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SECTION
HEALTH
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 18, 1997
Real thing or artificial?
Live Christmas trees are popular, but manu
factures of artificial trees aren’t giving up the
fight. Story on page 4B.
Bodies yield clues to life and death
By Randall Chase
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Mistletoe and Magic
Looking for something special
to do this weekend? How about an
evening of magic?
The Black Professional
Coalition will hold its annual
dance “Evening of Mistletoe and
Magic” Friday at First Union
Atrium, 301 South Tryon St.
The Black Professional
Coalition is made of members of
the Association of Black
Accountants, Charlotte Area
Association of Black Journalists,
Association of Black Lawyers,
Society of Black Engineers, Black
MBAAssociation, Urban Bankers
and the Forum for Black Public
Administrators.
Tickets are $15 in advance or
$20 at the door. For more infor
mation, call 559-6401.
Holiday dance
Second Ward High School
Alumni wiU hold their annual
Holiday Dance, Dec. 27 at Grady
Cole Center.
Tickets are $10. For more
information, call 392-5286,
Thursday
• Charlotte-Mecklenburg Senior
Centers continues its series of
workshops for grandparents rais
ing grandchildren at 7 p.m. The
workshop will teach grandpar
ents to recognize their children’s
special needs. The center is locat
ed at 2225 Tyvola Road and child
care will be provided. For more
information, call 522-6222.
• NAACP Charlotte-Mecklenburg
County Branch Meeting, 7 p.m.
University Park Branch, 2400
Keller Ave.
• The Metrolina Black
Automotive Employees will host a
Hunger Party at the Excelsior
Club, 921 Beatties Ford Road at 7
p.m. Admission is five canned
goods, toys or a $5 donation.
Proceeds wfil be used to help 200
local families during the holiday
season. For more information, call
334-5709.
Friday
• The Coca-Cola Caravan tour
rolls into Charlotte for five shows.
The show features giveaways,
photo opportunities and a visit
from Santa Claus. Shows will be
held today at 10:30 at Super
KMart, 545 Highway 29,
Concord, Eastland Mall, 5 p.m.
Saturday performances wfil be
held at Eastland Mall, 10:30 a.m.
and Super KMart, 2401N. Sardis
Road. Sunday performance
begins at 4 p.m. and wfil be held
at Wal-Mart, Arboretum
Shopping Center.
Satimlay
• Renaissance Place, Friends for
All Seasons and the Youth and
College Division of the NAACP
wfil hold a Christmas Party for
Charlotte’s needy youth. Children
and young adults wfil be the spe
cial guests for event which
includes dinner and giveaways.
The party wfil be held at Little
Rock AME Zion Church, 401 N.
McDowell St. and begins at 2 p.m.
For more information, call 531-
8838 or 358-1980.
• The 100 Black Men of Charlotte
See AKIUND CHARLOTTE page 38
CHAPEL HILL - Dr. John
Butts picks up the skull laid out
on the stainless table along with a
pile of bone fragments, dispas
sionately noting the distinguish
ing characteristics.
“She has some fresh broken
ribs....This is a fresh break,”
Butts said, holding up two pieces
of bone. ‘You can see they match
together, and there’s no healing
around it.”
The hole in the skull needed lit
tle interpretation by North
Carolina’s chief medical examin
er.
“It’s foul play,” Butts said.
Winston-Salem police used the
information to identify the victim
as Teresa Ann Johnson, 35, whose
decomposing remains were found
in a field in August.
“We tell the authorities what
kind of person they have, then
they go about figuring who it
might be,” said Butts.
While such cases often grab
headlines, it’s just another day at
the office for the state’s chief med
ical examiner.
Butts oversees a staff of about
30, including five pathologists, as
weU as a statewide network of
county medical examiners and
contract pathologists.
Their mission is to see that all
deaths of a suspicious, unusual or
unnatural nature are adequately
investigated.
“I do enjoy the problem-solving
aspect of it,” Butts said. “Actually,
most of medicine is problem solv
ing, and certainly what we do
here is that.”
And real life is nothing like
“Diagnosis Murder” or “Quincy.”
