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A new study published this week in the journal Cancer has doctors, patients, and families talking -- and asking hard questions -- about what happens in a couple when it's the wife, rather than the husband, who becomes ill.

Here's what researchers found when they followed 515 patients with cancer or multiple sclerosis over a period of five years.

• A woman is six times more likely to end up separated or divorced soon after a diagnosis of cancer or MS than a man who becomes ill with the same disease.

• In couples in which the woman fell ill, the divorce rate was more than 20 percent.

• In couples in which the man got sick, the divorce rate was just 2.9 percent.

• The older a woman was at the time she got sick, the more likely she was to end up alone.

• However, the longer a couple had been married, the less likely they were to end up divorced.

The researchers at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, Huntsman Medical Center, and Stanford University were studying a phenomenon that has already been documented in numerous other studies...  Read more

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This week a decision was made that could affect many lives. Currently mammograms are recommended as a yearly screening technique for women starting at age 40. If you have health insurance, it tends to happen pretty much automatically; your doctor sends you a reminder, and off you go to the radiology lab. Now all that might change.

The preventive services task force issued a recommendation that women under 50 shouldn't have routine screening mammograms unless individually recommended. And after age 50, mammograms should only be performed every two years instead of annually, the panel said.

What that means is that women between ages 40 and 50 won't be offered mammograms as a routine part of their wellness health care. And after age 50, they'll be offered mammograms only every two years, which is a long time for a tumor to grow.

As with so many health care decisions, this could come down to money...  Read more

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Thanks to H1N1, cold and flu season has hit early this year, so it's time for one of the most important warnings of the year. Beware of accidentally overdosing on acetominophen (Tylenol) or ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin) by taking both the painkiller and an over-the-counter cold and flu remedy that also contains it.

According to doctors and pharmacists, this is the most common -- and one of the most dangerous -- medication errors people can make, and yet it happens every day.

To help make this clear, I've put together a list of common OTC cold and flu remedies that contain either acetominophen or ibuprofen as one of the main ingredients. These include:

• Comtrex (325 mg acetominophen)

• Nyquil (500 mg acetominophenl)

• Dayquil (325 mg acetominophen)

• Dristan cold (325 acetominophen)

• Nurofen (200 mg ibuprofen) • Contac (500 mg acetominophen)

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What do you do when your beloved father dies and your mother, who was his primary caregiver, won't honor his memory the way you feel she should? That's what Joanie W. is facing. It's a common family dilemma, yet no one seems to talks about it. Final arrangements and how we deal with them bring up such strong feelings, and the public aspect of a funeral or memorial service -- or lack thereof -- can trigger feelings of shame, embarrassment, sadness and -- yes, it's true -- rage. Here's Joanie's story.

"My dad died recently after a long battle with heart disease and diabetes. His last years were really tough as his health went downhill, and he became really difficult to deal with. He was sour and bad-tempered and complained all the time, and my mom took the brunt of it. In his last days, once he went to the hospital, it was like she washed her hands of him. I flew out and stayed with him and basically ended up making all the final decisions...  Read more

"I just don't feel as sharp as I used to; it's like my brain is moving in slow motion." My close friend Amy, who recently finished treatment for breast cancer, was speaking to me and two other friends who are also cancer survivors. It was as if her admission yanked open a door; suddenly all three began talking about how emotionally devastating it's been to feel that cancer has changed their ability to concentrate, create, remember.

Sam, who's in his 60s and has had surgery for colon cancer, told everyone that his doctor had just told him about some research done at UCLA that demonstrated what cancer patients have been arguing for years: that "chemo brain," as the memory and concentration problems resulting from cancer treatment are known, can be very serious and doesn't necessarily go away after treatment is finished, as doctors had previously thought.

Everyone was so excited that we...  Read more

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It's time to talk once again about the importance of vitamin D, aka the sunlight vitamin. I've written about vitamin D before, but good advice bears repeating. For one thing, a lot of Caring.com visitors have been mentioning it on some of my cancer and health posts. (Thanks for helping to spread the word!) For another, more and more compelling news about the benefits of vitamin D keeps coming out -- yet the message doesn't seem to be reaching people.

My step mom, who's in her mid-60s, was recently telling me and my sisters about some health problems she's having, including thinning bones. Yet when I asked if she was taking vitamin D, she said her doctor hadn't mentioned it. Surprised, I asked my sisters, all in their 40s, if they were taking vitamin D, and none were, even though they suffer from a variety of health problems that vitamin D provides important protection against. So here's a roundup of the latest reasons to add a vitamin D supplement to your daily regimen...  Read more

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Patricia K. got the e-mail just a few weeks after Christmas. "The holidays had come and gone, and once again no one had heard from my sister Betsy -- not even a card," Patricia says.

Then suddenly, there was an e-mail in her in box. "The subject line was pure Betsy -- `I hear Mom's sick; why didn't anyone call me?!' Well, gosh, we didn't have her number -- we didn't even know what state she was living in."

Betsy, just three years younger than Patricia, had had a stormy relationship with her parents and sister since high school. She married young, a guy they thought was a lowlife. She had a baby, and proceeded to live one of those lives that lurches from disaster to disaster.

For a long time, the only time anyone heard from Betsy was when she called to ask for money, usually with her son as the excuse. She needed money to take care of Petey, she needed money to send Petey to school, she needed money to take Petey to the doctor...  Read more

If you or a woman you know has early stage breast cancer that's HER2-positive, she needs to know about some new research published yesterday in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

An early stage tumor that's as tiny as one centimeter or smaller still has a high risk of deadly recurrence if it's HER2-positive, new data show.

