Human Interest Stories
Houston Baby Magazine
"From Cancer to Parenthood"
When it comes to surviving cancer, there may be no better place than Houston to map out a strategy for medical treatment. Thanks to bountiful dedication and focus on research and treatment in our medically innovative city, a large percentage of people who were once “cancer victims” are now cancer survivors who go on to live long, healthy lives. Youthful survivors of cancer want the same things as others, including a future filled with family. Unfortunately for many of them, the price of survival is their fertility.
OutSmart Magazine
"Relationships 101: Love for the Long Haul"
The desire to couple is strong and, for most of us, both the most essential and challenging task of our lives. Few of us have had helpful, if any, role models in our lives for establishing and maintaining healthy, enjoyable GLBT love partnerships. Even the rare gay man or lesbian who grew up comfortably with same-sex parents has to confront a society that seems to actively pursue the disruption and dissolution of adult relationships in general.
"Your friendship with your partner should develop into the most important relationship in your life and stay that way over time," advises psychologist David Genac, Ph.D. Genac points to two key factors that make an emotionally healthy relationship: strong friendship and the intention, if not solid ability, to fairly resolve your inevitable conflicts.
"Relationships 102: Making Your Love An Enduring Refuge"
We know that there's far more to our GLBT families than what the state legally recognizes. Still, there's the reality that we have to live within -- while trying to change it at the same time. Our partner relationships -- our families -- can be legally and financially risky ventures. For most of us, it is well worth the risk. Human beings are social animals; our relationships make our world go around. Though progress is being made toward protecting the legal rights of individuals in GLBT relationships, for now there are issues that must be addressed, things you need to know, and things you need to do in order to keep safe what may be the most valuable asset you'll ever have: your family.
Single Minded Women.com 
"Baring Her Soul: An Interview with Leslie Goldman"
Leslie Goldman, M.P.H., is more accustomed to being the interviewer, not the subject. The website for her book, Locker Room Diaries, lists an impressive array of her health related publications, including some titles that really woke up my eyeballs like, “Make Over My Period!” and “Vasectomy may be linked to dementia” for venues ranging from the Chicago Tribune to Fitness and People Magazines.
Ask what sparked her interest in writing the book, published in 2006 with the subtitle The Naked Truth about Women, Body Image, and Re-Imagining the “Perfect” Body, and you realize that her personal story is a perfect starting place to bring up the uncomfortable subject of eating disorders.
What I heard in Leslie Goldman’s story made eating disorders sound not only not so
foreign or uncommon to me, but possibly even close to home.
"Sex. Food. Not Necessarily In That Order."
Pretty is as pretty does.
Did you hear that growing up? Don’t let my mother know I’m divulging this, but I heard it. I think she was half kidding, since she also railed against her own mother’s attempts to re-create her only daughter (my mom) into the fragile china doll that she instinctively was not.
I got just enough instruction on how to be a Good Girl to know what I wasn’t interested in being, from way back.
The catch is that there is no good or bad when it comes to behavior or even just being. There’s productive and destructive. There’s helpful and hurtful. There’s even naughty and nice, although the meanings of those two terms really do overlap, eh?
No, it’s all about the middle ground. Moderation. It’s the key. Not a single one of us, I bet, has managed to stay solidly in the middle every moment. It’s our goal.
Nurses Lounge Magazine
Houston edition, March 2007
Sample -- Correctional Nursing: A View of Caring From the Inside
Occasionally a nurse will resign, unable to tolerate the sound of a metal gate clanging shut behind her or the doors that all click loudly as they lock. But Jeanette Elias, RN, BSN, CCHP has stayed at this unique correctional facility on Galveston Island for more than 25 years.
"And there's never been a day when I didn't want to come back to work," Elias says assuredly -- from behind bars and protective glass.
Jeanette Elias is Nurse Manager over two units and 45 employees at the University of Texas Medical Branch's first-of-a-kind facility: the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Hospital. When the more than 150,000 prisoners in either the Federal or State of Texas penal system need hospitalization, this eight-story building on the UTMB campus is where they are brought by ambulance, van, and occasionally by air. They come from all over the state for everything from ambulatory care to psyc care to surgery and intensive care.
Before coming to UTMB, Elias trained in Houston's Medical Center and returned to the Island of her birth when she married a fellow Galvestonian. Upon first applying for a different position with UTMB, she knew nothing of correctional nursing. She'd overheard a conversation during orientation about "the prison unit," as it was called then. She was fascinated by the opportunity to experience the gamut of medical care, fresh out of nursing school. Once she made the choice, there was no turning back.
"I'm the type of person who wants to do different things," Elias explains. Elias left for a year, beckoned away by a friend who worked at the local VA Hospital in psychiatric nursing. "I missed it, so I went back to correctional nursing," she says with amusement.
"People who are fearful of inmates have always given me funny looks and asked how I can work there," Elias says. "What I've found is that our patients are so used to being treated like they're nothing, they're so very appreciative of the care they receive here. My biggest rewards have been from the expressions of gratitude and respect from these patients."
We Need Not Walk Alone
Magazine of The Compassionate Friends, 2001
Sample -- Considering Another Pregnancy After Loss
"The next time I become pregnant, I will not be able to relax for five seconds until that breathing child is in my arms. I hate it that I will never be as happy as I was when I was pregnant with Emily. I can't allow myself to be that happy again, because I cannot set myself up for another heartbreak."
~ Debra Sanders
Emily Sanders was born quietly into this world after only 21 weeks in her mother Debra's womb. After trying unsuccessfully to conceive for years, undergoing tests to find a cause, surgery and medication to treat infertility, and finally, the most joyful moment of confirming a pregnancy, Debra and her husband Rick lost Emily to an undiagnosed clotting disorder which cut off the baby's oxygen supply in-utero.
The little girl is the young couple's first child. Now, a man and a woman struggle to preserve their marriage, their dreams, their stability amidst the grief of losing Emily and the desire for more children.
