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Report: Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. releases robocall, tells supporters 'I am human'By Jonathan Easley - 10/20/12 07:07 PM ET The Chicago Sun Times is reporting that Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) sent out an automated message to constituents in his district on Saturday, asking voters to stick by him through his recent spate of difficulties. “Like many human beings, a series of events came together in my life at the same time and they have been difficult to sort through,” Jackson says in the call. “I am human. I am doing my best. I am trying to sort through them...

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. has been absent from Congress for almost three months — and today, his father, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, said he could not even guess when his son might return to Capitol Hill. “I don’t want to hazard a guess,” Jackson said in an interview on the ABC News/Yahoo Democratic National Convention live stream. “I mean, I’m a father in this, not — not medical adviser,” he said. “He must make that decision as to whether … he can continue to serve.” When Jesse Jackson Jr. abruptly took a leave of absence from Congress in early June,...

The Mayo Clinic said Monday that U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and is under treatment there for the condition. Jackson has been hospitalized at the Rochester, Minn., center and absent from Congress since June 10. He’s been suffering from massive depression and gastrointestinal issues, a likely complication from a risky weight-loss surgery known as a “duodenal switch.”

U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.is undergoing treatment for bipolar II depression at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., the facility said today. Mayo Clinic said the diagnosis came after extensive evaluation. “Congressman Jackson is responding well to the treatment and regaining his strength,” it said in the statement. The statement added: “Many Americans have bipolar disorder. Bipolar II disorder is a treatable condition that affects parts of the brain controlling emotion, thought and drive and is most likely caused by a complex set of genetic and environmental factors. Congressman Jackson underwent bariatric surgery in 2004, specifically a duodenal switch. This type...

CHICAGO — U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., a Chicago Democrat who took a hushed medical leave two months ago, is being treated for bipolar disorder, the Mayo Clinic announced Monday. The Rochester, Minn.-based clinic specified his condition as Bipolar II, which is defined as periodic episodes of depression and hypomania. Hypomania is a less serious form of mania. "Congressman Jackson is responding well to the treatment and regaining his strength," the clinic said in a statement...

Illinois Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., whose whereabouts haven't been disclosed since he mysteriously took a medical leave several weeks ago, is being treated for depression at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., according to a statement Friday from the hospital. Jackson is undergoing an extensive inpatient evaluation for depression and for gastrointestinal issues, according to the statement, which also provided the first details about his medical condition. But it provided no details about where the congressman, the son of civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, had previously been staying. [Snip] The timing of [Jackson's] leave has raised questions, in part because...

Fellow FReepers (sorry in advance for the long post)- This is an update to a thread I posted on 3/31/12, and an urgent request for further prayers for my beautiful wife Nikki. God bless those of you who were able to help by praying for us on that thread! We KNOW that your prayers have helped our family, as I will outline in this update. More help is needed though! On that Saturday morning, while my wife and I, & our 4 children were standing around the kitchen island talking about the upcoming day, she collapsed. I rushed Nikki to...

The onset of wrinkles, muscle wasting and cataracts has been delayed and even eliminated in mice, say researchers in the US.It was done by "flushing out" retired cells that had stopped dividing. They accumulate naturally with age. The scientists believe their findings could eventually "really have an impact" in the care of the elderly. Experts said the results were "fascinating", but should be taken with a bit of caution. The study, published in Nature, focused on what are known as "senescent cells". They stop dividing into new cells and have an important role in preventing tumours from progressing. These cells...

The rules of how to treat cardiac arrest are being re-written at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. Technology, new drug treatments, conventional CPR and the use of hypothermia are now being coordinated with great affect - in one case reviving a man who'd been clinically dead for more than an hour. (Video and transcript available at link)

The rules of how to treat cardiac arrest are being re-written at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. Technology, new drug treatments, conventional CPR and the use of hypothermia are now being coordinated with great affect - in one case reviving a man who'd been clinically dead for more than an hour. (Video Transcript) Rodney Whitmore is exercising in the physical therapy wing at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester Minnesota. It's part of his recovery regimen. Two months ago in his farm house, Rodney went into cardiac arrest. His heart stopped pumping blood and supplying oxygen to his body. Statistically, Rodney's...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- By all counts, the 54-year-old man who collapsed on a recent winter night in rural Minnesota would likely have died. He'd suffered a heart attack, and even though he was given continuous CPR and a series of shocks with a defibrillator, the man was without a pulse for 96 minutes. But this particular instance of cardiac arrest (http://www.mayoclinic.org/heart-attack/), reported first in Mayo Clinic Proceedings (http://www.mayoclinicproceedings.com) online, turned out to be highly unusual: "The patient made a complete recovery following prolonged pulselessness," says anesthesiologist and cardiac care specialist Roger White, M.D. (http://www.mayoclinic.org/bio/10114106.html), lead author of the article. Emergency...

