Breathing

WHAT the aged Communist rulers of China should worry about is the downgrading of their government's credit rating by Standard & Poor's, a nonpolitical judgment that the Asian recession has caught up with it.What does give those rulers the most anxiety appears, however, to be a movement called Falun Gong, or Wheel of Law, which keeps doing its thing despite every effort of Beijing. Its thing is breathing, exercise and meditation. Millions are doing it, many in unison, in China and throughout the world.

Mark O'Brien,49, a poet whose determination to live a life independent of his iron-lung breathing machine inspired the Oscar-winning documentary "Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O'Brien," died Sunday at his Berkeley, Calif., home from complications of bronchitis.

Nothing says "I'm a desperate loser" quite so clearly as voluntarily going on a "Flirting Safari," other than actually saying, a desperate loser."The nearly 50 people who gathered to go on the amorous adventure at a local bookstore on a recent night seemed to realize this. Nobody wanted to sit in the front rows.For the next hour, a "relationship coach" would take the anxious yet hopeful crowd on this safari, an audience-participation seminar that promised to transform us into Kings of the Jungle of Love.

A 3-year-old Brentwood boy was flown to Johns Hopkins Hospital yesterday after children playing nearby found him floating on his back and not breathing in about three feet of water at Sandy Point State Park.He was revived by a lifeguard before being flown to the hospital.Children playing in the south beach area of the park on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay discovered the boy in trouble about 12:25 p.m. and called to nearby adults for help, said Darryl Claggett, a spokesman for the Department of Natural Resources police.

A 2-month-old Gambrills boy was being kept alive by life support systems yesterday after county police found him not breathing at a day care home in Gambrills, authorities said.The infant, James Hoover, was in critical condition yesterday afternoon at Johns Hopkins Hospital, a spokeswoman there said. He had a heartbeat but was unable to breathe on his own, police said.The infant was at the house in the 2100 block of Branchwood Court when Kimberly Egan, who runs the day care home, discovered that he wasn't breathing when she tried to feed him shortly before noon.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- The mystery fumes are still extracting their toll. The unidentified poison that sickened the emergency room staff at Riverside General Hospital nearly eight weeks ago still won't loosen its grasp on Dr. Julie Gorchynski and nurse Sally Balderas.The 33-year-old doctor underwent surgery yesterday to try to save her knees. The bones inside the joints are literally dying for lack of blood circulation, she said -- a condition that Dr. Gorchynski blames on whatever happened that night in February that afflicted her and five other emergency room workers.

A Baltimore City Fire Department dispatcher may have saved the lives of twin infants yesterday when he instructed their mother in emergency techniques to start the children breathing again."

By learning from mistakes, anesthesiologists have developed measures to significantly reduce risks from anesthesia-related injuries.After a seven-year study of settled insurance claims found that injuries related to the respiratory system were the biggest problem area, anesthesiologists adopted two new techniques for monitoring breathing, said Dr. Robert Caplan of the University of Washington at Seattle.One, called pulse oximetry, uses a simple device clipped to a finger or ear lobe to measure oxygen levels in the blood.

It was all a blur -- a thick, gray blur.Firefighter Charles J. Campbell was on a rescue attempt in the 1300 block of Harlem Avenue in West Baltimore early yesterday when someone leaned out of a smoke-filled third-floor window and handed him something as he stood on an aerial ladder.Thick gray smoke escaped the window and forced tears in Mr. Campbell's eyes. He wasn't sure what the person had handed him at first. When his eyes cleared, he realized that the blur was an infant who had been handed to him by a woman.

It's a striking image: Figure skater Tonya Harding soars and speeds through a demanding routine, and once off the ice heads straight for an inhaler. Whether or not she wins a medal, Ms. Harding represents a triumph over a disease that afflicts from 10 million to 15 million Americans -- asthma.But while she and many asthmatics have their disease well enough under control to pursue regular activities, asthma apparently is growing in both number of sufferers and mortality -- both rose by about 30 percent between 1980 and 1987.

Have you heard of using milk of magnesia on severe acne? My son has cystic nodular acne. He is 16 and has been under a dermatologist's care for many years. We have spent thousands of dollars, to no avail. He has recently tried a home remedy: applying milk of magnesia to his face at night before bed. He looks the best he has in four years. Can you tell us why this is working so wonderfully well? Milk of magnesia is a solution of magnesium hydroxide and is best known for its laxative action.

