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How mom and dad’s quick-thinking actions helped save son’s life from rare disease
By JAMES GORDON FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
Published: 20:35 EST, 6 March 2025 | Updated: 20:42 EST, 6 March 2025
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The parents of a five-year-old boy from Pennsylvania are being praised for making the quick-thinking decision to return to hospital, despite being recently discharged.
Gunnar Woodring was known to be a bright and lively child until early January when his health suddenly took a terrifying turn for the worse.
Initially diagnosed with influenza, his condition rapidly deteriorated, alarming his mother, Katie Woodring.
‘I said, Gunnar, are you having a hard time breathing? And he nodded yes. And I said to my husband, I know we were just discharged, but we need to go back to the emergency room,’ Katie said.
Her maternal instincts proving to be lifesaving.
*** and ***
Doctors credit Gunnar’s survival to his parents’ quick actions and their refusal to ignore their instincts.
‘Had they not recognized that this was more than just the flu, more than just a mild viral illness.
‘They knew very early on that this child was quite ill and they did what great parents do: they advocated, and they said there’s something not right, so they saved their child’s life,’ Dr. Frank Maffei, Chair of Pediatrics and Chief of Pediatric Critical Care at Janet Weis Children’s Hospital, said.
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EVERYONE needs a Patient Advocate.
Not just a little child. The patient is not is a position to see and hear everything that’s going on.
As a PiA (Patient Advocate aka Giant Pain In The <synonym for donkey>) for my sainted wife, I keep my own chart and logs. I documented every interaction that happened in the hospital. And, I don’t take no <synonym for excrement> when the SHIF and she’s going into shock (low blood sugar) or coma (high blood sugar), I understand that the nursing staff can’t stand by 24/7, but I could. Once went 30 hours without a break during one tough interval.
I often thought I should have written a book about advocating for your patient. (Like the time I called the local Fire Department when there was an on-oxygen patient sneaking smokes in an overcrowded temporary ward in an old conference room. The Fire Chief personally thanked me after he shutdown the ER from accepting new patients. The head of the hospital wasn’t as happy when she visited my wife the day after. Like I cared. Frau asked me if I did it; I proudly said “sure did and I’d do it faster next time.” Never had the chance or need.) I found that the “head docs” never were upset or rude to me when I put in my “advice”. Their lesser team members were not as cordial. I’d seen a “head doc” have a heated hallway conversation with a “little doc” on more tha one occasion. Funny how much you can see when you are only focus on “your patient”.
I had all sorts of tricks to ingratiate myself to the staff (i.e., all ways thank and compliment the cleaning staff; box of donuts for the night nurses; never ask for a service I could do myself; never try to “help” the patient use the ladies room unless the nurse needed help). You have to strictly observe the boundaries. Remember you’re there to watch, record, and report. Not get in the way. The staff should barely know you are there. Remembering their names is easy when you write them all down.
Laugh! I could have take better notes if I had court reporter training. But I used some self-generated forms that helped a lot.
Bottom line: TL;DR. Always trust your instincts; docs and teams make mistakes.
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Is ARPA-H Really a Giant Biden Biotech Slush Fund?
Dr. McCullough with Liz MacDonald on Fox Business The Evening Edit
Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH
Mar 07, 2025
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Senator Joni Ernst wrote Robert F. Kennedy a concerning letter about one ARPA-H check for $28 M to Vaccine Company, Inc, operating out of a PO Box in Maryland. Ernst’s cursory investigation revealed Vaccine Company, Inc, is brand new, has no physical plant or address, and yet received a generous $24M payment from ARPA-H. Ernst points out that ARPA-H received an additional $1.5B from the Biden administration in 2022.
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Certainly seems suspect.
1.5B$?
Must be a really small lab to fit in a Post Office Box.
Where’s the new FBI? The POB had to be paid for. Follow the money and hand out immunity to the “little people” until you get to “the brains”.
Jail is too good for grifters.
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FROM 1440 https://join1440.com/
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Heart of Steel Titanium
An Australian man in his 40s lived for a record 105 days with a titanium heart before receiving a donor heart transplant March 6. Though five patients in the US had previously been implanted with BiVACOR’s Total Artificial Heart, he is the first to be discharged from the hospital with the device and has the longest survival period between implantation and transplantation.
