Adrian Rogers

Merry Christmas! Did you get that Ab Wheel you wanted? No? If what you really wanted for Christmas was to be healthier and feel better, there’s still hope.

Choosing health insurance can be confusing, as consumers try to decipher terms like “non-preferred providers” and “out-of-network co-insurance.” Buying it on your own, as many have been forced to do in the past decade amid a harsh economy, can be intimidating. Enter the Internet’s glut of information. Online shoppers for health coverage face potential dangers, including scams. But online tools introduced recently aim to ease the process.

Recognizing depression in a relative or friend is one thing. Talking with them about getting treatment is another – especially, suicide prevention advocates say, when the person with depression belongs to a generation less likely to place faith in mental health services, or “mental health” as a concept.

The cantankerous old man in your life might actually be a man who’s contemplating suicide. The forgetful widower next door may not be suffering from early Alzheimer’s, but from major depression. For seniors – who have the highest suicide rates in the nation – depression often manifests itself “atypically.” While a younger person with depression might be sad and withdrawn, as frequently portrayed in TV ads, an older person with depression might be verbally aggressive or exhibiting signs of dementia.

One possibly surprising thing about Little Free Libraries: Other than to borrow and drop off books, lingering to peruse the titles or page through the pictures, people leave them alone. That’s contrary to what passers-by wondered aloud when Mary Maxfield put up Little Free Library No. 848 – a peak-roofed box atop a sturdy post in her front yard on the South Hill, with a sign inviting people to take a book or leave one. How would she protect it from vandals? How would she keep people from throwing books into the street?

It was 2 a.m. when Susan Gray woke up in bed, the pain in her head so severe she saw red. She couldn’t lift her head from her pillow. Attempting to roll over, she couldn’t move her left side. She remembers the pain, the fear and the trip to the hospital, but family and friends had to fill in the events of the next nine days after her stroke: the second major bleed half a day after the first, being rushed into surgery for a 16-hour operation, fighting from her hospital bed to sit up when a gauge in her brain required her to remain down. She threw up everything she ate, they told her, and she was confused and combative – typical stages after a brain injury.