Recently, as most of us were worrying about how holiday meals, travel and work schedules would work out, new screening guidelines for women came forth from the august American College of Gynecologists (ACOG) and from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. In keeping with our mission to inform women about the very best thinking on [...]

I type this reflection on giving thanks with seriously blistered left thumb and middle finger—glue gun injuries sustained while making the walnut and filbert peace wreath this morning. I’m grateful. Grateful it’s my left hand and not my right, given the amount of cooking, baking, decorating and hair fussing (what was I thinking when I [...]

I did not feel well enough to travel this holiday. Normally, I would have pushed my way through it, but my husband gave me this gift of the day, the turkey and stuffing and pumpkin pie that I needed for my soul. I needed time to be and not do more than I could do, [...]

Apparently, everyone is stressed out because of Thanksgiving, and for good reasons. Family members awaken the week before with nightmares about being criticized for the umpteenth time about their choice of career. Vegans are cajoled into just having a bite of turkey—“It won’t kill you for goodness sake!” your Grandmother insists—and children are outcast to [...]

My mom is one of six sisters. Every Thanksgiving, my mother’s family gathers at Aunt Ruthanne and Uncle Ron’s house in Connecticut. The table stretches from the dining room into the living room, with a joyous crowd of parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents and friends. “We don’t say grace,” my late Uncle Howie once quipped. [...]

“Let’s have a family Thanksgiving,” I said to my friend Mary, “without any blood relatives.” It was a time a few years ago when I had had my fill of filial histrionics and was fed up with the my-way-or-the-highway holiday hosts. I wanted a tradition without the traditional baggage, a happy feast prepared and shared [...]

This week, many or most Americans will sit down to a traditional or not-so-traditional meal of turkey – alternatively, on both ends of the spectrum, turducken or tofurkey – and many other holiday dishes, as a way of giving thanks for the blessings of daily life. Perhaps the sideboard will groan less this year than [...]

Last week was a perfect storm for women’s healthcare as we know it, and many are questioning whether these changes would, in fact, be detrimental to women. Just as the debate on health care reform was beginning to heat up in the Senate, we learned from two independent agencies about radical changes in how and [...]

I am staggered by my good fortune. God saw fit to give me my very own Hero. My hero doesn’t wear a cape, and he doesn’t fly, but that is his strength—he is there, always there when and where you need him, and is never flitting about. He eschews the flapping piece of fabric in [...]

As a practicing breast surgeon and member of the Medical Advisory Board of Women’s Voices for Change, I was asked to review the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF)’s recommendation statement discouraging routine screening and regular breast self-exams. I think folly is too kind a description. Outrageous would be my choice of words. I seriously [...]