The device uses magnetic levitation technology—like that used in high-speed trains—to suspend a single moving part, a rotor, which pumps blood through the body. An external system controls the device, adjusting blood flow based on the patient’s activity. Experts say it could be a solution for heart failure patients awaiting transplants and may become a permanent option for those ineligible for transplants due to age or other conditions, though further testing is required.
Approximately 6.7 million Americans over age 20 have heart failure, and around 4,600 heart transplants were performed in 2024. The US Food and Drug Administration has approved expanding the trial to include 15 more participants.
*** end quote ***
Now that is a real boon to people whose heart is on its way to failure. And death.
Soon maybe they won’t need donors or pigs.
Amazing.
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Degraded Lands Transformed into Productive Farms: With Science, We Can Create Wonders
By Andy Corbley – Mar 3, 202
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In a degraded and semi-arid farming area in India, simple science-driven changes to the landscape have colored the horizon, and a village’s fortunes, with green.
In the Latur district in the central western state of Maharashtra, 40 years of erratic rainfall, groundwater depletion, soil erosion, and crop failures have impoverished the local people.
In the village of Matephal, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) launched a project in 2023 that aimed at addressing these challenges through integrated landscape management and climate-smart farming practices.
*** and ***
“This ICRISAT project improved yields, diversified crops, and boosted incomes. It also spared women from walking over a kilometer for drinking water, now available in the village for people and animals,” said Mr. Govind Hinge of Matephal village.
*** end quote ***
Pretty amazing results. Went from “dirt poor” with no water to abundant water and good soil.
Unfortunately, the author doesn’t itemize the capital investment that went into creating this miracle. While obviously significant, far beyond what a poor village could afford, one wonders what the ROI would be? For example, the 30 tons of fish harvested might be a source of capital. A 13 foot rise in the water table might be economically exploitable. The extra acreage that become productive might be a source of capital to be used.
I wonder if the world’s engineering schools could be an educational resource? Imagine instead of funding football teams with expansive coaches, Universities could complete for whose intervention produces the most results. Funny? No fill the stadium with two equally sized plots and see which produced the best tomatoes. Yeah, now that is exciting.
Listen to the 4 minute video and see if you’re not as impressed as I am.
Interesting to me is that this intervention made a permanent positive change in peoples’ lives.
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Note: I learned that a hectare (symbol: ha) is a unit of area that is accepted in the International System of Units (SI). It is primarily used to measure land area. One hectare is equal to 10,000 square meters and is equivalent to approximately 2.471 acres.
Found on XTwitter
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Seems like a great idea!
As a gun owning pro-life pro-choice little L libertarian, I really objected when Gooferment bureaucrats made a big deal out of adoptions by “those people” (i.e., gay, lesbian, single parent). I’d rather see those children adopted into a loving home than stuck in the “system”.
https://reinkefaceslife.com/2018/05/05/kansas-oklahoma-approve-religious-veto-on-lgbt-adoptions/
If they are truly so concerned, then schedule follow up visits and such.
But the “system” is no place for children.
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A Student Used AI to Beat Amazon’s Brutal Technical Interview. He Got an Offer and Someone Tattled to His University
By Matthew Gault Published March 4, 2025
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Lee recorded his entire technical interview with Amazon and posted the whole thing, uncut, on YouTube. Then they made him an offer. He rejected it. For Lee, the point was proving that Interview Coder worked, not passing a technical interview and landing a position.
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Good for him. Ethical shmethical. Columbia is probably just pissed that they lost their market for over-priced computer science grads. AMAZON just got embarrassed on YouTube.
Looks like we old programmers got ours and got out before the robot uprising?
Wonder if AI does FORTRAN and COBOL?
I think my 360 Assembler experience is still unique. Too many ways to hide the methods in registers and absolute / relative addressing. And no English language for AI to analyze.
Laugh!
P.S., The Gooferment and Big Banks still use COBOL. Too much invested in it and too hard to recode. I did a FORTRAN retrieval for one oil company that manage to misplace the FORTRAN source code for their refinery control code. So there should still be work for us fat old white guy retired injineer who’s a poor old senior citizen on a fixed income to “save the day” as Mighty Mouse would say.
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https://people.com/dog-found-abandoned-in-cold-looking-for-foster-home-11689843
Iowa Rescue Dog Dumped in a Cage and ‘Left Alone’ in 18-Degree Cold, Now in ‘Gentle Hands’
Rise, a 4-year-old dog left alone in a cage on Sunday, March 2, now has a name that “speaks to new beginnings,” per the Humane Society of Scott County
By Brenton Blanchet
Updated on March 3, 2025 04:40PM EST
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A dog found abandoned in a cage in Iowa in 18-degree weather is ready to begin a warm and welcoming next chapter.
