Free Republic

Wearing masks in public is our new normal. Health experts have concerns over people wearing N95 respirator masks, which have a breathing valve. The air you breathe in is filtered, but the air you exhale is not, putting others at risk. https://t.co/ROmeB4cPWu

As hospitals face an overload of COVID-19 patients struggling to breathe, innovative medical staff are turning to snorkelling masks from sports stores to stop their lungs collapsing. The idea started in Italy, the European country worst-hit by the coronavirus pandemic, with hospitals in other nations taking note and adding their own specific medical parts to make it work. One such is the Erasme Hospital on the outskirts of Belgium's capital Brussels. It is attached to the city's ULB university - and through it to a private spin-off, Endo Tools Therapeutics, whose knowhow in 3D printing for medical use has proved...

URGENT PRAYERS NEEDED - DAUGHTER ON RESPIRATOR, NOW HAS MRSA. My daughter, Stephanie, is on a respirator and nasal feeding tube in the ICU at our local hospital. She was admitted to the hospital on 06/07/2009, after having a seizure that lasted over an hour. She had several shorter ones back-to-back after admission. We were told today that she now has MRSA. I have written about her before. She is a severely mentally and physically disabled 24 year old, who does not walk, talk, or feed herself. She wears diapers and has a very rare type of dwarfism, so she...

A seriously ill baby, whose parents lost a court battle to keep him alive on a ventilator, has died. The nine-month-old had a rare metabolic disorder and had brain damage and respiratory failure. His parents had appealed against a ruling at London's High Court that it was in the boy's best interests to withdraw "life-sustaining treatment". Baby OT was unable to breathe by himself and died after doctors withdrew his treatment. His parents said they were "deeply distressed" by the decision of the High Court in London and said the life of their "beautiful boy" was worth preserving. The couple...

Italian Doctor Cleared of Charges in Death of Prominent Right-to-Die Activist By John Jalsevac ROME, Italy, July 24, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A doctor who removed the ventilator tube of prominent right-to-die activist Piergiorgio Welby has been cleared of charges of "consensual murder" on Monday, reports ANSA. The case of Piergorgio Welby hit international airwaves in 2006 after the poet, who suffered from advanced muscular dystrophy, sent a public letter to Italian President Giorgio Napolitano in which he described in detail his medical condition and expressed his desire to die. (see: http://vrzhu.typepad.com/vrzhu/2006/12/a_poets_right_t.html) "If I were Swiss, Belgian or Dutch, I could...

Many of you replied when I originally posted my husband's horrible hospital odyssey of several months ago. Things were going okay in the Catholic hospital, until my husband knocked out his trach in his sleep. The alarm didn't go off. My husband can breathe on his own, and the ventilator was giving him some small support. His heart stopped. They resuscitated him, and he's been in a twilight since. The dr. he has has given up on him - this has only been a week. My husband IS starting to respond and focus, but the dr. doesn't care. He's pressuring...

I'm in desperate need of some advice and some help. My husband was successfully operated on three months ago for pancreatic cancer. He was doing well til three weeks ago when he got dehydrated - a byproduct of the strong chemo regimen he was on. He went to the hospital, where he was ignored and got worse. Within four days he went from dehydrated to septic shock, a situation the hospital caused by ignoring his symptoms. He was on respirator, and I had all the Dr. Kevorkian clones running up to me all day to get me to sign a...

Father drops court appeal over his little girl's fate The fate of a little girl badly injured in a landslide last September will be decided outside of a Norwegian courtroom. Her father and officials at the Bergen hospital where she's lying in a coma have agreed to cooperate. Oddmund Hjartåker has been fighting to prevent doctors at Haukeland University Hospital in Bergen from taking his daughter off a life-support system. Four-year-old Kristina Hjartåker has been linked to a respirator since she was buried under mud and rocks in a landslide set off by heavy rain. Her doctors, other hospital...

Ok folks - asking for your prayers for a fellow-coworker's mother. Z's mother, Francis, was admitted to the hospital over the weekend as a result of a severe asthma attack. She was taken off the respirator yesterday, and Z just got a call from the hospital that they've put her back on the respirator. Please - keep Z and her mother both in your prayers.

VATICAN CITY (AP) -- Pope John Paul II underwent a successful operation Thursday night to insert a tube in his throat to relieve his breathing problems, hours after he was rushed back to the hospital for the second time in a month with flu-like symptoms of fever and congestion, the Vatican said. The pope was conscious and back in his hospital room late Thursday, breathing with the help of a respirator, the Italian news agency ANSA reported. A top aide to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi who visited the pope said John Paul was "serene" after waking up from the...

The Rationale Investors too often ignore sales, and we're not talking about the kind that fill your freezer with $3.99 a pound shell steaks. We mean revenues, as in the top line. These days everyone seems fixated on the consensus earnings estimate, and more specifically whether a company meets it, beats it or falls short. And rightly so. After all, earnings usually drive share prices. But sales are worth a look as well, for a couple of important reasons. First, sales ? and not earnings ? typically signal growth early on in two types of companies: those that are young...

Please pray for Freeper Pegita's Father who has been on a ventilator and "could be taken off the ventilator but his oxygen level is dropping" and she urgently needs prayer for him and information on oxygen enhancing drugs. From Pegita: "His blood was iron poor before hospitalization, and my suggestion for the use of this new medicine (originally for rebuilding blood for chemo patients), has not met with any interest."Meaning she needs prayer help and information from any Freeper in the medical field who might have information on medicine that is specifically for "blood rebuilding" - need this information urgently!