Retired surgeon gets top Sacred Heart award
Dr. Sam Selinger, a retired heart surgeon who founded a program in Spokane to provide health care for the poor, received the Sister Peter Claver Award this week from Sacred Heart Medical Center.
Selinger started Project Access here and recruited hundreds of health-care providers to help him.
A press release announcing Selinger’s award says:
“The process took years of concentrated work, travel to meet with state legislators and of course, visits with the colleagues with whom he’d worked for more than two decades. It was a massive mission to undertake, but he approached it with vigor and determination – and he’s quick to pass on the accolades to others.”
Selinger says, “As a surgeon, I helped one person at a time. Now, I am able to do so much more. And that is what makes my work so truly rewarding. Project Access is not about simply taking care of your neighbor – but enlisting others to help you do that.”
The Sister Peter Claver award is given to a community member each year who exemplifies the spirit of Sacred Heart’s longtime administrator.
Spokane guy wins with Weight Watchers
A 69-year-old Deer Park man went from 50 pounds overweight to training for the Ironman triathlon.
Now, Mike Brown has been selected as one of Weight Watchers Inspiring Stories of the Year.
Brown, an Internet consultant, joined Weight Watchers two years ago to support his wife, he says. At the time, he was borderline diabetic, overweight and barely exercising. He lost more than 50 pounds and has kept it off for a year. (His wife, Laurine, has shed 60 pounds and is still going, she says.)
“What’s worked for me is just staying focused on a program,” Mike Brown told me today.
Here are some of the other “secrets” of his success:
•Exercise is key. He runs 15-30 miles a week and bikes 50-100 miles. “I take in a couple thousand calories a day and burn off probably 1,000 calories a day,” he says.
•Learn to read menus. Brown and his wife still dine out two or three times a week – they just order wisely. They focus on veggies and lean meats. They split big steaks, or other generous meals, between the two of them. (“We stopped going to Prospectors,” Mike Brown says. “Even splitting meals between us is more than we could eat.”)
•Find a weight-loss buddy. “They need to get a willing team member,” such as a spouse or a friend, Brown says.
•Find an eating and exercise plan you like and stick with it. “You could do any diet,” he says. “It’s just a matter of focus and sticking with it. I don’t advocate that Weight Watchers is the only way to do it.”
AIDS quilt needs panels
A portion of the AIDS Memorial Quilt is coming to Washington State University soon, and event organizers are looking for community members to request specific panels for the display.
The deadline for such requests is Oct. 19. You’ll find more information on panel-making and the quilt itself here.
Twenty blocks (representing 160 lives) of the quilt will be on display at WSU for a week starting Dec. 3.
The AIDS quilt project began 20 years ago. It now includes panels memorializing more than 88,000 people who have died of AIDS. The quilt weighs 54 tons.
For more information on the WSU display, call (509) 335-5759.
A kidney, not a Kirby
It sounds like the set-up for a joke:
A vacuum cleaner salesman knocks on a door. The homeowner says he can’t afford a new Kirby since what he really needs is a kidney transplant.
But this one’s no joke. An Idaho Falls-based door-to-door salesman did just that recently … and ended up donating a kidney to the prospective customer.
No word yet on whether the recipient ever bought that vacuum.