Researchers from the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center reviewed recurrence data on breast cancer patients whose tumors were one centimeter or smaller -- typically considered to present a very low recurrence risk. (See size chart; one cm is about the size of a black-eyed pea.) What they found was that if a woman's tumor, no matter how tiny, was HER2-positive, her 5-year recurrence rate was 23 percent -- almost one in four.

Led by Ana Gonzalez-Angulo, MD, the researchers analyzed the center's breast cancer research database, which contained data on 965 women whose tumors were less than one centimeter when diagnosed, and who did not receive treatment with Herceptin...  Read more

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Here's some important news for older adults. Researchers are reporting that contrary to the messages we've been hearing over the last six months, the H1N1 swine flu virus can be extremely dangerous for those ages 50 and older.

New research, to be published in the November 4th Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), reviewed the first 1088 cases of H1N1 reported in California after the disease first surfaced in April 2009. The findings, presented by Janice Louie of the California Department of Public Health, were both surprising and scary. A quick summary:

• hospitalization and death can occur at all ages

• 30 percent of all hospitalized cases were severe enough to require treatment in an intensive care unit

• Although 32 percent were children under 18, 58 percent were adults

• Those ages 50 or older had the highest rate of death once hospitalized...  Read more

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I've heard so many variations on this one I could fill a page just with the individual stories. Here on the West Coast, it often involves one of the many freestanding casinos on tribal land, which are all too easily accessible from nearby towns. Or bus trips to Las Vegas or Reno organized by senior groups. A friend in Shreveport tells me her mom couldn't stay away from the riverboat casinos; another friend's dad got in over his head playing Saturday night (and then Friday night, and then Wednesday afternoon) poker. And it isn't just our parents; I recently listened as a group of people shared stories of family members -- often brothers, nephews, cousins -- who got sucked into online gambling.

You've heard the rationale before: "I just play the penny slots. What's wrong with that?" "I've played poker for years; you want me to stop now?" And the kicker: "I have so few sources of enjoyment left...  Read more

Going through cancer treatment is traumatic enough, and no one expects cancer patients to do anything more than try to get well. But some cancer survivors and their families turn around and use their experience with cancer to create foundations and services to help other cancer patients. And many times these services are among the best, because they're created with the insights that only another cancer patient can have. Here are a few inspirational -- and useful --- stories about cancer services created by cancer-stricken families. They're my cancer heroes and heroines of the day.

A Matching Service to Help Breast Cancer Patients Find the Right Clinical Trials

A new and incredibly valuable service,BreastCancerTrials.org was conceived by two San Francisco breast cancer patients, Joan Schreiner and Joanne Tyler, who met when a breast surgeon put them in touch with each other. Joan, whose cancer had metastasized before it was detected, found out firsthand how hard it was to find information on treatments that might help her...  Read more

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Watching those close to us age is stressful for everyone, but certain situations seem guaranteed to set family members against one another and start families unraveling at the seams.

And nothing causes more distrust and divisiveness among siblings than feeling they're not being treated equally or that one sibling is taking advantage of a parent at the others' expense. Case in point: Our message boards at Caring.com are filled with discussions about difficult family situations involving money, uneven sharing of caregiving responsibilities, dishonesty, or all three.

When One Sibling Repeatedly Borrows Money From a Parent and Other Siblings Resent It

This story plays out in all sorts of ways, but the central player is an adult child (or cousin, or nephew...) in difficult straits who frequently goes to aging parents asking for "loans," help with living arrangements, or out and out handouts...  Read more

Here in California where I live, the news hasn't been good this week, with 11 swine flu deaths reported. And nationwide, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported almost 300 deaths since the first of September. No question these are serious numbers, and there's plenty of reason for anxiety, so don't be hard on yourself if you're fretting.

But the best way to handle anxiety, I've found, is to face fear with facts. If you understand what you're afraid of, you can take steps to protect yourself. And if you feel you've been proactive, you can take a deep breath, knowing you've done what you can.

Here's what you need to know:

Be patient and persistent. While there has been some confusion and disorganization at some of the earliest flu shot drives, that's no reason to give up. (In some states, clinics have announced flu shot events, then people arrive to find signs posted saying the vaccine isn't available after all...  Read more

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It's scary to think about cancer, but even scarier to think that we might unknowingly be doing things that put our families at risk.

I'll never forget the day I was cleaning my mom's bathroom, and her caregiver arrived. She smelled the bleach spray I was using all the way from the front door and asked me what I was doing, then gently admonished me that the harsh chemicals weren't good for my mom's lungs, already weak from a lifetime of cigarette smoking. I felt terrible, of course, but also bewildered. After all, I'd been trying to do something nice. Using my experience as a starting point, I thought I'd round up the latest thinking on household chemicals and the risk of cancer and other serious illness. Here are my top five tips.

1. Spring clean the cleaning products. The number one rule of thumb, doctors and environmental safety experts say, is read the ingredient list carefully on anything you're going to be spraying in the air or wiping on touchable surfaces...  Read more

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If you care for an aging family member, I'm guessing I don't have to point out to you the parallel with raising children. There's a reason we're called the "sandwich generation" -- we're the peanut butter and jelly holding together two pieces of bread: our children and our aging parents. But I bet you might not realize that many of the tax breaks we receive from the government for childrearing are available in similar form for taking care of our aging relatives.

Here's a rundown of how your status as a family caregiver might earn you some breaks at tax time:

1. Take advantage of income tax breaks available to caregivers. The one I hear about most from my friends in this situation is the ability to claim a parent as a dependent on your taxes. The criteria for doing this? You must have provided more than half of your parent's total support for the calendar year. Also, your parent's gross annual income has to be below $3500...  Read more