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Education, Information

EISENHOWER’S BATTLE WITH CROHN’S DISEASE

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Born October 14, 1890 in Denison, Texas, Dwight David Eisenhower was raised in Kansas.  He graduated from West Point in 1915 and began his military career.

During World War II, he was a five-star general in the United States Army and served as supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe.  According to Wikipedia, he was responsible for planning and supervising the invasion of North Africa in Operation Torch in 1942-1943 and the successful invasion of France and Germany in 1944-1945 from the Western Front.

In 1953 at the age of sixty-two, Eisenhower was elected the 34th President of the United States.  On May 10, 1956, six months before being re-elected for a second term, he was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease.

What is Crohn’s disease?  According to the Mayo Clinic article “Crohn’s Disease—Symptoms and Causes” at https://www.mayoclinic.orgdiseases-conditions/crohns-disease. It is an inflammatory bowel disease which causes inflammation of the digestive tract.  It can lead to abdominal pain, severe diarrhea, fatigue, weight loss, and malnutrition.  Symptoms can range from mild to severe.

The exact cause of Crohn’s disease is unknown.  According to the Mayo Clinic article, risk factors for Crohn’s disease may include the following:

  • Age.  Crohn’s disease can occur at any age, but most people are diagnosed before they are thirty years old.
  • Ethnicity. Crohn’s disease can affect any ethnic group, but whites and people of Eastern European (Ashkenazi) Jewish descent have the highest risk.
  • Family history. If you have a close relative with the disease, such as a parent, sibling, or child, you are at higher risk to develop the disease.
  • Cigarette smoking. Cigarette smoking is the most important controllable risk factor for developing Crohn’s disease.
  • Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medications. These include ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin, and others), naproxen sodium (Aleve), diclofenac sodium (Voltaren) and others.

Eisenhower served two terms in office from January 20, 1953 to January 20, 1961.  He died March 28, 1969.

If you have a family member who has a serious illness and needs private duty nursing, call American Home Health at (630) 236-3501.  The agency can provide round-the-clock nursing care by Registered Nurses (RNs), Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs), and Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs).  Our service area covers fifteen counties in Northern Illinois including Cook, Lake, McHenry, Boone, Winnebago, Ogle, Lee, DeKalb, DuPage, Kane, Kendall, LaSalle, Grundy, Will, and Kankakee.  American Home Health is licensed by the State of Illinois and accredited by the Joint Commission.  For further information, go to www.ahhc-1.com, or call (630) 236-3501.

Education, Information

MUHAMMAD ALI’S FIGHT WITH PARKINSON’S

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MUHAMMAD ALI AND WIFE LONNIE
WASHINGTON, DC
JUNE 11, 2001

In 1964, a twenty-two-year-old boxer known by his birth name, Cassius Clay, Jr. entered the ring for a match with Sonny Liston, who had been the world heavyweight boxing champion since 1962. Clay had spent the weeks prior to the match trash-talking Liston’s fighting abilities, trying to get inside his opponent’s head. Clay won the fight in a major upset. He then changed his name from Cassius Clay, Jr., which he called his “slave name,” to Muhammad Ali.

Ali described his fighting style as “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. The hands can’t hit what the eye can’t see.” He considered himself “The Greatest.”

In 1966, two years after winning the heavyweight title, he refused to be drafted into the United States military. He gave as reasons his religious beliefs and opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. He was arrested, found guilty of draft evasion, and stripped of his boxing titles. He was sentenced to five years in prison, fined $10,000, and banned from boxing for three years. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction in 1971.

Ali was provocative and outlandish and arrogant and fearsome. Before his famous “Rumble in the Jungle” match with George Foreman in 1974, Ali continued his pattern of verbal assault. “I wrestled with an alligator, I tussled with a whale, I handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder in jail. I’m a bad man. . . last week I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalized a brick. I’m so mean I make medicine sick.”

Ali retired from boxing in 1981 at age 39. In 1984 at the age of 42, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Some reports attributed his condition to boxing-related injuries, but both Ali and his physician disputed this.

In 1998, Ali began working with actor Michael J. Fox, who has Parkinson’s disease, to raise awareness and fund research for a cure for Parkinson’s disease. In 2002, they made joint appearances before Congress to push the case. Ali worked with the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s disease to raise awareness and encourage donations for research.

As his condition worsened, he made limited public appearances. He was cared for at his home by members of his family. Muhammed Ali died June 3, 2016 at age 74 after a 32-year battle with Parkinson’s disease.

