Thursday, September 24, 2009

Vaccine helps prevent HIV infection


- The Associated Press
 
BANGKOK -- For the first time, an experimental vaccine has prevented infection with the AIDS virus, a watershed event in the deadly epidemic and a surprising result. Recent failures led many scientists to think such a vaccine might never be possible.
The World Health Organization and the U.N. agency UNAIDS said the results "instilled new hope" in the field of HIV vaccine research.
The vaccine -- a combination of two previously unsuccessful vaccines -- cut the risk of becoming infected with HIV by more than 31 percent in the world's largest AIDS vaccine trial of more than 16,000 volunteers in Thailand, researchers announced Thursday in Bangkok. READ THIS EXCITING STORY HERE......

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Soaking Prayer

PILLOWS!
BLANKETS!
HOLY SPIRIT!

SEPTEMBER 19, 2009
6:30 - 7:30 P.M.

Every third Saturday of the month, members of the St. Dunstan’s Order Of St. Luke Healing Prayer Ministry host Soaking Prayer, a 90-minute time of soft, inspirational music interspersed with Scripture readings, usually based on a theme or single word e.g. “love”, “water”, “forgiveness”, etc. Participants are asked to bring a pillow and blanket. There is no charge to participate. There will be a discreet basket for freewill offerings. For more information, contact the church office at 619-460-6442. Soaking Prayer is a lay-led experience and under the guidance of Fr. David, Chaplain of the Healing Prayer Ministry.

HEALTH FAIR at St. Dunstan's...

SAVE THE DATE: SEPTEMBER 19, 2009 / 10 AM - 2 PM 

Free Information and Support for Health & Wellness:
Healthy Snacks and Lunch available at 12 noon for $5
PLAN TO ARRIVE EARLY AND SPEND A GREAT HEALTHY DAY!

 

Monday, September 14, 2009

Intensive Care Week


Thoughts while sitting beside my brother as his brain and body failed.
Philip Yancey | posted 9/14/2009 10:26AM
You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends," Joan Didion writes in a memoir of her husband's death from a heart attack. Everyone who has suffered sudden loss knows that freefall feeling.
My brother's life did not end this summer, but in one terrifying week of progressive strokes, his brain shut down much of his body. On a Friday, he began experiencing vision problems. The following Monday, he drove himself to the doctor, who sent him in an ambulance to a local hospital. On Tuesday he spoke sometimes clearly and sometimes in gibberish. Wednesday he could walk but lost control over his right hand and arm. By Thursday he could not stand and failed to follow simple commands. An MRI showed significant brain damage.
When I arrived the following day, my brother could barely open his eyes and had lost movement on his right side. Sometimes he squeezed my hand appropriately when I talked and he cried often, so I knew he had some understanding. After the brain had stabilized, a surgeon cut a window through his skull and in a six-hour procedure redirected an artery from the scalp to the inner brain.
I spent all that week in a hospital waiting room, hanging out with other families between visiting hours. In such a setting, strangers become intimate friends. A mother told stories of her bipolar daughter whose lung had been removed. We saw her in the manic phase, pacing the halls with a medicine-dispensing pack; in her depressive phase, nurses watched her for suicidal signs.
Alone, always with a book in hand, the boyfriend of a young woman who had overdosed on Vicodin kept vigil by her bed for three weeks. Nearby, an Indian man translated for his wife: after a brain injury, she had lost facility in English and reverted to her mother tongue. A desperate family put up posters in the elevators—Help Save Nick's Life—asking for Asian Americans to consider a bone marrow donation.
Sadly, some patients had no visitors. Different rules govern wealth and status in a hospital: the currency is not cash, but visitors and love. Read the whole story.....

American Anglican Council Announces Formation of Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans-NA

September 14th, 2009 Jill Posted in American Anglican Council, Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FCA), Global Anglican Future Conference

By David W Virtue and Mary Ann Mueller, Virtueonline


NASHOTAH, WISCONSIN—In a stunning pronouncement, the American Anglican Council (AAC) announced the launching of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans-North America (FCA-NA) this week bringing together individual Anglicans in the great Diaspora who are unable to find an ACNA church near them. Orthodox Episcopalians and Anglicans can join to become ministry partners.
"I am pleased to announce the formation of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans – North America as a ministry partner of AC-NA to which you can apply immediately," said the Rev. Phillip Ashey, AAC’s travelling chaplain. He urged Anglicans to go on line and join the FCA -NA apply at: www.fca.net. Read the whole story here.....

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Healing News




CASES

Coming to Know the Limits of Healing
By COLIN FERNANDES, M.D.
Sometimes a doctor must say, “There is nothing more I can do.”


Splits Form Over How to Address Bone Loss
By KATE MURPHY
Some doctors are worried that a disease is being treated unnecessarily with risky drugs.

Friday, September 4, 2009

Q&A: Faith Healing and the Law


Two of government's obligations - enforcing child welfare laws and protecting freedom of religious expression - can clash when a parent chooses to rely on spiritual healing practices instead of standard medical care to treat a child's illness. Indeed, courts in Wisconsin and Oregon recently decided two cases involving faith healing that resulted in the death of a child. In a new Pew Forum Q&A, church-state scholar Robert W. Tuttle explores the legal issues that courts must consider in such cases. Go to the Q&A »