‘Unlike the movies and TV, you
cannot go in there, kneel over a
body, make a few observations
and measurements, then say
Well, I put the time of death
between 8 and 8:15 last night,’ ”
Butts said.
In fact, a proper autopsy can
take hours of painstaking work.
“If it’s a fellow like I did the
other night, who had been shot
multiple times, you might spend
hours tracing out the paths of the
bullets, recovering the fragments
or bullets to be used for evidence,”
Butts said. “Taking documentary
photographs, making diagrams,
that’s often a very, very long
process.”
There are also tissue samples to
examine and the toxicological
analysis to be made before the
final report is ready to be filed.
“Our clients might be dead, but
our patients in a sense are often
quite alive, if we're talking about
the next of kin, law enforcement,
newspapers,” Butts said.
Tan percent of all North
Carolina deaths are autopsied.
Half of those are defined as med
ical-legal autopsies, which involve
sudden or unexpected deaths and
all deaths involving violence or
trauma.
Pathologists in the chief medical
examiner’s office perform about
1,200 autopsies a year, roughly a
third of the total. The others are
done by pathologists who work
under contract with the medical
examiner’s office and are referred
cases by local medical examiners.
In aU, about 40 percent of cases
See PATHOLOGY page 3B
Season’s reason to be kind
ILLUSTRATION/JIM HUNT
Children of broken families can enjoy holidays, too
By Alan Wachtel, MD
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
‘Us the season to be jolly, but
for children of divorce, this joy
ous time of I’ear can serve as
not-so-merry reminders of the
division within their families.
This is especially true when the
circumstances of the divorce do
not allow youngsters to feel
loved by both parents.
But it doesn’t have to be that
way. There are several mea
sures parents can take to help
ensure children share in the
wonder and happiness of the
holiday season.
In many cases, children of
divorce must contend with an
exaggerated longing for the
“perfect family” and the
absence of connection and
belonging that goes with it.
The first step toward a happy
holiday season is to set chil
dren's schedules. This should
be negotiated well in advance
by the parents and all involved
should know the agenda.
There are many ways to con
figure visitation during the hol
idays. One parent, for example,
can spend time with the chil
dren on Christmas Eve while
the other has Christmas morn
ing. This arrangement, if nec
essary, can alternate yearly.
For children, the holidays are
what their parents make of
them. The greater children’s
involvement with holiday
plans, for example, helping to
make decorations, or cooking,
the more meaningful these
days wfil be for them.
The creation of special tradi
tions within each household
can also bolster children’s sense
of coimection.
Each parent can foster then-
own traditions. For example, a
parent and youngsters may
bake cookies on Christmas Eve
or make apple sauce at
Hanukkah.
These activities present
another opportunity to openly
share with your child the joy
and meaning they bring to you.
If young people are part of a
blended family, parents can
have all the children involved
in these events. This can serve
as a form of team building, that
works best with actions rather
than words.
As with intact families, each
youngster needs to have a close
relationship with each parent.
The holidays are a good time to
bolster this relationship by
having each parent spend
extended one-on-one time
alone with each of their chil
dren. At all costs children
should never be made to choose
between their parents.
Although yoimg people rarely
have visions of sugar plums,
gifts are a major part of their
holidays. The selection of a gift
that relates to one of your
child's interests can enhance
the parent-child bond.
A budding artist, for example,
may appreciate a special set of
paints. A young naturalist may
enjoy a book about the rain for
est.
Gifts don’t have to he expen
sive, but should reflect a per
sonal understanding of each
child. This type of present can
help parents cultivate a lifelong
bond with their children.
Surgery
can be
avoided
By Lauran Neergaard
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON - Women
who suffer excessive menstrual
bleeding now have their first
alternative to surgery: a heated
balloon that can fix the prob
lem right in the gynecologist’s
office.
The Food and Drug
Administration approved
G}mecare Inc.’s ThermaChoice
on Friday. The Menlo Park,
Calif., company estimates the
outpatient procedure will
replace 20 to 30 percent of the
hysterectomies - the standard
treatment - performed today.
“It’s nice to have an option
that’s less invasive,” said Dr.