If you have a family member who has a serious illness and needs private duty nursing, call American Home Health at (630) 236-3501. The agency can provide round-the-clock nursing care by Registered Nurses (RNs), Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs), and Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs). Our service area covers fifteen counties in Northern Illinois including Cook, Lake, McHenry, Boone, Winnebago, Ogle, Lee, DeKalb, DuPage, Kane, Kendall, LaSalle, Grundy, Will, and Kankakee. American Home Health is licensed by the State of Illinois and accredited by the Joint Commission. For further information, go to www.ahhc-1.com, or call (630) 236-3501.

—By Karen Centowski

Education, Information

ONE MAN’S PROMISE TO ST. JUDE

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Born January 6, 1912 in Deerfield, Michigan, Amos Muzyad Yakhoob Kairouz was the son of Maronite Catholic immigrants from Lebanon. One of ten children, he was raised in Toledo, Ohio, where he attended St. Francis de Sales Church (Roman Catholic), Woodward High School, and the University of Toledo. You know him as Danny Thomas, the American nightclub comedian, singer, actor, and producer.

Using the name Amos Jacobs Kairouz, he began performing on radio in Detroit in 1932. He moved to Chicago in 1940 where he changed his name to Danny Thomas (after two of his brothers).

Thomas first reached mass audiences on network radio in the 1940s when he played the part of the shifty brother-in-law Amos in The Bickersons. He also played the part of Jerry Dingle, the postman on The Baby Snooks Show. He had his own 30-minute weekly variety show called The Danny Thomas Show. It ran on ABC in 1942-1943 and on CBS in 1947-1948.

With the advent of television, Thomas starred in Make Room for Daddy, later known as The Danny Thomas Show. The show ran for eleven years (1953-1964).

As a “starving actor,” Thomas had made a promise to St. Jude, the patron saint of hopeless causes. He had promised that if he found success, he would open a shrine dedicated to St. Jude. Thomas did not forget his promise. After he became a successful actor in the 1950’s, he and his wife began traveling the United States to raise funds to build St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital. With help from Dr. Lemuel Diggs and close friend Anthony Abraham, an auto magnate in Miami, he founded the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee in 1962. Although St. Jude’s was named after Danny Thomas’s patron saint, it is not a Catholic hospital and is not affiliated with any religious organization. The focus of St. Jude’s is the research and treatment for children with cancer and other life-threatening diseases.

According to https://en.wikipedi.org/wiki/St._Jude_Children”_Research_Hospital. “All medically eligible patients who are accepted for treatment at St. Jude are treated without regard to the family’s ability to pay. St. Jude is one of the few pediatric research organizations in the United States where families never pay for treatments that are not covered by insurance, and families without insurance are never asked to pay. In addition to providing medical services to eligible patients, St. Jude also assists families with transportation, lodging, and meals. These policies, along with research expenses and other costs, cause the hospital to incur more than $2.4 million in operating costs each day.” Today, according to _Forbes Magazine_, St. Jude Children’s Research Center in Memphis, Tennessee, is the fifth highest fundraiser in the United States with $1.37 billion in contributions.

If you have a family member who has a serious illness and needs private duty nursing, call American Home Health at (630) 236-3501. The agency can provide round-the-clock nursing care by Registered Nurses (RNs), Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs), and Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs). Our service area covers fifteen counties in Northern Illinois including Cook, Lake, McHenry, Boone, Winnebago, Ogle, Lee, DeKalb, DuPage, Kane, Kendall, LaSalle, Grundy, Will, and Kankakee. American Home Health is licensed by the State of Illinois and accredited by the Joint Commission. For further information, go to www.ahhc-1.com, or call (630) 236-3501.

—By Karen Centowski

Information, Status

CONDUCTOR RECOVERS FROM GUNSHOT WOUNDS

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On May 16, 2017, Michael Case was working as a conductor on an Amtrak train pulling into the station in Naperville, Illinois. Aboard the train was Edward Klein, 79, who was returning home from a canceled trip to Las Vegas..

Case knew that Klein needed to get to Chicago to catch a train to Milwaukee to get to his home in West Allis, Wisconsin. He was aware of a plan to escort Klein at Union Station to get him safely home to Wisconsin.

When the train pulled into the station in Naperville, Case got off the train to help other riders with their baggage. Klein was acting agitated and disoriented so Case closed and locked the train doors to keep Klein on the train. Case later explained his decision to keep Klein on the train, “I didn’t feel like it was a safe place for him to get off at Naperville station with all those tracks there.”

Minutes later, Klein reached out an open window and shot Case with a .38 caliber revolver. Case, who was struck in the abdomen, was able to crawl behind a partition to safety. He was taken to Edward Hospital in Naperville in critical condition and underwent multiple surgeries during the next six weeks. He was released from the hospital ten weeks after the shooting.

