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PLOVER, Wis. (AP) -- Jason Dorshorst thought somebody ripped off his $4,000 wheelchair in broad daylight while he washed his pickup truck. It turns out that a good Samaritan took it to keep it from being stolen. Dorshorst, 26, of Plover, washed his vehicle Monday at Speedy Clean Car Wash. He left the custom-made wheelchair outside the business so it wouldn't get wet during the six-minute cleaning. It vanished in that short time. "My first thought was, 'Why would somebody ever do that?'" said Dorshorst, who was injured in a 2003 motorcycle accident and needs a wheelchair to complete day-to-day tasks. "I've never heard of anyone's wheelchair disappearing." He added, "It's pretty low for somebody to do that." But Plover Policeman Brent Thauer said Wednesday the chair wasn't stolen. A woman who arrived at the car wash while Dorshorst was inside saw the chair and assumed it was lost or abandoned, he said. Her father works with disabl...

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Ahh, found the link: www.giveanhour.org May 25, 1:39 PM EDT WASHINGTON (AP) -- Thousands of private counselors are offering free services to troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with mental health problems, jumping in to help because the military is short on therapists. On this Memorial Day, America's armed forces and its veterans are coping with depression, suicide, family, marital and job problems on a scale not seen since Vietnam. The government has been in beg-borrow-and-steal mode, trying to hire psychiatrists and other professionals, recruit them with incentives or borrow them from other agencies. Among those volunteering an hour a week to help is Brenna Chirby, a psychologist with a private practice in McLean, Va. "It's only an hour of your time," said Chirby, who counsels a family member of a man deployed multiple times. "How can you not give that to these men and women that ... are going oversees and fighting for us?" There are only 1,431 ment...

COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) -- After years of helping authorities look for murder victims and survivors of natural disasters, a search-and-rescue dog named Molly has been rescued herself. Surgeons at the University of Missouri College of Veterinary Medicine on Thursday installed a pacemaker in the 5-year-old chocolate Labrador retriever's heart. She needed the surgery after being diagnosed with a complete electrical heart blockage. Owners Allen and Alicia Brown of Saginaw were overwhelmed with offers to help pay the more than $2,500 in surgery, vet and travel costs after The Joplin Globe reported on Molly's need for the pacemaker. Medical technology company Medtronic Inc. donated the device, and a Kansas businessman offered to anonymously pay up to $2,000 of the cost. "It surprises me greatly," Allen Brown said. "There's just been such an outpouring of public support for her." Molly was scheduled to return home Friday and be confined to her crate for two weeks. S...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Google's online filing cabinet for medical records opened to the public Monday, giving users instant electronic access to their health histories while reigniting privacy concerns. Called Google Health, the service lets users link information from a handful of pharmacies and care providers, including Quest Diagnostics labs. Google plans to add more. Similar offerings include Microsoft Corp.'s HealthVault and Revolution Health, which is backed by AOL co-founder Steve Case. Google Health differentiates itself from the pack through its user interface and things like the public availability of its application program interface, or API, said Marissa Mayer, the Google executive overseeing the service. Mary Adams, 45, a Cleveland Clinic patient who participated in the Google Health pilot, said that she was initially concerned about the privacy of her medical information. Still, she felt safe enough to enroll and has been using the service for about six months, linking ...

Paper money unfair to blind - court Federal appeals court says Treasury Department is violating the law by keeping dollars the same size and feel. NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the U.S. Treasury Department is violating the law by failing to design and issue currency that is readily distinguishable to blind and visually impaired people. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld a 2006 district court ruling that could force the United States to redesign its money so blind people can distinguish between values. Suggested solutions include making bills different sizes, including raised markings or using foil printing which is a method of hot stamping that is tactically discernable. Judge Judith Rogers, in a ruling on a suit by the American Council of the Blind, wrote that the Treasury Department's failure to design and issue paper currency that is readily distinguishable to the visually impaired violates the Rehabilita...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- They're the cold cases of medicine, patients with diseases so rare and mysterious that they've eluded diagnosis for years. The National Institutes of Health is seeking those patients - and ones who qualify could get some free care at the government's top research hospital as scientists study why they're sick. "These patients are to a certain extent abandoned by the medical profession because a brick wall has been hit," said Dr. William Gahl, who helped develop the NIH's new Undiagnosed Diseases Program. "We're trying to remove some of that." The pilot program, announced Monday, can only recruit about 100 patients a year. But federal health officials hope that unraveling some of these super-rare diseases in turn will provide clues to more common illnesses. "We believe this is not only a service to be rendered, but also knowledge to be gained," said NIH Director Dr. Elias Zerhouni. About 10,000 new patients a year s...

