COVER STORY  As a family care physician, Dr. John McCarthy will, over the course of visits during your life, tell you a few words you don’t want to hear.
You probably shouldn’t go tanning. You’re overweight. You should eat vegetables, exercise more. Oh, and you should take these pills every six hours. Read More>>

COVER STORY  For patients, it’s a common complaint: You wait in the waiting room, you wait in the doctor’s office and, when the doctor finally arrives, it’s a five-minute visit and she’s gone. Read More>>

COVER STORY  Lauri Costello, a family practice physician in Spokane, was already frustrated with the world of medicine. She was irked by the red tape and bureaucracy and dealing with insurance companies. Then a patient — a woman who’d had a stroke — sued her practice. Thanks to a gag clause, she says she can’t get into the details. Read More>>

COVER STORY  Most people think doctors have it all — great careers, busy offices, money for vacations and cars. But here’s a surprising fact: After 10 years in practice, 17 percent of general internists will have left their field, according to findings from the American Board of Physicians and the American Board of Internal Medicine. Read More>>

PEOPLE  Losing your vision may be hardest when you never expected it. The summer before Charlotte Inman started to go blind, she and her new husband bought rollerblades, bikes and skis.
It took a while for Inman to notice anything was wrong. She began bumping into things, tripping over her dog. She realized she couldn’t see her fingers at all if she held them off to her side. Her peripheral vision was disappearing.
The diagnosis: retinitis pigmentosa, a condition that can progress to total blindness. Read More>>

INNOVATION  When President Barack Obama signed the long-debated health care reform bill into law on March 23, he affected one-sixth of the U.S. economy with a few pen strokes. While the bill runs 2,400 pages, it’s predicted to create 200,000 to 300,000 pages of new or changed rules and regulations.
As Vice President Joe Biden said, it’s a big, uh, deal. Read More>>

SENIORS  Death can come unannounced, without a word of warning or foreshadowing. But other times, death comes more slowly. Those last months, last days, last moments, can be filled with dread, anger and fear, or peace and closure. Read More>>

INNOVATION  There’s a lot you can learn from a just a little bit of bone. Peer into it under a microscope and the shape and structure can tell a pathologist about malignancies, about deficiencies, about cancer. Read More>>

SENIORS  Pop quiz: What’s your name? What’s today’s date? Other than shark, what are four creatures beginning with S? Why is a carrot like a potato? How long can you remember the phrase, “Good Citizens Always Wear Stout Shoes?”

To the average adult, it’s not a tough quiz. At least, it shouldn’t be. But for an adult suffering from Alzheimer’s, it’s a very tough quiz indeed. They may score only one out of 35 points. Read More>>

INNOVATION  Maybe it was a bar fight. Maybe a hockey puck. Maybe it was the result of an ill-considered bet. For whatever reason, there’s a gaping, whistling hole where your two front teeth used to be. These days, an oral surgeon can help you out with an implant — a faux-tooth held in place by a titanium rod. Reports of discomfort may vary, but no one argues it’s not expensive. Read More>>

SPECIAL SECTION  Ever since 1964, when he first read about Nobel Prize winner Albert Schweitzer, Dr. Mike Ettner, emergency department physician from Kootenai County Medical Center, wanted to be a missionary doctor. It is the only dream he’s ever had. He had planned on spending his life saving the sick and injured in Africa. Read More>>

COVER STORY  Spokane has a lot of things worth bragging about. There’s Riverfront Park. There’s Bloomsday. There’s Hoopfest. And according to Mike LaScuola, environmental health specialist for the Spokane Regional Health District, there’s the water that’s streaming out of your kitchen faucet. Read More>>

COVER STORY  Fire and water. Earth and wind. For ancient Greeks, and the Buddhists before them, these basic elements provided a foundation for contemplating the world. In this special section, we invite you to take a look at how these simple, time-honored concepts can help you in your quest to create a healthier home. Read More>>

INNOVATION  Between the east and the west sides of Washington state, there’s a dental gap. And not the David Letterman kind. Graduates at the University of Washington School of Dentistry tend to stay in Seattle. They tend to practice in the Big City or the Big Suburbs. But Seattle doesn’t need dentists. Places like Colville do. Read More>>

SPECIAL SECTION  Wonderful things, lasers. They can mend eyes, annoy lecturers, blast TIE fighters. And they can re-sculpt the surface of the skin. At medical spas, skilled laser technicians can erase freckles, moles, hair and spider-veins. But lasers aren’t just a matter of point, click, and — zap — blemish-be-gone. Choose the wrong medical spa, and you could get burned. Literally. Read More>>