Understanding preferences for a mindfulness-based stress management program among caregivers of hematopoietic cell transplant patients.

Informal caregivers of allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplant patients experience significant levels of stress throughout the caregiving process. One strategy that has been shown to aid in stress management in other populations is mindfulness. The goal of this study was to understand caregivers' experiences with mindfulness and evaluate their receptiveness to a mindfulness-based stress management program. Data were collected via in-depth phone interviews from 18 caregivers (55% female). Results indicated that about half the sample was familiar with mindfulness and/or had practiced meditation. The majority indicated that they believed a mindfulness program would have been useful for them and that they would have been willing to participate. Most indicated that a program delivered once-weekly for 60 min, during both inpatient and outpatient phases, would be preferable through a combination of in-person and mobile-based delivery. These data provide critical information for the development of future mindfulness-based interventions for this caregiving population.

Pulmonary infiltrates in an elderly man.

An 80-year-old man presented with subjective fever, chronic cough occasionally producing scant yellow sputum, retrosternal pleuritic pain, and dyspnea on walking one block. Since symptom onset three months earlier, he had lost 20 pounds; he had had two loose stools a day, fatigue, malaise, and anorexia but not hemoptysis, nausea, vomiting, hematemesis, hematochezia, or melena. He denied paroxysmal nocturnal dyspnea or orthopnea. As far as could be ascertained, he not recently been exposed to tuberculosis or any other infectious disease. He had previously been seen at another clinic and had completed a 10-day trial of erythromycin (500 mg p.o. q12 h) without apparent change in symptoms.

Aftereffects of a tainted meal.

A 58-year-old man presented with profuse diarrhea, abdominal distention, flatulence, weakness, and a 15-lb weight loss. The initial symptoms of nausea and vomiting had begun a week earlier, within hours of eating chicken that had not been well wrapped when purchased. Two days after symptom onset, he received intravenous rehydration therapy at another hospital. With resolution of the nausea and vomiting, he felt slightly better and went home against medical advice. He had not had fever, chills, hematochezia, melena, hematemesis, or dysuria.

A man with fever and lymphadenopathy.

A 40-year-old man presented with a three-week history of malaise, nausea, night sweats, decreased appetite, and a 15-lb weight loss. He reported having had diarrhea, occasionally with bright red blood, for the first two weeks and a temperature as high as 39.4 degrees C for the last two weeks. He had not had cough, shortness of breath, wheezing, chest pain, arthralgias, rash, or conjunctivitis. He had not eaten raw oysters or raspberries.