Health Answers At Grateful Med
Dear Ann Landers: Your column has often given readers invaluable information about how to recognize and get help for their health problems. Computers can now provide even more help. Anyone with access to the Internet can tap into the world’s largest and most up-to-date collection of medical and scientific information.
The National Library of Medicine’s vast database, called Internet Grateful Med, is available on the World Wide Web. This technology will be an important tool in saving lives and cutting health care costs. Here are some examples of what Grateful Med has done.
A Maryland woman was heartbroken after experiencing six first-trimester miscarriages. She consulted Grateful Med and discovered a way to prevent these recurrent losses. She and her husband now have a healthy 11-month-old son.
A doctor in Watertown, N.Y., was baffled when an otherwise healthy patient became beet red on one side of his body and chalky white on the other whenever he exercised. Through Grateful Med, the doctor was able to read articles about an extremely rare condition called harlequin syndrome. The man has since been successfully treated for the problem and is doing well.
A physician in a remote Alaska town had a patient who could not taste or smell. The doctor ran a computer search on Grateful Med and found 20 citations that fit the woman’s condition and noted that nasal allergies could be the cause. The doctor used drug therapy to treat the allergy symptoms, and the patient regained her sense of taste and smell.
Please let your readers know about this exciting high-tech development in medical information. It can save lives. - Michael E. DeBakey, M.D., Baylor College of Medicine, Houston
Dear Dr. DeBakey: Thank you for making it possible for me to alert my readers to something that could help them cope with health problems and save lives.
Your dedication and innovative approach to medicine has made you one of the admired individuals in the annals of medical history. My warm regards and thanks for everything you’ve done these many years for all of us.
Dear Ann Landers: You are probably plenty fed up on the subject of Christmas newsletters, but since seven months have passed, I thought it might be safe to bring it up again.
A reader who signed himself “Bah, Humbug” blamed you because he didn’t get any newsletters last Christmas. He said that you had no business discouraging people from sending them and that just because YOU thought they were either brag sheets or boring, it didn’t mean everyone else felt that way.
Instead of writing to you to complain, maybe “Bah” should have written to those friends he is so concerned about. I, too, enjoy reading Christmas newsletters, but I don’t wait a year to write to someone I care about. - Lori in New Orleans Dear Lori: Thanks for the innovative defense. I owe you one.
Dear Ann Landers: If you think this is as funny as I do, go ahead and print it. - Longtime Reader in Bentonville, Ark.
Dear Ark.: I do, and I will. Here it is: “I asked my Uncle Jeb why he and Aunt Tessie had so many kids. He replied, ‘We lived down by the tracks. The train woke me up at 6 a.m. and I didn’t have to be anywhere ‘til 7.”’