Health News Blog provides coverage of current health news.

HIV: PRACTICAL MATTERS-PUTTING YOUR AFFAIRS IN ORDER: STIPULATING WHAT HAPPENS TO YOUR PROPERTY AND PROVIDING FOR HOSPICE CAREMost people stipulate what happens to their property by making a will. No one requires that you do so. If you die without a will (called dying intestate), your property goes automatically first to your spouse and then to your nearest living relatives. Your property will not go to friends or to unmarried partners. To assign property to friends or unmarried partners, you must make a will.     Wills apply mostly to property—money, house, car, furniture, clothes. Wills do not necessarily legislate any of your other wishes. Life insurance benefits will go to the beneficiary, even if the will states otherwise. In principle, a will may specify what your funeral arrangements are and whether you’d like to be buried or cremated, but in practice, wills are often not read until after the funeral.     Over a certain value, property left in a will is taxable. You can minimize the taxes your beneficiaries will pay by setting up trusts or by giving to them a certain amount of money per year while you are still alive. Neither trusts nor gifts under a certain dollar amount are taxable.     Trusts and annual gifts also ensure that you will have property to leave. Some people, rather than use their property to finance their own medical care, decide to put it into trusts or give it to the people they love.     Once they are impoverished, their medical bills will be paid by public assistance programs. Leaving your property in trust or as a gift must be done years before you need extensive medical care: Medicaid/Medicare will check to see if money or property has been given away in recent years. To find out how and when to leave your property, see a lawyer or a financial planner.     A lawyer is the best source of information regarding what happens to your property. Lawyers also often draw up wills. State laws set the forms for wills, however, and if you know the form, you can draw up your own will.     Providing for Hospice Care-Some people want to decide where they will die. Some choose to die at home; some would rather leave their homes as a place for the living, so choose to die elsewhere. In either case, they may choose hospice care.     A hospice can be either a place or a concept, that is, either a building or a program dedicated to care of the dying. Hospice programs can be run through hospitals, nursing homes, or private organizations. Nursing agencies, like the Visiting Nurse Association, often also provide hospice care.     Both private insurance policies and medical assistance provide some level of reimbursement for hospice care, providing the requirements of the hospice are met. To find a hospice or hospice program, ask your doctor or nursing agency or hospital social worker. Your doctor can advise you on when to consider hospice services.*219\191\2*

EPILEPSY AS A PSYCHO-SOCIAL DISEASE: WHERE COUNSELING HELPS”Karen is one of the best examples of the importance of counseling. Karen had her first seizure when she was about ten. It was a tonic-clonic seizure, and then she had a few complex partial seizures later. Medication controlled these for about two years, but when she was about twelve she again began having seizures and first came to Hopkins. The doctor wanted to change Karen’s medicine but was also very concerned about the fact that things were going poorly for her in school and thought the cause might be a problem with the school’s acceptance of her seizures. The doctor asked me to see Karen and find out what was going on.”Karen was a very shy young lady, and during our first visit all she did was cry. I couldn’t get her to talk at all. So I asked her to keep a journal, to go home and write down her thoughts about everything she felt, so that when she came back we could talk about them. What we discovered was that the problems weren’t in school, they were at home. The major problem was a father who blamed Karen for all of the family strife, arguing, and financial problems.Eventually we asked her family to come in to talk. Her father never would participate. He was a very domineering type, her mother a rather meek lady. The counseling, which went on weekly for over a year, helped Karen gain control and do better in school. This may have had less to do with understanding epilepsy than with the fact that the family situation changed. Her mother, who ostensibly came to counseling to understand more about epilepsy, gained insight into her own problems. She ultimately decided to divorce Karen’s father. This led to an additional need for family counseling as they readjusted to a single-parent family.”It took a long time for Karen to realize that the problems were really not due to her but to the dynamics of her family. She finally realized that she was not responsible for having epilepsy. She learned that her medical bills were not the cause of the family’s financial problems. She eventually saw that her father was just using the epilepsy as an excuse and that she was suffering from his blame and her own feelings of guilt.”"So what you’re saying is that the epilepsy wasn’t Karen’s problem, is that right?”"Well, not exactly. Karen’s seizures were not a major problem, but she had no education about epilepsy. She was surrounded by all of these family arguments and strife, and she said to herself, ‘Hey, I’m the only one who is sick. I’m the only one who is different. Therefore, all of this must be my fault.’ This also led to her doing poorly in school, which made her think that she was dumb, which she attributed to her epilepsy. All of these things contributed to a terrible self-image. So we had to work on these issues. We also had to work with her brother and sister, who were jealous that she was getting a disproportionate share of attention. They needed to see that Karen was the victim not the cause of parental discord.*221\208\8*