Many of us have experienced a pounding heart, sweaty palms, a feeling of constricted breathing -- perhaps before giving a speech, getting on an airplane, asking for a raise. But for some people, those same symptoms are accompanied by dizziness, shortness of breath and even a sense of impending doom. These people may be suffering from a panic attack, says Dr. Elias Shaya, chief of psychiatry at Good Samaritan Hospital. And although panic attacks can be potentially disabling, they also are considered treatable.

Asthma is the most common chronic disorder among American children. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the respiratory disease affects 6.2 million children under age 18. And while many of the stimuli that can trigger an asthma attack -- including sudden temperature change, pollen and respiratory infections -- cannot be avoided, some can. In fact, parents can go far in preventing asthma attacks in their children with hearty doses...

Brake lights flashed, and dust scudded into the air. Then Donald Winding saw the car, which had slammed into the guardrail and spun into a grassy area, snapping a tree in two. Winding pulled over and ran down the embankment to the crumpled Taurus. The driver, a burly man in his 30s, stared ahead glassily, unseeing. His throat was swollen, his torso bent backward and his leg soaked with blood. Another man grabbed Winding's arm: "It's no use. He's already dead." But Winding, an operating room nurse and CPR instructor, sensed that the driver was still alive.

Whether you're looking for a new way to exercise or a way to relax after a long day, yoga or tai chi could be right for you. These Hindu and Chinese practices are timeless in Asian countries and were introduced to the United States in the late 1800s. Yoga and tai chi stress the importance of control over both mind and body, but they can also be a source of exercise. If you are unsure whether yoga or tai chi is right for you, take a drop-in class, which most yoga and tai chi centers offer.

Although recent reports of Pope John Paul II's medical condition have focused on a series of seemingly separate ailments, doctors say his downward spiral likely stems from a larger problem - his long struggle with Parkinson's disease. In the past month, the 84-year-old Pontiff has suffered from breathing, swallowing and speech problems. He has had a breathing tube installed in his windpipe and a feeding tube passed through his nose into his stomach. He speech became so labored he managed to emit only a rasp while blessing pilgrims, then he was unable to speak at all. Doctors say such problems are common among those in the advanced stages of Parkinson's, progressive disease that destroys nerves controlling movement.

LOOKING FORWARD Monday President Bush probably will get an earful at the National Governors Association's winter meeting in Washington. Topics are certain to include the mounting costs to states of the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs and Bush's budget for the coming fiscal year, which cuts an array of state aid programs, from education assistance to funding for job training. Black farmers who claim they suffered racial discrimination in being denied federal loans will testify before a U.S. House subcommittee in Cincinnati on problems in a settlement they reached with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

It was a standard 30-minute hospital procedure, but it grabbed the world's attention overnight. Doctors in Rome performed a tracheotomy yesterday on Pope John Paul II - making an incision in his neck below the larynx and inserting a tube that can provide oxygen to his lungs and help clear fluids or other obstructions from his airway. The 84-year-old pontiff reportedly was breathing with the help of a mechanical ventilator. A Vatican spokesman described yesterday's procedure as "elective" and said the surgery had had a "positive" outcome.

VATICAN CITY - Struggling to breathe, Pope John Paul II underwent an urgent tracheotomy late yesterday after being rushed to the hospital for the second time in less than a month. The half-hour surgery, in which doctors inserted a tube through a small hole cut in the pope's windpipe to ease his respiratory crisis, was termed a success by a Vatican official. The pope remained in a 10th-floor suite of hospital rooms. Pope John Paul suffered serious breathing difficulties, complications from a relapse of the flu that sent him to the hospital Feb. 1 for nine days, said the official, reading a statement issued by a Vatican spokesman, Dr. Joaquin Navarro-Valls.

Specialists at university medical institutions termed Pope John Paul II's condition last night as "serious," but said that it is not necessarily life-threatening as long as doctors carefully monitor the pontiff's breathing and administer appropriate medications. Vatican officials announced yesterday that the pope had been hospitalized as a precaution after his breathing became labored, possibly as a result of a bout of influenza. They said the pope was also suffering from "acute laryngeal tracheitis" and "larynx spasm crisis."