Patti's Blog - Advocate for Elders, People with Disabilities and Their Families

Hantavirus From 'Hoarding: Buried Alive' Home: Woman May Have Contracted Virus While Cleaning Houston House

From Huffington Post: (click for full article)

A Houston home that was being prepared for an episode of the TLC show "Hoarding: Buried Alive" is now being quarantined, after a woman cleaning the home contracted what is believed to be hantavirus, according to news reports.

Hantavirus is already in the news for killing three visitors to Yosemite National Park earlier this summer. The virus is carried by rodents and spread to humans via droppings and urine, and can cause the potentially fatal hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. People can contract hantavirus by breathing air that has been contaminated by the virus-ridden droppings and urine, though it's not transmissible between humans.

Good Morning America reported that the woman who was cleaning the home, located in The Woodlands part of Houston, tested positive for hantavirus, but a second test is needed to confirm it. She was hospitalized after contracting the illness.

Hoarding: Living with the overwhelming need for stuff

Excerpt from The Globe and Mail: (click for full article)

The house where Stuart lives is full of boxes. They are stacked up to two metres high in every room, blocking his front door, sitting among piles of dusty flyers he won’t read, wine bottles that he will never drink, and bags of clothes he will never wear.

“There is no logic to it. I saw it. I liked it. I bought it,” says Stuart, 57, who doesn’t want his full name used. Shortly after his daughter started to live full time with his ex-wife, he went to an auction to find a bed, and discovered, in his loneliness, that he enjoyed collecting glass. Now, there is no empty space larger than 18 inches anywhere in his two-bedroom, Toronto-area home. His garage, his shed and his van are all stuffed. He has one usable chair, but no one visits. The girlfriend who tried to help him clean is gone.

It would be easy to call Stuart a slob, but he is clean-cut, tidy and well-spoken. He suffers from hoarding, which has made for riveting reality television, even as psychiatrists have increased research into and focused treatment on the mental-health issue. Peggy Richter, head of the newly expanded anxiety disorders clinic at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, and an expert in hoarding, says new research suggests that between 2 and 5 per cent of the population may struggle with problem hoarding, literally and figuratively behind a closed door.

Picturing A Brain Injury

Excerpt from Science Friday: (click for entire article)

In 2004, journalist Eliette Markhbein was struck by a car while riding her bike. The collision split her helmet in half “like a ripe watermelon,” and left Markhbein with injuries to her spine and brain. Her life, she says, was changed forever.

As she struggled to recover, Markhbein started painting, to take her mind off of the physical and emotional pain she was experiencing. “When I was painting I did not have to face my injury. It was addictive. It was better than morphine,” she says.

The Dangers of Too Much Stuff

Excerpt from NFPA: (click for entire article)

It was a fire that alarmed an entire city: a blaze in a high-rise Toronto public housing complex that defied massive efforts to bring it under control. "I remember saying, ‘When is this going to go out?’," recalled Toronto Fire Chief William Stewart, who had anticipated a routine apartment fire, not a six-alarm inferno.

The 30-floor, 713-unit building was located on Wellesley Street in downtown Toronto. The fire began around 5 p.m. on September 24, 2010, when a cigarette was dropped from an upper floor into the west-facing balcony of a unit on the 24th floor. As firefighters would soon learn, unit 2424 was no ordinary household. The 560-square-foot (52-square-meter), one-bedroom apartment was stuffed with paper and possessions, and the balcony where the fire started was just as packed.

Fanned by winds with temperatures in the high 80s, the balcony fire spread into the apartment. A fire alarm was initiated, and the first units from the Toronto Fire Department responded. Arriving firefighters were prevented from getting into the unit by the high heat in the hallway; the building was constructed in the 1960s and was  unsprinklered, allowing the fire to grow rapidly. The high fuel load in the apartment soon turned the hallway into what one fire expert called "a tunnel of hell." The radiant heat was so intense that the door of the unit across the hall began to burn.

Court orders cleanup of Ypsilanti Township hoarder's condo

Excerpt from AnnArbor.com: (click for entire article)

A Washtenaw County Circuit Court judge has ordered the cleanup of an Ypsilanti Township condominium littered with raw meat — among other debris, including dead rodents — within 21 days.

In a verified petition filed with the court, township attorneys allege Wingate Park condominium owner Elmer Sheldon is hoarding the meat. Sheldon told township building inspectors he is homeless and no longer lives in the condo.

Mom charged after son dies at 'deplorable' home overrun with animals

Excerpt from the Chicago Tribune: (click for entire article)

The scene was shocking enough when police answered a call at the small brick bungalow in Berwyn.

A 14-year-old boy, severely mentally disabled, wearing only a T-shirt, lying in the backyard and not breathing.

As he was rushed to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead, police said they made a gruesome discovery inside. Four children -- ages 12 to 18 -- who had never been to school, living with more than 200 animals in a home covered by feces and infested with spiders and hundreds of hissing cockroaches that measured four to five inches.

Almost 100 Cats Seized From Hoarder

Excerpt from KPHO: (click for entire article)

The Yavapai Humane Society and Purebred Cat Breed Rescue Inc. have been busy the last couple of days, removing 96 cats from a home near Cottonwood.

Dr. Linda Mercer, president of the rescue organization, said the cats were owned by an elderly woman who had been breeding Siamese, Scottish Fold, Pixie-Bob, Manx and Bengal cats for profit. The woman had became infirm, and in the last few years the home developed into a hoarding situation, Mercer said. The owner is now hospitalized and has relinquished the cats to Mercer's group.

The cats will be evaluated for adoption and illness. Those deemed suitable for adoption will be spayed orneutered, vaccinated and tested for FIV/FeLV before being offered to the public.

An Unwanted Inheritance

Excerpt from Newsweek: (click for entire article)

Greg Martin wasn’t sure what to expect when his mother died last May, forcing him to return to his childhood home for the first time in nearly 18 years. The house, located on a pleasant block in San Diego, had always been cluttered, but now it was virtually uninhabitable. “There were piles as tall as me, six feet or so,” Greg said. “Where there used to be floor, there were trails—a foot and a half high, so you’d be walking on stuff.” Greg was forced to navigate through piles of magazines, papers, and books, plastic bags filled with thrift-store purchases, expired medicine bottles and literally tons of clothes. The only “living space” was a small pocket by the front door, where his mother, a colorful and fiercely independent woman, had collapsed shortly before her death at the age of 83. Greg, who has taken a leave of absence from his job, expected that cleaning out the house would take six months. It’s now been eight—and counting.

Life Expectancy Lags in the U.S., But It May Be on the Upswing

Excerpt from Time Healthland: (click for entire article)

Americans don't live as long as people in other wealthy nations on average, and they're less healthy overall. And although American life expectancy has been ticking up over the last 25 years, it's been rising more slowly than in countries like Japan, France and Australia, widening the global longevity gap. It's a confusing phenomenon, especially considering that the U.S. spends far more on health care than any other nation in the world.

That's why the National Institute on Aging asked the National Research Council to assemble a panel of experts to study the problem. The resulting report, which was released Tuesday, pinpoints some key causes, many of which should sound familiar: heart disease, smoking, obesity, lack of exercise, income disparity and unequal access to care.

Elderly Hoarder Says She'll Handle Everything Herself

Excerpt from Fox 4 KC: (click for entire article)

An elderly south Kansas City woman who was kicked out of her cluttered home, and who a good Samaritan says has refused her help and the help of city officials, says that she just wants to be back in her own home, with her own things.

Alice Stanbra, 87, says that she has heart problems and has been living in her car since KCMO condemmed her home last November because of the extreme clutter. But she also says that she has everything under control.

"I don't bother nobody," said Stanbra. "I mean, I never asked anybody for anything."