HEALTH AND WELLNESS

                    Blood is to health care as oil is to transportation. Oil, is that the most precious of fluids? In these days when fuel costs often soar, many might think so. In truth, though, each one of us carries around a few liters of a far more valuable fluid. Think of it: As billions of barrels of oil are extracted from the earth every year to quench mankind’s thirst for fuel, some 90 million units of blood are drained from humans in hopes of helping those who are ill. That staggering figure represents the blood volume of some 8,000,000 people. Still, like oil, blood seems to be in short supply. Medical communities worldwide warn of blood shortages. What is it that makes blood so valuable?                                                      A UNIQUE ORGAN Because of its amazing complexity, blood is often likened to an organ of the body. “Blood is one of the many organs –incredibly wonderful and unique.” Unique indeed! One textbook describes blood as

                              “I cut my wrists so bad I had to get stitches. At the time, I told the doctor that I cut myself on a light bulb, which was true –I just didn’t mention that I’d done it on purpose.” -Cecil, 23. “My parents have noticed my cuts, but only the ones that aren’t so bad and look like scrapes… Sometimes they’ll see one they don’t recognize, so I make up an excuse… I don’t want them to know.”-Kris, 13. “I had been a self-injurer since I was 11. I knew of God’s high regard for the human body, but even this did not deter me.”-Jenny, 20. You might be familiar with someone like Cecil, Kris, or Jenny. It could be a schoolmate. It could be a sibling. It could be you. In the United States alone, it is estimated that millions of people –many of them youths –deliberately hurt themselves by various means such as cutting, burning, bruising, or scraping their skin. Deliberately hurting themselves? In the past many would link such behavior

                           BREAST CANCER: What To Hope, How To Cope. Rita had none of the classic risk factors. She was 40 years old, healthy, and had no family history of breast cancer. Her regular mammogram had shown nothing abnormal. But one day while examining her breast in the shower, she felt a lump. It turned out to be cancer. Rita and her husband sat numbly while the doctor explained her options. In times past, a doctor would tell a woman with breast cancer that her only hope lay in a radical mastectomy –a disfiguring operation that removed the breast, lymph nodes in the chest and armpit, and chest muscles. Chemotherapy or radiation treatments often prolonged the ordeal. Understandably, many dreaded the ‘cure’ more than the disease. The battle against breast cancer has been an going struggle between the need to treat a killer aggressively and the desire to avoid needless disfigurement and painful side effects. Like Rita, today’s breast cancer patients may