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The National Stroke Association has selected stroke survivor Ruth Wolfe, of Redding, to share her in- spiring story on NBC's To- day Show, which will air May 21. The story of Ruth's un- expected stroke and recov- ery has gained national at- tention and is being retold to inspire others to learn the symptoms of stroke and act quickly when in doubt. Knowing the symp- toms, acting fast and re- ceiving prompt medical attention saved Ruth's life. Ruth never considered herself at risk for a stroke. Like many women, Ruth balances a career and fam- ily with an active lifestyle. She exercises, eats healthy and has never smoked. Despite this, in 2010, Ruth suffered a stroke while sitting alone in her car. It came on suddenly and without warning. As a respiratory therapist at Mercy Medical Center Red- ding, Ruth recognized the signs of stroke and knew she must act quickly. Quick action allowed the Mercy Stroke Center Team to administer life- saving treatment that dra- matically reduced the po- tentially life altering side effects of her stroke. As a five-year survivor who has made a dramatic recovery Ruth encour- ages everyone to learn the symptoms of stroke and seek immediate medical treatment if experiencing any stroke-like symptoms. "I got my life back," Wolfe said. "I never thought I'd be able to do the things I do again. I am so thankful." NATIONALSTROKEASSOCIATION By Shirley Engebretsen Those of you who use computers on a daily ba- sis, have you noticed af- ter a day's work that your neck, shoulders and eyes feel strained? Your desk- top monitor may be silently harming your body. A monitor set too high or too low causes us to tilt our heads up or down slightly in an unnatural position. Either of these can cause permanent damage to the muscles and tendons in our neck. An office safety supervi- sor has said that the mon- itor should be eye level so that when one looks at the screen, the neck is in its nat- ural resting position. However, if the user wears bifocals and the mon- itor is at eye level, the user's neck is straining upward in order to be able to read the screen. The user could use dollar store glasses so that she looked straight ahead. But it would be a little awk- ward to keep switching to prescription glasses when someone came to the re- ception window. One idea is to try setting the screen lower within the reading area of bifocals. As an experiment, use a step ladder for a stand. If it works, the user should be able to read the screen with- out straining neck muscles. Don Holden, the mainte- nance manager at the Corn- ing Healthcare District, was asked to custom design a desk. Enjoying the challenge, he created a desk with two levels. The first is to place the keyboard and mouse and the second level is for the monitor, which is now set directly in the reading area of the user's bifocals. There is no one size fits all when it comes to office furniture and safety. But computer users need to pro- tect themselves from long term injury on the job. There is much to learn about ergonomically safe office furniture and habits. Talk to your safety supervi- sor, read books and articles or do research on the Inter- net to learn more about how to protect yourself. Ingenuity goes a long way to help us live a happy life both now and in our re- tirement years. ShirleyEngebretsenPh. D. is executive director of the Corning Healthcare District. ERGONOMICS Is y ou r co mp ut er m on it or k il lin g yo u? COURTESYPHOTO Stroke survivor Ruth Wolfe, le , is pictured with a coworker. Redding stroke survivor to appear on Today Show COURTESY PHOTO A custom desk helps solve neck pain for those who wear bifocals. By Marilynn Marchione The Associated Press They weigh as little as a pound yet force some of the toughest choices in all of medicine. Extremely pre- mature babies face big dif- ferences in how hard hos- pitals try to save them, a study finds. It is the first major look in the U.S. at how preemies fare according to the care they get. There was a wide range — some hospitals always gave active treatment to the youngest preemies as opposed to just comfort care, but others never did. Researchers had no infor- mation on how parental wishes affected the deci- sions versus hospital pol- icy, but said that proba- bly was not the main fac- tor because differences in care from one place to an- other were so large. Parents need to know that "the hospital that you go to might determine what happens to your baby," al- though many parents are not in a position to shop around when they find themselves in these emer- gency situations, said one study leader, Dr. Edward Bell of the University of Iowa. They also should be given better information on sur- vival odds — not just by gestational age but also by what happens if active care is given, said another study leader, medical student Matthew Rysavy. "A doctor might say 'no 22-week infant has ever sur- vived,'" but that might mask the fact that doctors there don't try, because they don't consider such babies viable, he said. Trying is not always the right thing to do, and could just prolong dying, inde- pendent experts said. Sur- vival odds are influenced by many factors besides care, such as whether the baby is a twin, and even gender — girls tend to fare better. "We just seem to be re- suscitating more and more tinier babies, and there are consequences," said Dr. Jon- athan Muraskas, a neona- tologist at Loyola Univer- sity Medical Center in May- wood, Illinois. Despite medical ad- vances, the rates of cerebral palsy, blindness, deafness, asthma and other major problems have not changed much, he said. "How low do we go and what are the implications?" he said. The study is in Thurs- day's New England Jour- nal of Medicine. About 12,000 babies each year in the United States are born between 22 and 25 weeks gestation. A full- term pregnancy is about 40 weeks. Tundi and Nate Brady faced this twice, with dif- ferent outcomes, when she went into labor with twins around 23 weeks into her pregnancy at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. When the first twin was born, "it was very clear" that doctors did not think she would survive, so the couple declined life sup- port and the baby died 20 minutes later, Tundi Brady said. But then her labor stopped and she was able to go another week until her son, Dexter, was born weighing about a pound. Doctors estimated he would have a 40 percent chance of surviving and a 70 per- cent chance of disability if he did. "That was good enough for us," so they chose ag- gressive treatment, she said. He spent five months in a neonatal intensive care unit and is now a healthy 5½-year-old. "We were so lucky," she said. The study involved nearly 5,000 babies born before 27 weeks gestation at 24 hospi- tals in a research group run by the National Institutes of Health between April 2006 and March 2011. Researchers looked at rates of comfort care ver- sus active treatment, such as breathing machines, feeding tubes or heart re- suscitation. Active treat- ment was given to 22 per- cent of babies born at 22 weeks, 72 percent of those at 23 weeks and nearly all beyond that. SURVIVING THE ODDS Efforts to save premature babies vary TUNDI BRADY VIA AP Tundi and Nate Brady's 5-year-old son, Dexter, plays at home in Iowa City, Iowa. Born 16weeks premature, he spent five months in a neonatal intensive care unit a er birth and is now a healthy 51/2-year-old. Chris' HerbShop (530) 528-2930 333 So. 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