Number of disabled veterans rising WASHINGTON (AP) -- Increasing numbers of U.S. troops have left the military with damaged bodies and minds, an ever-larger pool of disabled veterans that will cost the nation billions for decades to come - even as the total population of America's vets shrinks. Despite the decline in total vets - as soldiers from World War II and Korea die - the government expects to be spending $59 billion a year to compensate injured warriors in 25 years, up from today's $29 billion, according to internal documents obtained by The Associated Press. And the Veterans Affairs Department concedes the bill could be much higher. Why? Worse wounds. More disabilities. More vets aware of the benefits and quicker to file for them. Also, ironically, advanced medical care. Troops come home with devastating injuries that might well have killed them in earlier wars. Time is also a factor when it comes to disability compensation costs. Payments tend to go up as veterans age...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Agents selling private health insurance plans to the elderly and disabled would be barred from cold-calling, door-to-door solicitations and pitching their products outside hospital waiting rooms or pharmacies, under a federal rule proposed Thursday. The rule is designed to make it harder to pressure Medicare beneficiaries into signing up for insurance products they don't need or want. It essentially restricts face-to-face solicitations to those initiated by the customer. A new Medicare drug benefit began Jan. 1, 2006. Since then, participants and state insurance commissioners have complained that some agents use false information to enroll people into certain plans, particularly those offering comprehensive health insurance. "We want to make sure that beneficiaries aren't pressured into sales," said Kerry Weems, acting administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services "In parking lots, waiting rooms and those kinds of places, a s...

Japan, Home of the Cute and Inbred Dog Care for a Chihuahua with a blue hue? Hirofumi Sasaki, a pet store owner in Hiroshima, has seen so many defective dogs that last year he converted an old bar into a hospice to care for them. So far he has taken in 32 dogs, though only 12 have survived. Or how about a teacup poodle so tiny it will fit into a purse — the canine equivalent of a bonsai? The Japanese sure do. Rare dogs are highly prized here, and can set buyers back more than $10,000. But the real problem is what often arrives in the same litter: genetically defective sister and brother puppies born with missing paws or faces lacking eyes and a nose. There have been dogs with brain disorders so severe that they spent all day running in circles, and others with bones so frail they dissolved in their bodies. Many carry hidden diseases that crop up years later, veterinarians and breeders say. Kiyomi Miyauchi was heartbroken to discover this after one of two Boston terriers she bought year...

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Worlds First Backflip On A Wheelchair -

Day 1 at Project Walk fell on their 13th wedding anniversary. In years past, John and Marci Pou might have gone to dinner. Instead, in a strange place thousands of miles from home, Marci watched as John fought to maneuver his broken body. It was June 26, 2006, the start of a regimen that would push John to the limit physically and challenge both of them emotionally and even spiritually. Taking hold of John's sneaker, Chris Corpuz, a Project Walk recovery specialist, pulled his left leg straight out in front of him. "All right," Corpuz directed, "bring your knee up to your chest." John focused, trying to visualize the movement, something that 10 months earlier would have been as natural as blinking. But his leg hung immobile, until the trainer himself slowly pushed it in. "Push it out," Corpuz said. Again John tried, but he just couldn't make a connection between what his brain wanted to do and his lifeless limb. Corpuz then fanned John's leg ou...

It was only a chair, but it had become his purgatory. Each day that John Pou spent in the wheelchair, his spirit seemed to die a little more. It was a perpetual reminder of the calamity that had brought him and Marci, even the kids, to this place. The chair stood for all that was lost: A promising career as a policeman, a vigorous life spent in karate classes and fishing the lakes of his beloved North Carolina, future plans conjured when things were perfect - plans that seemed irrelevant and impossible now. Their home, too, the dream house John had worked on with his own hands, felt like a taunting monument to his inadequacies: The pool where he could no longer swim or play chicken with Chase and Kacie, the garden he could no longer tend, the front door he couldn't enter without a makeshift ramp for his wheelchair. That chair, affixed to him like an unwanted limb. It had been eight months since John shattered his C-5 vertebra diving over a wave during a family vacation. Eight month...