On Sunday, March 2, the Kings Harvest Pet Rescue No Kill Shelter in Davenport announced on Facebook that, earlier that morning, an unidentified person left a dog unattended in the cold outside of the shelter’s former location.
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Special place in Hell reserved for that person. Only thing worse that that I can think of is: What if it was a child?
Would it have taken that much effort to bring it to the proper address that was on the sign where it was abandoned?
I find this very sad because all life is precious.
As Bob Barker always ended the Price Is Right tv show. “Remember to spay and neuter your pets.” That advice should apply to some heartless people too.
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https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y4xqe60gyo?ICID=ref_fark
Australian whose blood saved 2.4 million babies dies
13 hours ago << EDITOR ADDED DATE 2025-03-03>>
Kelly Ng BBC News
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One of the world’s most prolific blood donors – whose plasma saved the lives of more than 2 million babies – has died.
James Harrison died in his sleep at a nursing home in New South Wales, Australia on 17 February, his family said on Monday. He was 88.
Known in Australia as the man with the golden arm, Harrison’s blood contained a rare antibody, Anti-D, which is used to make medication given to pregnant mothers whose blood is at risk of attacking their unborn babies.
The Australian Red Cross Blood Service who paid tribute to Harrison, said he had pledged to become a donor after receiving transfusions while undergoing a major chest surgery when he was 14.
He started donating his blood plasma when he was 18 and continued doing so every two weeks until he was 81.
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We need more of these silent heroes. Where do we get Anti-D?
I started donating blood in College. I remember that the Christian Brothers really publicized the need. Most were WWII and or Korean War vets and could really make us understand how important it was. I remember one of them teaching “Engineering Measurements” saying that we were probably too dumb to be good engineers but probably smart enough to bleed correctly. It was a big joke when we reported that we did “bleed well enough”.
Later in my life, when my sainted wife was mysteriously “loosing platelets”, she was getting four bags of them every week. One of her last wishes was that I replace them. I did and then some until I “aged out”. Who knew that “old platelets” didn’t help those in need?
Anyway, I hope that everyone who can donates. Maybe you might have the “golden arm”!
What a privilege to save lives.
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https://www.newsmax.com/us/incentive-budget-abortion/2025/02/28/id/1200846/
N.J. Gov. Seeks to Draw Abortionists to Garden State
By Nicole Weatherholtz | Friday, 28 February 2025 10:27 AM EST
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New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy has included a $2 million incentive program in his new budget proposal to draw “reproductive healthcare providers” to the Garden State, according to Catholic News Agency.
Murphy’s remarks on the 2026 budget indicate the initiative was designed to appeal to abortion providers in pro-life states, saying the program would bring reproductive healthcare providers to New Jersey who have been “targeted by politicians elsewhere.”
“I will certainly never back down from defending women — and protecting their access to reproductive healthcare and, especially, their right to an abortion,” Murphy said on Tuesday. “Those folks in Washington can try and push their anti-choice agenda on us. But as long as I am governor, they will fail.”
With the 2026 budget, the governor declared that his administration was “going to make the largest investment into protecting reproductive rights in our state’s history by fully funding women’s healthcare.”
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As pro-life pro-choice little L libertarian I don’t understand why the Taxpayers of the Pepuls Republik of Nu Jerzee have to subsidize or incentivize that Phil Murphy calls “reproductive healthcare providers”.
There is a lot of emotion in this issue and personally I believe that “abortion” is a tricky topic.
Up to a certain point, the Gooferment should have no role in what should be a terrible decision that has to be made by a woman. Perhaps guided by her doctor, her family, and her Church, she should be free to chose what she sees as “best”.
At some point, the child gets the rights of a human being. I don’t know what that point is: conception, 3 months, viability outside of the womb, 6 months, at birth, at some number of days after birth, when they can assert their rights, at 18, at 21. As I said, I don’t know.
But I do know, that the Gooferment should not add to the fury. “It’s all sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Using Taxpayer money to attract more killing of human beings seems like a failure to understand the basic role of Gooferment: “Protect its citizens!”
No mater what age they are.
It’s a topic best left to the people. If Murphy wants, then let him pay out of his pocket; not mine. Or start a GOFUNDME!
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