Health

When Bruce Masales was diagnosed with Stage 4 bladder cancer, he says the news came without warning.But as a longtime volunteer Halifax firefighter, Masales said he at least took comfort in the belief he would receive financial compensation. However, Masales said he was told he doesn't qualify under the provincial Workers' Compensation Board or other municipal insurance coverage, falling through a gap in both systems."I'm sitting there — I was kind of shocked," Masales, 60, said recently.The doctors discovered the cancer during an unrelated surgery he had last summer, Masales said.He was diagnosed in August 2024 with metastatic Stage 4 bladder cancer — meaning it had spread to other organs. Masales was originally told he had about a year to live.Bruce Masales, right, poses for a photo in t...

Around 10:45 on the morning of Feb. 25, Lee Goguen asked her father if he had any last requests.The death that was coming to 70-year-old Gerald Goguen was the death he had chosen weeks in advance and his wife of 41 years had chosen to go with him.   Diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2008, Gerald's health had started to deteriorate sharply in the months leading up to Christmas. Coby Goguen, 62, also had cancer that had spread and eaten into her bones. Both were racked with pain and wanted out. Lee said she wanted to see her parents relieved of their suffering and was grateful they had the option to end their lives on their own terms.   Coby and Gerald were married 41 years. Their daughter chose this photo for their obituary notice. (Submitted by Lee Goguen)"I got a lot of closure from it,"...

Wietske Flor goes through every day wondering when the next seizure will hit. Sometimes, the seizures happen multiple times a day. Sometimes, days will go by without one, leaving her on guard and waiting for the inevitable. It means the 41-year-old Chilliwack mom can't be left alone to care for her three kids, aged nine to 13. She can't drive — even though before this illness, she used to fly airplanes, having completed her training as a commercial pilot before deciding to become a midwife. "I am almost in a shell," Wietske said from her Chilliwack home. Simple tasks like cooking and gardening are often too overwhelming. The seizures leave her so tired she often misses her kids' school events. "It's been utterly debilitating for us," said her husband, Gabor Flor. "For most of the four year...

This story is part of CBC Health's Second Opinion, a weekly analysis of health and medical science news emailed to subscribers on Saturday mornings. If you haven't subscribed yet, you can do that by clicking here.Once a day, Tim Lagman takes a pill that reduces his risk of contracting HIV, a precaution he's taken since 2017.Pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, is part of the daily routine for a growing number of Canadians at risk of exposure to HIV through sex or injection drugs. While most people take it in pill form, Lagman, a sexual health educator and podcaster in Scarborough, Ont., is hopeful about a new, longer-lasting injectable option given every two months."The option of injectable PrEP would help people at risk of HIV to not worry about it so much," he said."Every other month would...

Quirks and Quarks19:30Beyond long COVID — how reinfections could be causing silent long term organ damageCOVID may no longer be considered an official global emergency, but mounting scientific evidence suggests every COVID infection a person gets increases their risk of developing long-term health issues. "There is no such thing as a COVID infection without consequence," says long COVID researcher, David Putrino, from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.The long-term effects can show up as long COVID, with symptoms such as shortness of breath, digestive problems, fast or irregular heartbeats, extreme fatigue and brain fog, or as silently accumulating cellular or organ damage.Putrino has been studying the lingering effects of COVID since early in the pandemic five years ...

Measles is so infectious that when under-vaccinated individuals mingle, they'll always be at risk. That's why public health officials are stressing the importance of high vaccination rates amid backsliding and growing outbreaks.The disease is spreading across the country, with hundreds of cases reported this year and the majority in Ontario. The resurgence comes amid falling childhood immunization rates; measles was declared officially eradicated in Canada in 1998, aside from the occasional travel-related case.The virus spreads easily through airborne droplets and usually causes fever, cough and redness of the eyes to start. What follows includes white spots next to the molars and a distinctive red rash that usually starts around the hairline and moves down the body.Before effective measle...

In an 11-page court document filed Thursday, the former CEO of Alberta Health Services alleges the province's health minister and AHS have crafted a narrative about her that is "completely unfounded, entirely fictitious, malicious" and replete with "bad faith allegations."Athana Mentzelopoulos was responding to statements of defence from the provincial health agency and Health Minister Adriana LaGrange last week, which both alleged Mentzelopoulos was terminated due to her job performance. Mentzelopoulos had previously filed a $1.7-million wrongful dismissal lawsuit against AHS and the province in February, in which she claimed she had been fired after launching an investigation into various contracts with links to government officials.A former chief judge from Manitoba has been appointed b...

When Jennie Passche gets sick, she finds herself in a competition to get care.The 65-year-old in Esquimalt, on B.C.'s Vancouver Island, says she has to wake up early to call her community's urgent and primary care centre, which opened in 2021 to provide same-day care and alleviate the family doctor shortage.But by the time she gets through, she says, it's usually too late."It just seems so hopeless. What's going to happen to me? Who am I going to see?"Passche was taking part in a call-in segment on CBC's BC Today meant to mark a milestone for the province: 1,001 new family care physicians hired over the past two years following changes made to the province's payment model, and a record number of residents – 250,000 – attached to some sort of primary care provider.WATCH | How B.C. changed i...

Hundreds of nurses rallied outside several Ontario hospitals on Thursday to demand that CEOs improve staffing levels across the province.The Ontario Nurses' Association (ONA), which represents 68,000 registered nurses, health care professionals and student affiliates, said it wants hospital leaders to implement registered nurse-to-patient staffing ratios to ensure quality of care. Such ratios represent the maximum number of patients that can be cared for by one nurse in a particular hospital unit."Safe staffing saves lives and it makes your nurses want to stay," said Liz Romano, an intensive care nurse at Toronto General Hospital for nearly 45 years and bargaining unit president for the ONA at Toronto General and Toronto Western Hospitals."We're rallying here today to bring to the public t...

Canada has slipped to 18th place in the global World Happiness Report, down three spots from last year and placing it among the "largest losers" in happiness rankings over the last two decades, according to the annual report released Thursday.At its peak, in the 2015 report, Canada had placed fifth. Now, in 18th, Canada has dropped to its lowest-ever position since the polling began in 2005. The United States has also dropped to its lowest-ever position at 24th, having previously peaked at 11th place in 2012. The U.K. fell to 23rd.Finland once again came out on top, named the happiest country in the world for the eighth year in a row in the annual report published by the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford."In general, the Western industrial countries are now less happy t...