Longer Looks: Revival Of The Midwife; From The Streets To The O.R.
Each week, KHN's Alana Pockros finds interesting reads from around the Web.
The Atlantic:
Call The Midwife
When Kelly LeGendre found out in 2012 that she was pregnant with her first child, the Arizona resident, then 34, knew she needed to seek prenatal care. Unlike most American mothers, however, LeGendre didn’t seek out an obstetrician. Instead, she opted for a midwife.
For LeGendre, the decision was a no-brainer: “I wanted minimally invasive prenatal care and a completely natural childbirth experience,” she explains. She’d known several women who had positive birth experiences with midwives; meanwhile, some mothers who had gone the traditional physician route told her they had been urged to accept interventions that LeGendre didn’t want, like genetic testing, early induction of labor, or IV antibiotics during labor.
LeGendre is part of a small but growing minority of American mothers opting for midwives over obstetricians: In 1989, the first year for which data is available, midwives were the lead care providers at just 3 percent of births in the U.S. In 2013, the most recent year for which statistics are available, that number was close to 9 percent. (Jamie Santa Cruz, (6,12)
The Los Angeles Times:
Off The Streets and Into The OR: A New UCLA Doctor Turns His Life Around
Two very different documents define James Maciel's unusual life journey.
The older one is a photocopy of his court records from the late '90s, showing arrests for graffiti vandalism and possession of a handgun that landed him in Orange County Juvenile Hall and the Youth Guidance Center for six months. It is an unhappy souvenir of a teenage phase that could have led to hard-core gang life and all its dangers, he said recently.
The other document is his new UCLA medical diploma, earned at the relatively late age of 33 while he and his wife were raising their three children. The diploma is a passport to Maciel's upcoming residency in surgery at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, the Carson hospital that serves many low-income people and immigrants and is among the busiest in the state in treating gunshot wounds. (Larry Gordon, 6/13)
The New York Times:
The New Girl In School: Transgender Surgery At 18
In a cozy cottage decorated with butterflies to symbolize transformation, Katherine Boone was recovering in April from the operation that had changed her, in the most intimate part of her body, from a biological male into a female. It was not easy. She retched for days afterward. She could hardly eat. She did not seem empowered; she seemed regressed. (Hartocollis, 6/16)
The New York Times:
Wearable Devices To Prevent Sunburn
Could new technology succeed where years of public health messages, doctor warnings and nagging moms have failed — to keep us safe from too much sun?
We have all heard about the devastating effects of ultraviolet radiation. It burns, ages, wrinkles, and can even cause cancer. There are 3.5 million cases of skin cancer in the United States each year, yet fewer than one third of people use sunscreen regularly, according to a May report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Jennifer Jolly, 6/16)
The Philadelphia Inquirer:
Listening To Love: Doctors Use Seniors' Stories To Improve Care
Danielle Snyderman's fascination with the love lives of her elderly patients began after a woman in her late 80s suffered a series of falls. It was clear that she could no longer live safely in an apartment with her husband of six decades. A broken hip would have been catastrophic for her. Snyderman, a geriatrician, recommended that the woman move to assisted living. Her husband resisted fiercely, fighting against what seemed to be in his wife's best interest. Snyderman, who is 38 and has been married a mere nine years, suddenly understood what this man was losing. The lives of these two people, who had spent far more of their lives together than apart, were so entwined that it was folly to care for them as individuals. (Burling, 6/14)
Fusion:
Enter The Wild West Of The Embryo ‘Adoption’ Industry
Because implanted embryos don’t always “take” in IVF, doctors advise making extras. That can lead to leftovers, raising questions for families, medical facilities, policymakers and activists about what should be done with them. The Taylors and Granadoses are an example of one possible approach and demonstrate the evolution of the concept of the American family, in this case due to the convergence of two seemingly unlikely bedfellows: reproductive technologies and the conservative right. (Hernandez, 6/10)