimate comfort with amenities; including an adjustable mattress, flat screen television, nightstand, desk, reclining lounge chair and private bathroom.
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According to a mother who asked me to write this column, the use of chewing tobacco and other forms of smoke-free tobacco has become the rage in her son’s high school. Many assume that if the tobacco does not make smoke, it must be safe. How wrong they are!!

Nothing about the use of any form of tobacco is safe. Another myth to dispel is that smokeless tobacco helps a person quit cigarette smoking. This simply is not the case.

Because most tobacco users start before they are 18 years old, the FDA has declared tobacco use a pediatric disease.
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Community members may obtain tests, screenings, and information on healthy living

Senior students with the Indiana University Northwest School of Nursing will host the annual health fair from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday in the Savannah Center Gymnasium, in the southeast corner of the main campus parking lot at 33rd Avenue and Broadway.

Available services will include blood work, free health screenings, and health information. The theme for this year’s fair is “Don’t Monkey Around: Go Bananas for Good Health!” This event is open to the campus and Northwest Indiana residents.

Lipid, metabolic and hemagram profiles will be available, along with blood pressure and bone-density screenings and a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test, which screens for prostate cancer in men ages 40 to 50 years and older.
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Munster students bowl to raise money for MDA

Bradley Patricks (left) keys in information for the score-keeping device and Emma Hong (right) shows her bowling form Wednesday as the Munster High School DECA students bowl to raise money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association at Plaza Lanes in Highland. DECA is a marketing organization for high schoolers. (Photography by John J. Watkins.)

Munster High School students bowled Wednesday to raise money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, hoping to top last year’s amount of $3,000, said teacher Kent Lewis.

The students belong to DECA, a marketing association for high schoolers, and 50 of them bowled at Plaza Lanes. If they top $3,000, it will be the most amount raised by a high school group in Northwest Indiana, Lewis said.

Nationally, DECA is associated with the MDA but Lewis said the students had a more personal reason to bowl for the organization.
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Congressman sees firsthand equipment bought with federal funds

Dr. Nancy Mangini, professor of anatomy and cell biology, demonstrates digital imaging of an electron microscope for U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky as he tours Indiana University Northwest's Medical Professional Building in Gary on Tuesday to check out equipment bought with federal funding he secured. (Photograph by Natalie Battaglia/The Times.)

U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky visited the Indiana University School of Medicine Northwest on Tuesday to view research equipment bought with about $500,000 in federal funding he secured to help stimulate biomedical research in the region.

“What I appreciated most was the use it was being put to,” Visclosky, D-Merrillville, said after the tour. “They’ve done a terrific job here at the school.”

The school received the money from the Health Resources and Services Administration last fall after Visclosky obtained funding through a 2008 appropriations bill.
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St. John family reaches out to others at hospital

Members of the Splant family, from left, Nathan, Kimberly and Phillip, present Community Hospital neonatal intensive care unit nurse Lora Brands, RN, center, with DVD players and a basket full of educational viewing materials regarding preterm infants that can be shared with other parents of premature babies while at the hospital. (Photograph courtesy of Community Hospital.)

They say good things come in small packages.

When Nathan C. Splant, son of Phillip and Kimberly Splant, of St. John, was born 15 weeks prematurely Jan. 10, 2004, he weighed less than 2 lbs. and was only 12 inches long. He spent 108 days in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) of Community Hospital in before being discharged in April with an oxygen tank and heart monitor.

Good things have continued to happen ever since. Today, Nathan is a healthy, happy 5-year-old. The Splant family recently made a return trip to Community Hospital to make a special delivery on behalf of the Nathan C. Splant Foundation, an organization the family founded to honor their son and give back to others.

The donation of DVD players and educational viewing materials regarding preterm babies from the Nathan C. Splant Foundation will provide the parents of other premature babies born at Community Hospital’s NICU and Special Care Nursery, with the education and support necessary for a healthier start.
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Methodist working toward Level 2 status

With the help of Dr. Nick Johnson and physician assistant Al Vega, Dr. Matt Lazio covers a wound in the trauma area of the Methodist Hospitals Northlake Campus in Gary.
(Photograph by Jessica A. Woolf.)

“Trauma alert, plus one,” a muffled voice says over the intercom at 9:30 p.m. “Trauma alert, plus one.”

Emergency room doctors, residents, nurses and other medical staff briskly pull on gloves and blue medical gowns and gather in the trauma bay at the Methodist Hospitals Northlake Campus in Gary. EMS workers wheel in a young man who was shot in the abdomen.

About 20 minutes later, he’s taken from the trauma bay to get CAT scans.
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