Kimber Richter of the FDA
staff
About 19 percent of alt
women suffer from excessive
menstrual bleeding, called
menorrhagia. The problem is
one of inconvenience, as women
can use more than a dozen
menstrual pads in a single day,
and is physically dangerous,
because they can become ane
mic.
About 180,000 Americans
undergo hysterectomies - the
surgical removal of the uterus
— every year to treat the disor
der. That is major surgery,
requiring weeks to recover.
Another, less invasive option is
called surgical ablation, where
doctors cauterize the uterus
with a laser or a scraper. But
that requires such extensive
surgical skill that only 20,000
procedures are performed
every year.
ThermaChoice promises to be
easy enough for many more
gynecologists to offer.
A balloon on the end of a hol
low tube is threaded up the
vagina into the uterus and
inflated with a liquid. When
the balloon fills the uterine
cavity, a cable that runs to an
electronic control box begins
heating the liquid until it
reaches 188 degrees.
Eight minutes at that tem
perature destroys the uterine
lining without the typical
scraping. The water is with
drawn, the balloon collapses
and the tube is removed.
In a study of 125 women
given ThermaChoice or surgi
cal ablation, both options were
equally effective, controlling
bleeding in 80 percent of
patients for a year after the
procedure.
Both choices were equally
safe, the FDA concluded. But
unlike surgical ablation,
ThermaChoice does not require
the woman to be put to sleep, a
form of anesthesia that is risky.
ThermaChoice is not for
every patient, the FDA empha
sized. It cannot treat fibroids or
uterine cancer, both of which
can cause this bleeding.
And even though the proce
dure saves a woman’s uterus,
no one should attempt to get
pregnant after ThermaChoice
treatment, the FDA warned.
The therapy destroys a signif-
See BALLOON page 38
Holiday rush produces stress, exhaustion
By Penny Brown Roberts
THE DAILY ADVERTISER
LAFAYETTE, La.
Psychotherapist Kathy Elliott
always knows the holiday season
has arrived when stressed-out
patients come to her in full force.
Elliott, who is also a University
of Southwestern Louisiana assis
tant psychology professor, said
the stress begins before
Thanksgiving. Individuals and
families push themselves to the
limit by baking that extra batch
of Hanukkah cookies or sending
out many greeting cards. By New
Year’s Day, the rituals leave peo
ple feeling exhausted rather than
renewed. They are often disap
pointed that the experience didn’t
meet expectations.
The holiday blues are brought
on by the added stresses of the
season, like coping with family
tensions, financial worries from
gift buying and physical exhaus
tion from shopping, traveling,
feasting and drinking. Add that to
the feeling of wistfulness that,
despite all our best efforts, it real
ly isn’t shaping up to be the per
fect Christmas we were expect
ing. All that can lead some people
into a mild depression.
“It’s that cluster of negative feel
ings that are so common to people
around the holidays,” Elliot said.
“We have unrealistic expecta
tions for the holidays that usually
come from our childhood. If we
had really good holiday seasons,
then we want to repeat it in all its
perfection. If we had bad hohdays,
we want to make sure that it’s
good this time.”
Symptoms include traditional
signs of depression fike a loss of
appetite, sleep impairment, lack
of energy and a desire to avoid
holiday celebrations.
Some question whether the phe
nomenon really exists. A
University of Cincinnati study
found that suicides are actually
lower in December, peaking
between January and April.
“It might actually be a myth,”
said Tferry Zenner, a social worker
with Acadieina F amfiy Counseling
Service. “But all the interest it
generates may serve a purpose in
giving us permission not to feel
euphoric when all other signals of
the season turn it into a civic
duty.”
Elliott advises keeping the holi
day season simple. Plan ahead by
designing a schedule that
includes eveiything from social
engagements to addressing greet
ing cards. Don’t put energy into
activities you don’t value, like
another co-worker’s party.
Don’t set unreasonable expecta
tions. If you don’t get along with
Aunt Mable the rest of the year,
you probably aren't going to now.
Do what’s meaningful to you,
instead of taking cues from televi
sion shows or relatives. •: