Huge Bills For Hand Rehab; Vaccinations In Pregnancy; Extraordinary Patients

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How To Raise A Human We Want To Hear From You!  We've reported on kids and chores, Grandma's role in evolution and stay-at-home dads. What else do you want to know about parenting? What questions do you have for our correspondents? Submit your question here. We’ll pick a few to answer on NPR.org at the end of the series.   Angel Dean Lopez and his son Theo both sustained serious injuries to their hands that required surgery and months of occupational therapy. Heidi de Marco/Kaiser Health News   All In The Family: Father And Son Injure Their Hands And Incur Big Therapy Bills Angel Dean Lopez, a Hollywood TV writer and father of three, enjoys doing projects with his kids. He was helping make some wooden race cars for the neighborhood pinewood derby, when he ran into trouble while working on a car shaped like a San Pellegrino bottle. "I was in a hurry and I did a horrible thing," he said, remembering how his hand slipped as he was using a router to shape the small block of wood. He needed surgery, a two-day hospital stay and numerous sessions of occupational therapy to regain the use of his hand, he told reporter Stephanie O’Neill. By chance, Lopez’s son Theo sustained his own serious hand injuries carving a jack-o’-lantern about a week later. He also needed surgery and lots of therapy to recover. Only later did Lopez learn that his otherwise generous insurance policy would pay only a fraction of the charges for the prescribed occupational therapy. All told, the family owed $8,561. Read more in the latest article in our Bill of the Month series, a collaboration between NPR and Kaiser Health News.   Nicole Xu for NPR   Pregnant Women: Avoid Soft Cheeses, But Do Get These Shots The list of things you're supposed to avoid when you're pregnant is comically long. Hot baths. Alcohol. Soft cheeses. Tuna and lunchmeat. Sprouts. So what about getting vaccinations at the start of the third trimester? That’s a yes, with a few exceptions. A flu shot can be a big help for Mom, and Tdap (for tetanus, diphtheria and whooping cough) ahead of birth can help protect her newborn. Now there’s a one-page immunization guide for pregnant women that spells it all out, NPR's Selena Simmons-Duffin reports.   "If my life were to end next week ... I want to feel like I have made a contribution," said Carol Martin, seen here holding her 2018 Boston Marathon medal. Jesse Costa/WBUR   What Can Cancer Specialists Learn From Patients Who Beat All The Odds? Carol Martin, 67, has advanced, inoperable pancreatic cancer. And yet she just finished this year’s Boston Marathon, almost two years after her initial diagnosis. Why did she respond extraordinarily well to therapy? Even her doctors don’t know, but a project at Harvard Medical School aims to figure it out. The Network of Enigmatic Exceptional Responders is collecting all kinds of information about cancer patients who beat the odds, reports Carey Goldberg at WBUR’s CommonHealth. The ultimate goal is to make whatever helped these fortunate patients of use to other people. Your Shots editor, Scott Hensley   You received this message because you're subscribed to our Health emails. |  Unsubscribe  |  Privacy Policy | NPR 1111 N. CAPITOL ST. NE WASHINGTON DC 20002

China won’t take our plastic trash anymore, and we can't find anywhere else to send it all

For a quarter century, the U.S. has found it cheaper to ship plastic scrap overseas for recycling than to do it at home. China came to dominate that market -- but last year announced it didn't want the scrap anymore. No other countries are ready to handle it.

Angela Hsieh/NPR When she went looking for her birth mother, she hoped to find a bit of herself, too. But the reunion wasn’t what she expected NPR's Ashley Westerman was born in the Philippines but raised by white Americans in rural Kentucky, with no one around who looked like her. This year, she tracked down the woman who gave her up for adoption three decades ago and writes about the hopes, trepidation and even disappointment of the journey and eventual meeting. It wasn't everything she had wanted, but, she writes, it brought some clarity — for her and for her birth mom. Robert Noonan/Science Source Savor those barbecues: The increasing range the Lone Star tick could make the next burger, lamb kabob or pork chop your last The tiny arachnid, once confined to the country’s Southeast, can now be found from Oklahoma City to the Chicago suburbs to Bangor, Maine. Its bite can cause an allergy to red meat, with symptoms that can range from a runny nose to a rash and nausea, even asthma and anaphylaxis. “We're confident the number is over 5,000 [cases], and that's in the U.S. alone," one allergist says. And don’t plan to drown your summer sorrows in an ice cream cone: Some people’s allergies are triggered by dairy, too. Michael Reaves/Getty Images In Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement, yet-another 2016 aftershock rumbles through Kennedy had reliably been the center of the Supreme Court for years, but it seems the center can’t hold anymore in the United States, writes NPR’s Ron Elving. The justice sided with the court’s conservative wing on the most controversial subjects this term — including abortion rights, which stand to face intense new challenges with the new Kennedy-less bench. A more sharply divided high court will reflect the country’s politics, as primary results this year have pushed the parties further from the middle. Jie Zhao/Corbis via Getty Images The U.S. sent a small mountain of our recycling across the Pacific to China last year. This year, there is nowhere for it to go Citing health concerns and environmental protection, China shut down imports of plastic scrap. Malaysia, Thailand or Vietnam have picked up some of the 372,000-metric-ton business but are quickly capping out their capacities. So it's piling up in landfills and being dumped into incinerators here. "This export mindset that has developed in the U.S. is one that has to change," says a Yale policy expert. Angela Hsieh/NPR The best songs of the first half of the year, picked by NPR’s experts and your stations’ music fiends If you’re in the market for a new go-to anthem, you’ll find all kinds here, each the personal choice of a public radio journalist. No haggling, no voting — each reached into their heart and picked what nestled closest. If you’re more into novels than short stories, they’ve picked favorite albums, too. You received this message because you're subscribed to our Best of NPR emails. |  Unsubscribe  |  Privacy Policy | NPR 1111 N. CAPITOL ST. NE WASHINGTON DC 20002