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Man with hemicrania continua requires indefinite therapy

Columns

DEAR DR. ROACH: My future son-in-law was diagnosed with hemicrania continua several weeks ago by a neurologist and is responding to indomethacin. Could you provide a prognosis for this illness? The internet says that it can take anywhere from weeks to months to years. Is this likely the case? — M.I.L. ANSWER: Hemicrania continua is an unusual type of headache syndrome. It’s often misdiagnosed, with 50% of people not receiving a correct diagnosis for eight years. The pain is on one side of the head (hence “hemicrania”), and the pain severity can be high, with over 70% of ...

Dear Annie: Father feels invisible in fight over inheritance

Columns

Dear Annie: Dear Annie: My 90-year-old father has been married to his third wife, who is 85, for nearly 33 years. Between them, they have five adult children: two are his and three are hers. For their entire marriage, they have relied largely on my father’s retirement account to pay their day-to-day living expenses. His wife does not have a retirement account of her own. They also have two homes. One is a summer cottage that was in her family before they married. The other is a winter home they purchased together. Recently, as they began revising their wills, my father said he ...

The California dream ends in empty reservoirs and homeless tents

Columns

Many years ago, sometime after Ronald Reagan replaced Pat Brown as governor of California, I was driving up the coast from Los Angeles to San Francisco and visited Hearst Castle, William Randolph Hearst’s epic mansion in San Simeon. It was state property then, donated by the Hearst family, and the uniformed guide struck me as knowledgeable, competent and proud of her work. Some time later, I wrote articles arguing that California, not yet the highest-tax state but never a tax haven either, was proof that big government could provide competent services. For a generation under Govs. ...

Antique games can command significant interest

Columns

Tennis, anyone? How about table tennis? The tabletop version of the sport is believed to have begun in Victorian England as a parlor game played by the upper class. Early equipment was improvised; instead of a net, players are said to have lined up a row of books across a table and hit a golf ...

Clinton County on short end of PFBC’s stick

Letters to the editor

Jeff Deitrich Renovo When I was a kid, I remember taking my elderly uncle out fishing for stocked trout on Long Run near Salona. I remember my dad teaching me for the first time how to use a spinner for stocked trout on Baker Run. I remember as a 16-year-old fishing up through Paddy Run near Renovo and coming upon a stocking truck at the reservoir, where the lone driver and I stocked 400 trout into a quarter mile stretch of water. What fantastic days those were. They could not be that today. Those three streams are on a list of at least 15 Clinton County streams that once were ...

1984

Letters to the editor

Jim Newton Itasca Ronald Reagan vs. Walter Mondale was an election for the ages. In my nostalgic mind, I found both men capable, even likable during the 1984 presidential campaign. They didn’t instinctively hate each other over policy differences. Despite its book-title implications, 1984 wasn’t that bad. America’s economy was recovering from the 1981-82 recession and optimism was growing. I think we can forgive “1984” author George Orwell for being 40 years early on his otherwise prescient vision. For me, that vision began during the 1988 George H.W. Bush vs. ...