For Janis Ollson and her husband Daryl, wedding vows have taken on an entirely new significance. "In sickness and in health" was a promise made on their wedding day – and a promise they revisited just four months ago when they renewed their vows after 10 years of marriage. But as Ollson walked down the aisle this time, she leaned on a cane for support and had a prosthetic leg. It was, in many ways, a miracle she made the walk at all. It's been about three years since Ollson, who lives in the Canadian province Manitoba, went under the...

Health Reform: The white coats showed up again at the White House, helping the administration ram health care reform down our throats. Can you have a bipartisan bill without a bipartisan vote?It didn't work the first time, when the White House last year assembled enough sympathetic medical professionals to stage a photo-op in the Rose Garden trying to persuade us that, as the commercial goes, three of four doctors really, really support the administration's attempt to nationalize health care. Rather than a grass-roots uprising of physicians, last year's event was a classic case of astroturfing. Attendance was by invitation only,...

Open heart surgery generally conjures up images of a long, painful, rib-splitting slice down the middle of the chest. But doctors at the Mayo Clinic are hoping to change that. Heavy lifting goes with the territory for Teresa Van Hauer. She's in the sales territory for a designer shoe and boot representative, meaning she's lugging around 40- to 45-pound cases quite a bit. However, a failing heart valve threatened to close all her accounts. "And when that happens, it is, literally, you're just toast," she said. A critical valve in her heart was crusted with calcium deposits and worn out....

PRESIDENT OBAMA is a great admirer of the Mayo Clinic. Time and again he has extolled it as an outstanding model of health care excellence and efficiency. ...So perhaps the president will give some thought to the clinic’s recent decision to stop accepting Medicare payments at its primary care facility in Glendale, Ariz. More than 3,000 patients will have to start paying cash if they wish to continue being seen by doctors at the clinic; those unable or unwilling to do so must look for new physicians. For now, Mayo is limiting the change in policy to its Glendale facility....

Health Reform: President Obama suggested last summer that the Mayo Clinic was the model for government medical care. On Monday, the Mayo Clinic in Arizona stopped taking Medicare patients. Now what? If the nonprofit Mayo Clinic is "what works," as the president believes, then it's clear that government health care doesn't. If Washington can't manage a system with fewer than 50 million participants well enough for those who paid for it to get care, then it sure can't run a program that will eventually include every person in the country. Obama's comment didn't go unnoticed at the Mayo Clinic. While...

Phoenix - The Mayo Clinic in Arizona, as of tomorrow, will no longer accept patients who are on Medicare. Medicare patients are no longer going to be accepted due to the fact that the compensation paid out by Medicare is apparently not adequate to make up for the cost of care taken on by the clinic. What this means is that many patients on Medicare are either going to have to begin to pay in cash, or be turned away to go elsewhere outside of the Mayo Clinic. The Mayo Clinic has roughly 3,000 patients on Medicare who see their...

"Low reimbursements have led one West Valley medical facility to stop taking certain Medicare patients, a pilot program that an Arizona health-care expert says may become a long-term trend in the industry." "For Mayo Clinic, the cost of providing services to Medicare patients exceeded the total amount paid on behalf of Medicare patients by $840 million in 2008, according to the hospital." "Mayo Clinic was the first health-care system to go in this direction, and I don't think they will be the last," Rivers said. "Everyone else is facing the same pressures as Mayo Clinic, and I won't be surprised...

The Mayo Clinic, praised by President Barack Obama as a national model for efficient health care, will stop accepting Medicare patients as of tomorrow at one of its primary-care clinics in Arizona, saying the U.S. government pays too little.

About 3,000 Medicare patients who’ve been getting care at a Mayo Clinic facility in Arizona will have to pay out of their own pocket or find another doctor. Starting in 2010 (i.e., next week), the five primary care docs at a Mayo outpost in Glendale, Ariz. will stop accepting Medicare. Patients in the program who choose to stick around will be on the hook for about $1,500 per year, Mayo spokesman Michael Yardley told the Health Blog. The clinic expects that most of the patients will find another place to get their primary care. “We know it’s been incredibly difficult...