During his hospitalization, Case’s wife stayed at the hospital almost twenty-four hours a day. She was his support, his anchor, through it all. Case said, “I remember her sorting me out real quick, like, ‘Hey, we’re going to do this. I got you.’ And she did.”

Klein was charged with attempted first-degree murder, and was ordered held on $1.5 million bail. His attorney said that Klein was mentally unfit to stand trial.

According to https://www.dailyherald.com/news/20180105/dupage-judge-wisconsin-man-had-intent-to-kill-amtrak-conductor, “A DuPage County judge ruled Friday that Edward Klein knew he was doing wrong and intended to kill an Amtrak conductor he shot last May in Naperville. Using a complicated legal term, Judge Jeffrey MacKay ruled Klein was “not not guilty” and “not acquitted” of the multiple charges against him, despite being found unfit to stand trial. Doctors have diagnosed Klein with an impaired cognitive disorder and dementia and said he suffers from a major neuro-cognitive disorder.” He faces confinement in a mental health facility.

If you have a family member who has suffered a serious injury and needs private duty nursing, call American Home Health at (630) 236-3501. The agency can provide round-the-clock nursing care by Registered Nurses (RNs), Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs), and Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs). Our service area covers fifteen counties in Northern Illinois including Cook, Lake, McHenry, Boone, Winnebago, Ogle, Lee, DeKalb, DuPage, Kane, Kendall, LaSalle, Grundy, Will, and Kankakee. American Home Health is licensed by the State of Illinois and accredited by the Joint Commission. For further information, go to www.ahhc-1.com, or call (630) 236-3501.

—By Karen Centowski

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WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM CNAs

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Fifty years ago, subdivisions were sprouting in the cornfields and bean fields in Illinois. The 1960’s and 1970’s were a time of rapid growth in the housing stock at the edges of major metropolitan areas such as Aurora, Rockford, and Bloomington-Normal.

Ranch houses, tri-levels, and two-story homes were popular styles. Most had attached garages, and the backyards were often enclosed with chain link fences. The homeowners planted shade trees on the boulevard and in the backyard. They spent time and money mowing, watering, and fertilizing the grass. They took pride in ownership of a beautiful new home.

Margaret, her husband, and their four children lived in one of these new houses. She was a stay-at-home mom, and her children were allowed to be free range children. That meant they roller skated on the sidewalks, shot basketballs into hoops mounted on rooftops above the garages, and played baseball on the diamond at the elementary school. The boys on the street made a go-cart out of wood and an old lawnmower chassis and gave rides to the younger boys.

AND THERE WERE THE DIRT HILLS. Since this was a new subdivision, the last row of houses backed up to a large piece of vacant land. The builder had dug a retention pond, installed concrete sewer pipes, and piled up a huge mound of dirt next to the retention pond. Many a young boy rode his dirt bike down from the top of the mound of dirt. In fact, some became so skilled that they could ride at full speed down the dirt hill and land on a raft in the lake.

The children grew up, got married, and moved away. Margaret and her husband continued to live in the house. When Margaret was in her late seventies, her health began to fail. She could no longer climb the steps into the house so her husband built a ramp in the garage.

As Margaret’s illness progressed, she needed 24/7 care from CNAs who came to her home. This was a tremendous help to Margaret and to her husband. It allowed her to continue to stay in her own home for a period of time. Later, she was admitted to a hospital and died there at age eighty-one.

If you have a family member who needs private duty nursing, call American Home Health at (630) 236-3501. The agency can provide round-the-clock nursing care by Registered Nurses and (RNs), Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs), and Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs). Our service area covers fifteen counties in Northern Illinois including Cook, Lake, McHenry, Boone, Winnebago, Ogle, Lee, DeKalb, DuPage, Kane, Kendall, LaSalle, Grundy, Will, and Kankakee. American Home Health is licensed by the State of Illinois and accredited by the Joint Commission. For further information, go to www.ahhc-1.com, or call (630) 236-3501.

To hear the Beatles, the English rock band, sing “With A Little Help From My Friends” from their 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, go to With A Little Help From My Friends—You Tube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0C58ttB2-Qg.

—By Karen Centowski

Education, Information, Status

HEADS-UP ON TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY

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When you hear the words “traumatic brain injury,” what do you think of first? Serious head injuries on the battlefield? Head injuries in motor vehicle crashes? Concussions occurring in contact sports such as football? You might even think of Muhammad Ali, a famous boxer who endured repeated blows to his head and developed Parkinson’s disease at the age of forty-two.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, falls were the leading cause of traumatic brain injury in 2013. In fact, falls accounted for 47% of all traumatic brain injury related emergency department visits, hospitalizations, and deaths in the United States. According to the CDC report at https://www.cdc.gov/traumaticbraininjury, “Falls disproportionally affected the youngest and oldest age groups. More than half (54%) of the TBI-related ED visits, hospitalizations, and deaths among children 0 to 14 years were caused by falls. Nearly 4 in 5 (79%) TBI-related ED visits, hospitalizations, and deaths in adults aged 65 and older were caused by falls.”

