PEOPLE  Pull your lips back and put your tongue against the roof of your mouth. Lift your lateral margins, blow air across the tip of the tongue without touching — ssss — before immediately lifting your tongue to touch and aspirate quickly out of your lungs — tuh. Then, bring your tongue all the way to the back of your throat, against your soft pallet — errrr — and open your mouth wide, drop everything you’ve been doing — eh — widening, lifting then you have to close (don’t lift up the side margins anymore!) and only hit the tip — teh. 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>>

PEOPLE  “You got a puppy?!” The boy, a little guy with blonde hair, not more than three years old, nods at Dick Boysen, who puts his hands on his knees and says, “Wow! What kind?” While he talks to the boy about his puppy, a little girl in a hula skirt and a lei shuffles by. Boysen stands up and smiles as he looks around the classroom — there’s a girl making art out of glue and sand on construction paper, a teacher working with a group of youngsters on their colors. There’s the little hula girl. Read More>>

PEOPLE  Ever wonder if you could continue to live in your home if you suddenly couldn’t climb stairs? Or what if you suddenly had to rely on public transportation? How would you cope? Could your home be designed to help you out? Read More>>

PEOPLE  There haven’t been a lot of things that have stood in Anna Mae Ericksen’s way. You could argue that Ericksen, who recently celebrated her 90th birthday at a party with more than 200 guests, has been one of the most influential developers of Spokane’s thriving medical industry. But you wouldn’t really need to argue — there aren’t many who’d disagree. Read More>>

PEOPLE  Mary Ann Wilson is the kind of person you want to spill your heart to.

I’m 20 minutes late for our interview — there are too many Starbucks locations in this town — but Mary Ann still greets me with a smile, warmly touching my arm with sincere “it’s all right” understanding. Read More>>

PEOPLE  The clanging chatter of health care reform is nothing new to John Driscoll — it’s always been there as he’s navigated the choppy waters of the health care industry as a case manager, a health care administrator and in his current posts in the Washington State House of Representatives and as the executive director of Spokane’s Project Access. Read More>>

PEOPLE  For most of us, the workday starts when we reach the office. For Dr. William Sayres, work starts when he flips on his kitchen light. As the 52-year-old family physician prepares breakfast in his Valleyford home, he often gets calls from nearby neighbors needing a little medical assistance. How about a quick check on Mom? Could he answer a couple of quick questions about a prescription?
Sure, he says. He’ll come by. Making house calls is just a part of what he does. “It’s fun, and families are so appreciative,” he says. Read More>>

PEOPLE  About 20 years ago, on the rain-forested edge of West Africa, a young doctor waited for a patient in a tiny makeshift hospital. Located 50 miles from the nearest paved road, powered by a gas generator and filled with villagers he had recruited and trained to approximate a nursing staff, it was a ramshackle operation. Still, it was all pretty impressive for a 24-year-old recent med school graduate working in the ancient village where his father was born. And when a local man arrived with his 9-year-old daughter — spiking fever, lots of pain — he saw how even his improvisation of a hospital could change a community. Read More>>

PEOPLE  George Thompson can tell you exactly how long it’s been since his last recurrence of cancer: “It was 55 months ago. But who’s counting?” Read More>>