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St. John’s Rehabilitation Program
• Accepting Medicare & Insurances • Sunday Morning Worship Service • Private Rooms • Physical, Occupational & Speech Therapy available Seven Days a Week • Newly updated OmniVR Therapy Program and Equipment 901 Luther Place, Albert Lea • 507-373-8226 • www.stjohnsofalbertlea.org
X-rays show more than just cavities By Rachel Nolander Poppel Why are X-rays needed at the dentist, and what are digital X-rays and why are these better than traditional X-rays? When you visit the dentist, the dentist and his or her team are responsible for diagnosing your oral health status. For the dentist to be thorough and not miss any important findings, it is very important for he or she to review dental X-rays regularly. Your visual exam only shows surface problems, and most dental problems lie under the surface. Cavities between the teeth can be found when they are still small on X-rays. If you can see a cavity with a naked eye, or worse yet, feel a hole with your tongue, then it is a big cavity that can be much more painful and costly to repair than a small cavity caught early. X-rays don’t only show cavities. They also allow your to dentist examine the amount of bone support to the teeth, an indicator of periodontal disease. X-rays also permit the dentist to check for any pathology such as cysts, tumors or cancers in the jaws. Digital X-rays, properly called dental radiographs, are faster and more efficient than traditional X-rays and
Tiffany Krupke/Albert Lea Tribune
Jennifer Westerlund, left, and Marietta Stein stand in the Hospice department at Mayo Clinic Health System in Albert Lea. Westerlund and Stein will be running Albert Lea’s first day camp for teens and children who have experienced a loss.
‘The forgotten survivors’
Albert Lea clinic to host day camp for children handling grief By Tiffany Krupke
tiffany.krupke@albertleatribune.com
They hope to create a comforting atmosphere for teens and children who have experienced a loss. Marietta Stein and Jennifer Westerlund, bereavement staff for the Mayo Clinic Health System in Albert Lea, will host a camp for children and teens in Albert Lea. The camp will run from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. on May 17 at Brookside Education Center and is free of charge. The camp is called Helping Hearts Heal and is for children and teens in grades kindergarten through 12th.
The activities are designed to help participants understand their feelings and to know that they are not alone in their grief. “Children tend to be the forgotten survivors,” Stein said. “We are hoping the camp will give them the opportunity to explore and deal with their feelings.” Stein said children who have experienced a loss need to hear different verbs. “It is important to talk to them in a way they can understand,” Stein said. Children have a different mindset when processing a loss and often have a lot of questions. The camp will provide a
safe area for the children and teens to talk, she said. Westerlund, who worked on the curriculum, said they are incorporating physical activities to make attendees more comfortable. “We want to emphasize taking good care of themselves. We also want to zero in on feelings and memories,” Westerlund said. She said an example of a helpful exercise for attendees is creating a photo collage that reminds them of the loved one they have lost. They also hope to utilize some of the resources at Brookside, like the rock wall. “We are hoping for good
Helping Hearts Heal When: 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., May 17 Where: Brookside Education Center Cost: Free weather,” Stein said. About 20 hospice volunteer, community members and staff will be involved with the camp. Westerlund said they hope the camp will be an annual event. For more information or for registration materials call 373-6393. Registration must be received by May 2.
The Mankato Free Press
MANKATO — Bethany Lutheran College has taken the first step toward beginning a bachelor of science nursing program by launching a search for a full-time director of nursing. Eric Woller, vice president of academic affairs, said the college has been discussing adding a nursing program for more than a decade, since Bethany became a four-year institution.
But certain roadblocks, such as finding clinical space for students, kept the program on the back burner. The demand in recent years for nursing has increased, leading Bethany to move forward, Woller said. “It’s definitely a combination of a couple of things, including the demand for nurses. But also, anecdotally, perspective students ask about nursing quite a bit,” Woller said. The process of developing a nursing program includes
acquiring a state license, developing curriculum and gaining accreditation, Woller said. A director of nursing will hopefully be in place by August to design, develop and implement an accredited and board-certified program, he said. Bethany plans to use space at Mayo Clinic Health System in Mankato for clinicals. “We’re a couple of years away from being able to say we have a nursing program,” he said. While the planning is still
By Jeff Hansel
Rochester Post-Bulletin
in the early stages, Woller expects the program to have about three or four full-time faculty, as well as adjuncts, to teach classes and clinicals. The Institute of Medicine recommends that, by the year 2020, 80 percent of the nursing workforce holds a minimum of a bachelor’s. Woller said most health care facilities desire baccalaureate nursing candidates. Bethany’s nursing program will be among several other nursing programs in southern Minnesota.
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Seventy-five years after baseball player Lou Gehrig was diagnosed with ALS, Mayo Clinic researchers have begun a human study hoping to slow progression of the devastating ailment. ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, has become widely known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. The catastrophic diagnosis carries a crushing prognosis for both the patient and those around them. Gehrig, for instance, only lived two years after he was diagnosed. But the new treatment offers the hope of extending the life of those with ALS. “Lifespan after diagnosis is roughly two to three years, but there’s a huge range,” said Mayo neurologist Dr. Nathan Staff. Affected individuals can survive more than a decade after diagnosis,
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Rachel Nolander Poppel is a dentist at Albert Lea’s Advanced Family Dental.
Researchers with Mayo Clinic place hope in stem cells
Bethany takes step to add nursing program By Amanda Dyslin
have several benefits: One of the greatest benefits is reduced radiation. The sensor used with digital X-rays is more sensitive to radiation than traditional X-ray film, so less radiation is needed per X-ray, resulting in lower amounts of radiation to the patient. With digital radiographs, an electronic sensor (instead of film) is placed in your mouth to capture the image. The digital image is then relayed to a computer, where it is available for viewing immediately. This makes digital radiographs much faster, since traditional X-ray film needs to be processed, which can take five to 10 minutes. Digital radiographs can also be stored on the computer and then compared against previous or future images to see how your dental health is being maintained. Traditional radiographs are much more difficult to keep organized, and the image quality deteriorates over time. Digital dental radiography is one of the most significant recent advancements in dentistry.
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Brian McCoy, a Rochester carpenter, is one of the first 25 people ina Phase I ALS stemcell clinical trial at Mayo in Rochester. “I have nothing to lose,” said McCoy, who was diagnosed in October 2012. “I don’t think it will help me. But, down the road, it might help somebody.” The trial is a safety study to determine if it’s safe to give ALS patients injections of stem cells grown from samples of their own fat tissue. If the process is indeed safe, the study will be expanded to more patients. That will allow researchers to further study both safety and effectiveness in a Phase II randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial. “We don’t know if it will work or not,” said Dr. Anthony Windebank, deputy director for discovery in the Center for Regenerative Medicine at Mayo. “It may even do harm.” If the treatment is both safe and effective and has a marked impact on survival, it would be the first bodyheal-thyself treatment designed specifically to slow ALS progression. More than 700 people with ALS have expressed interest in joining one of the Mayo studies, illustrating the tragic reach of the disease. Currently there’s only one main drug that extends the life of ALS patients. But on average, it only adds about two months to lifespan. And that short time, McCoy said, just isn’t enough. Mayo researchers dream of adding a new treatment tool to fight the disease directly, instead of fighting symptoms. The ALS Association said “progressive degeneration of the motor neurons in ALS eventually leads to their death.”