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Dear Annie: Vaping vice might be a dealbreaker

Columns

Dear Annie: My dad died of lung cancer a few years ago, and because of that, I abhor smoking in all its forms. The problem is I just discovered my boyfriend, who is a nurse, has been secretly vaping behind my back. I was shocked and upset not so much that he did it (which is bad enough) but that he went through great pains to hide it from me. Plus, he works in the medical field and should know better! He promised to discontinue when I confronted him and that he did it only because of the immense pressure he is under. Recently, I found newly bought vaping pens in his apartment. The ...

Opiate prescriptions for pain don’t provide relief to patient

Columns

DEAR DR. ROACH: I have horrible neck, shoulder, back and hip pain, which are all from different traumas. I’ve been seeing a pain doctor for the past 14 years. I started out taking 5 mg of Vicodin and 4 mg of trazodone. Over the years, my prescriptions have been raised to 7.5 mg of oxycodone four times a day and 800 mg of ibuprofen three times a day. I see my doctor every two weeks, and during these visits, I normally get shots (different ones in different places). My problem is that my pain medicine isn’t working anymore. Will I have to keep raising the dosage? I can’t take it ...

Feeding the government pig

Columns

It’s the most wonderful time of the year — and I don’t mean Christmas. It’s the time when Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) releases its annual “Congressional Pig Book Summary,” exposing some of the most outrageous, ridiculous and in many cases unconstitutional spending one can imagine. I guarantee you won’t be able to imagine most of it. Why should you when it’s not their money they are spending and borrowing, which has driven the debt to unprecedented and dangerous levels. According to CAGW, the number of earmarks, which is spending that avoids going through ...

Dear Annie: How honest is too honest?

Columns

Dear Annie: My husband “Jack” has become so angry with me lately, and I don’t understand why. We have been married for 10 years, have two beautiful girls, ages 6 and 4, and he’s a great dad. However, with me, he is short-tempered and does not want to spend any “alone” time with me when I suggest we have date nights. Jack refuses to discuss what’s wrong when I ask him why the sudden change in his temperament towards me. I am a stay-at-home mom and consider myself a good wife and mother, and don’t deserve to be made to feel badly about myself with his outbursts of anger, ...

How Pennsylvania’s new paid leave bill leaves the sandwich generation behind

Columns

The number of family caregivers has grown from 53 million Americans in 2020 to 63 million as of 2025. This number is expected to increase as the baby boomer generation ages and faces the limitations of our current health and social services systems. A family caregiver is an unpaid individual who provides assistance to a family member who needs support due to illness, disability or aging. The population of metro Pittsburgh is one of the oldest in the country, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. This means an increasing proportion of the local population will require care from family ...

Decluttering till death do we part

Columns

Margareta Magnusson was an artist in Stockholm who wrote a bestselling book, “The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning.” Decluttering, the removal of unnecessary items from our living spaces, had already become an international obsession. That was doubly so for Americans, whose large houses became easy repositories for the cheap goods arriving by container ship from low-wage countries. We declutterers had already gotten going 15 years ago, when Marie Kondo, Japan’s high priestess of neatness, came out with her big book, “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.” I tried to ...