She was visiting: Medical tourism to Israel

Caroline Ardeeser, a 78-year-old retired Florida resident, decided to forgo Medicare and hospitalization in the U.S. and pursued surgery in Israel. She was visiting Israel earlier this year, when her knees "gave out." Rather than return home, where she had stopped paying health insurance premiums, she chose to have the reconstructive surgery performed at the Sheba Hospital in Israel. The 90-minute surgery and a week's stay in the hospital cost her $16,000, which she had in savings.

She says that at her age, she cannot obtain private health insurance in the U.S. And even if she could, she estimates that with the co-pay, the surgery and the rehabilitation at home could have cost three times as much. She plans to have surgery on her other knee soon and is recuperating in a rented house in the West Bank city-settlement of Ariel. "I had a most positive experience here," she says.

Much of the medical tourism industry in Israel depends on brokers like Ira Nissel, who handled Caroline’s case. An immigrant from New York who came to Israel in the late 1970s, he is an entrepreneur who formed IMS Global four years ago to promote medical tourism to Israel.

A survey in 2008 by Deloitte Center for Health Solutions found that in 2007, 750,000 Americans traveled overseas for medical treatment. Spokespersons for the Israeli government said about 20,000 foreign tourists were served in Israel in 2007.

Advice to people lacking insurance: Consider the merits of getting care abroad – or of getting a U.S. president who favors universal health insurance.

Read a story about medical tourism.

Thanks to Netty Gross for the source article in the Oct. 13 issue of the Jerusalem Report.

A normie wandered in unawares: Coffee, karaoke, and group therapy

Harold Jonas, 52, kicked a heroin habit two decades ago in the beachfront city of Delray Beach, Florida, far from his native Philadelphia, and decided to stay. He married a fellow addict, raised a family, earned a doctorate and opened a halfway house for substance abusers making the transition from residential care to independent living.

Steadily, he and his wife, Dawn, expanded their cottage industry. They organized an association of halfway house owners and opened KoffeeOkee, the coffeehouse-karaoke bar.

About 20 residents of Delray Beach recently gathered at the café one night for a weekly counseling session. One "normie" – their word for the 65,000 year-round townspeople – wandered in unawares and was allowed to stay. First-timers sat at the periphery of the circle, avoiding eye contact with others.

Advice to people struggling with drug habits: You can have fun and friends without harmful drugs.

Browse for related stories in the index at the very bottom of this page, or read one of our Delray Beach stories.

Thanks to Jane Gross for the source article in the Nov. 16 issue of the New York Times.

She and her husband Jack were in for a difficult few months: MyPatientLine

When Karen Rynes gave birth to her twins four months early, she and her husband Jack were in for a difficult few months. The newborns were in very critical condition, and spent the next four and a half months in the NICU at Baylor University Medical Center.

Jack and Karen live in Dallas, but since they are originally from the Midwest and have lived all over the country, most of their contact with their concerned friends and loved ones was by telephone. This meant that, each day, after a long and emotionally taxing visit to the hospital, Jack and Karen returned home and had to field phone calls from family and friends who wanted updates on the status of the twins.

This need to repeat the day's news and events to multiple parties each day was emotionally taxing for the Rynes family, adding difficulty to their already stressful lives. After a tough day, the last thing they wanted was to relive the day's events multiple times over.

They set up an 800 number service with voicemail capabilities that would allow friends and family to call in for a recorded a message every day with the updated status of the twins. Family and friends could listen to these updates and leave their own messages of support and encouragement for Jack and Karen to hear at their leisure.

With the 800 number in place with help from Jack's company, Jaduka, tensions were eased for Jack and Karen. "We were now able to update friends daily and spend more time with our boys," said Karen. "The system also helped ease the minds of our friends and loved ones, who called in for updates without worrying about disturbing us."

Karen's 92-year-old grandmother also came to know the benefits of this system, as she never went to sleep without first calling and listening to the day's update.

Jack and Karen have made the service available to help other families. "We felt the need to help other families facing the unexpected trauma of an extended hospital stay for any purpose, whether due to premature babies, cancer, or even war injuries, so we created MyPatientLine," said Jack.

MyPatientLine is a phone service that offers an expanded version of the messaging system that Jack and Karen used to get through their difficult period. Some hospitals have already started offering it to their patients. The Connecticut Children's Medical Center, for example, plans to provide MyPatientLine to patients upon admission to their hospital.

In the same way that this service helped them, Jack and Karen hope that MyPatientLine can help others.

Advice: Consider MyPatientLine or other ways to update family members in an emergency.

Browse for similar stories in our index at the very bottom of this page, or read another preemie story.

Thanks to Nick Krefting for the interview of Karen.

We did this to change thousands: A breast cancer survivor

During her treatment for breast cancer, Kim Carlos, 36, ate lunch once a week at the Nordstrom department store in Kansas City, Missouri, with three other young women with breast cancer. They wrote a book based on their discussions, "Nordie's at Noon," and published it themselves. Their grass-roots marketing was so successful that Da Capo Press bought the book and is redistributing it.

Kim's work brought her so many requests for speaking and advocacy work that she decided to leave her position at a law firm in Kansas City to dedicate herself to motivational speaking and issues-oriented public relations.

"We didn’t go through this to change one life, we did this to change thousands," she said.

Advice: Share your survival stories, your pain and your joy, with your support group of friends, like Kim.

Read another breast cancer survivor story, or read the source article by Marci Alboher in the Oct. 25 issue of the New York Times.