Obama meets young girl with Leukemia, Make-A-Wish

X-posted from my Examiner.com page.

Make-A-Wish Foundation has made many dreams come true over the years. They continue to make the impossible somehow possible, bringing a little bit of wonder back into some very sick kid's lives.

Meet Jasmina Anema; she is 6 years old and has leukemia.

According to an article at The Huffington Post, the girl's trip from Manhattan to Washington D.C. was sponsored by the Make-A-Wish Foundation and was meant to happen last week, but was cancelled due to her ill-health, according to NBC.

In addition to the aggressive natural killer cell (NK-cell) leukemia returning, Jasmina suffered complications from her bone marrow donor's cells attacking her body, a condition called "graft-versus-host disease".

Jasmina was originally scheduled to meet President Obama and the First Lady around Thanksgiving, but according to NY1, she suffered seizures after developing Posterior Reversible Encephalopathy Syndrome, as a side effect of medications.

Jasmina finally made the trip to the White House on Wednesday, visiting the Oval Office and receiving some gifts to take back home.

In an interview recorded before her failed Thanksgiving trip, the resilient girl admitted she couldn't sleep because she was so excited.

This holiday season think about donating to the Make-A-Wish Foundation and become part of making dreams come true for some brave kids in our own neighborhoods.

Thanks for the advise....NOT!

The surprising mammogram news came this week. Suddenly after years of hearing that woman 40 and above should get a yearly mammogram, we hear that they are not needed until 50?

Hmm…telling adult woman NOT to do preventative screenings? What is wrong with this picture?

After the news hit, there has been quite an uproar. Woman everywhere are say, "This doesn't add up!"

Those screenings through your 40s can be baseline information for anything that pops up in your 50s. Mammograms are still one of the best early detection tool for breast cancer.

And just today I read from ABC news, that women have been getting too many pap smears too? Why?

Because they are just so darn fun? I don’t think you need to be a woman to detect my sarcasm on this subject. Pelvic exams are one of the most invasion, annoying and embarrassing procedure to get done. Yet, woman who take their preventative health seriously get them done, year after year.

So why the big change? Good question but I doubt if we will get a cogent answer from on high very soon.

Call me a flaming skeptic but does this have anything to do with the contentious health care reform debate bubbling forth all over the country?

Is this a way for the insurance companies to not cover preventative screenings? Yes, to me at least, it looks like it is.

So, to be clear - I am not a doctor and I am also not a lobbyist for the health care industry. I am a 45 year old woman who has been having mammograms on a yearly basis since I turned 40. And, I will keep on doing it even if those extortionist insurance “providers” won’t cover it!

Call me a skeptic but I don't think I trust my long -term health (or anyone else's for that matter) to the obvious monetary dictates of the insurance industry.

What do you think?