What is a traumatic brain injury? According to the article called “TBI: Get the Facts” at https://www.cdc.gov//traumaticbraininjury, “A TBI is caused by a bump, blow, or jolt to the head that disrupts the normal function of the brain. Not all blows or jolts to the head result in a TBI. The severity of a TBI may range from “mild” (i.e., a brief change in mental status or consciousness) to “severe” (i.e., an extended period of unconsciousness or memory loss after the injury). Most TBIs that occur each year are mild, commonly called concussions.”

You need to be especially careful to prevent your family members from falling. Make some small changes to make the home a safer place. Below are some tips from a Mayo Clinic article called “Fall Prevention: Simple Tips to Prevent Falls” at https://www.mayoclinic.org:

  • Remove loose rugs (throw rugs) from the home.
  • Immediately clean up spilled liquids, grease, or food.
  • Turn on the lights before going up or down stairs.
  • Place nightlights in the bedroom, bathroom, and hallways.
  • Store flashlights in easy-to-find places in case of power outages.

If you have a family member who has suffered a traumatic brain injury and needs private duty nursing, call American Home Health at (630) 236-3501. The agency can provide round-the-clock nursing care by Registered Nurses (RNs), Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs), and Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs). Our service area covers fifteen counties in Northern Illinois including Cook, Lake, McHenry, Boone, Winnebago, Ogle, Lee, DeKalb, DuPage, Kane, Kendall, LaSalle, Grundy, Will, and Kankakee. American Home Health is licensed by the State of Illinois and accredited by the Joint Commission. For further information, go to www.ahhc-1.com, or call (630) 236-3501.

—By Karen Centowski

Education, Information, News

LIVING WITH DIABETES

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Checking Blood Sugar Levels

Sixty years ago, downtown Chicago was a destination for shopping, for the arts, and for business. It was a bustling town.

Marshall Field’s thirteen story building dominated the commercial area. Designed by Daniel Burnham and built in 1891-1892, it took up an entire city block bounded clockwise by State Street, Randolph Street, Wabash Avenue, and Washington Street. The interior featured a Louis Comfort Tiffany glass mosaic vaulted ceiling in the five-story balconied atrium in the southwest corner of the building.

At Christmas time, at the street level there were ornate decorated window displays including thirteen themed windows. Upstairs in the Walnut Room, a three-story decorated Christmas tree was the focal point of the room. Families would stand in long lines waiting to be seated at the tables under the tree.

Jean worked in an office in the Loop, not far from Marshall Field’s. Her job was to calculate tariffs for freight on the Burlington Northern Santa Fe lines. This was an important but difficult job because all the calculations were made using pencil and paper. Computers had not yet been universally adopted for business use.

During lunch hour, she would often go to Marshall Field’s just to browse. It was a way to get away from the office for a few minutes. She enjoyed looking at the store’s merchandise and feeling the excitement of the shoppers. Occasionally, she would buy a piece of costume jewelry for herself or a gift for a family member.

In 1957, Jean developed diabetes. For years, she continued to work. She managed her diabetes with diet and with injections of insulin. She died of kidney failure in 1986.

What is diabetes? According to the American Diabetic Association website, www.diabetes.org, “Diabetes is a disease that occurs in several different types, with the main factor the inability to produce enough insulin in the pancreas to handle the demands of the foods and sugars that enter the body.” There are three types of diabetes: Type 1, Type 2, and Gestational.

According to the American Diabetic Association website, www.diabetes.org, “Nearly 30 million battle diabetes and every 23 seconds someone new is diagnosed. Diabetes causes more deaths per year than breast cancer and AIDS combined.”

If you have a family member who needs private duty nursing, call American Home Health at (630) 236-3501. The agency can provide round-the-clock nursing care by Registered Nurses (RNs), Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs), and Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs). Our service area covers fifteen counties in Northern Illinois including Cook, Lake, McHenry, Boone, Winnebago, Ogle, Lee, DeKalb, DuPage, Kane, Kendall, LaSalle, Grundy, Will, and Kankakee. American Home Health is licensed by the State of Illinois and accredited by the Joint Commission. For further information, go to www.ahhc-1.com. or call (630) 236-3501.

—By Karen Centowski