Like many in her age range, Sylvia McGregor, a 97-year-old in Sydney, Australia, deals with her share of maladies — in her case, arthritis, osteoporosis, hearing loss, macular degeneration, lung disease, hypothyroidism, chronic kidney disease, heart disease and two total knee replacements. But unlike most nonagenarians, she does intensive strength training twice a week. She credits the...
ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox. Series: Toxic Burden - How American Chemical Regulations Failed the Public Before his shift at the Goodyear Tire and Rubber plant in Niagara Falls in May 2021, a worker peed in a cup. Before he clocked out, he did it again. Goodyear shipped...
Nearly 1 in 7 older adults die within a year of undergoing major surgery, according to an important new study that sheds much-needed light on the risks seniors face when having invasive procedures. Especially vulnerable are older patients with probable dementia (33% die within a year) and frailty (28%), as well as those having emergency surgeries (22%). Advanced age also amplifies risk: Patients...
After nine years as a homeless drug addict in Los Angeles, Jared Klickstein finally checked himself into a drug treatment center. Unlike the program he had gone to six years before, which had hot tubs, acupuncture, and trips to the beach, this one, in North Hollywood, was deadly serious about personal responsibility. Clients kept a strict schedule. They did chores. They scrubbed toilets. “No hot...
Jennifer Smithfield felt weak and still had trouble breathing in February after nearly two weeks with covid-19. It was a Sunday, and her doctor’s office was closed. So her primary care physician suggested going to an emergency room to be safe. Smithfield went to HCA Healthcare’s flagship hospital, near its corporate headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee, and thought she would be checked out and...
“A Secret Language of Chinese Officialdom” Toy Reid has always had a gift for languages — one that would carry him far from what he calls his “very blue-collar” roots in Greenville, South Carolina. In high school, Spanish came easily. At nearby Furman University, where he became the first person in his family to attend college, he studied Japanese. Then, “clueless but curious,” as he puts it, he...
