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Heroes

How a hospice worker helped this family through their tough time.

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When Christine Powers was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1995, she took it in stride.

No one would have blamed her if she had complained, but that wasn't her way.

Christine in New York City. All photos via Gerry Powers, used with permission.

It was the same thing when Christine was diagnosed with malignant skin cancer in 2000.

Even when the cancer reappeared later, seven years after being cancer-free, she kept her composure. That time, the cancer had spread to her brain. After multiple operations and a multi-year battle, it was clear the cancer was terminal, so her family opted to get Christine hospice care.

For anyone not familiar with it, the term "hospice" can seem like it carries some mysterious and scary connotations, but it actually refers to a type of medical and emotional care for people in the last stages of a terminal illness. It helps them and their families manage the end of life with as much compassion as possible by focusing on the quality of life instead of continuing often painful treatments to prolong it.

Samantha Lee is one of the hospice aids who helped care for Christine in her last years. 

"Christine was the youngest patient I ever had," Samantha says. "I was in love with that family so much."

The Powers family.

Hospice nurses and aides try to ensure a patient isn't in pain and help them — as much as possible — live their final days with dignity.

When Samantha helped take care of Christine, she came to the house five days a week, four hours at a time. She would cook, wash clothes, run errands, talk with Christine, and then work with her to try to keep her energy and mood up. She helped her do some exercises, and she encouraged her to do one major project a day to keep her spirits up.

"Our home aides knew Christine really, really well," Gerry Powers, Christine's husband, fondly recalls.

Gerry and Christine Powers.

And they were with her until the end, making her as comfortable as possible and the family as cared for as possible.

"You can be intellectually prepared for a loss, if someone in your life is declining," Gerry says. "But I don't think you’re ever really emotionally prepared when it happens. That’s the thing."

Samantha says people's eyes get big when she tells them she's a hospice worker, caring for patients at the end of their lives.

"They'll say, 'Oh, you’re a hospice aide? Wow, must be hard. Why do you like that?'" she mimics over the phone.

But you can tell by her voice just how much she loves her job. She says she's grateful that she can be there to help the patients and their loved ones through this difficult time.

"[This job] changed me around," she says. "It made me more soft on the inside, more compassionate and humbled."

One thing Samantha has learned from her work is the importance of having conversations about death and dying early on.

It's not an easy thing to do, but talking openly about death can bring some comfort to the end of life.

Especially in Western countries, talking about death is kind of taboo and invokes anxiety and fear in many of us. But if a loved one dies without ever having shared their end-of-life wishes, it can add extra stress and confusion during crisis mode.

"You have one family member that feels that this is not the way to live, that [the loved one] should go," says Samantha. "Then you have the other family member that wants to hold on."

She says that if people start conversations about what they want when they get to the end, then it shouldn't be a problem when the time actually comes. Family members will know exactly what they need to do and be able to spend more time focusing on their loved one and taking care of themselves.

Gerry and Christine.

Samantha says that her work as a hospice worker has also given her a new perspective on life and death.

"I look at life much different," she says.

"It really doesn't make sense to be so angry and have a lot of hatred in your heart because nobody knows when their time is up."

Education

Teacher reveals the 'really obvious' reason teens no longer read. It's not just the phones.

"Kids who read are just built different."

via Canva/Photos

A teenage boy stars at his smartphone.

Studies show that kids are spending a lot less time reading these days. In 2020, 42% of 9-year-old students said they read for fun almost daily, down from 52% in 2012. Seventeen percent of 13-year-olds read for fun daily, down from 27% in 2012. Among 17-year-olds, 19% say they read for fun, down from 31% in 1984.

It’s safe to say that modern technology is a big reason why kids aren’t reading as much. A recent report found that teenagers spend an average of 8 hours 39 minutes per day on screens, compared to 5-and-a-half hours for pre-teen children. So, it’s no wonder they don’t have any time left to crack open a book. A high school teacher on TikTok who goes by the name StillATeacher recently brought the topic up with her class, and they stopped reading for fun at the end of middle school.

“So even those who are like avid readers of the Percy Jackson series in fourth and fifth grade fall off,” the teacher says. “Honestly, there are many reasons to stop reading recreationally, like increased pressure inside and outside of school, a desire to spend more time socializing, and, of course, the phones.”

But the teacher says there’s an obvious reason “right in front of our faces”: the adults. “Adults have lowered the bar for how much you should read as a teenager so far that the bar cannot be found,” she continued. “There are many educators who have the mindset that you shouldn't teach whole books because kids just won't read them.”

@stillateacher

the literacy crisis is upon us #teachertok #teacher #highschoolteacher #englishteacher #education #literacy #booktok #creatorsearchinsights

“I've taught at schools where teaching novels is actually discouraged,” she continued. “And I have conversations with teachers in other content areas who say that they themselves never read books, that they don't think it's important for students' long-term success. All this said, it is not entirely surprising that high schoolers don't wanna read.”

How does reading benefit kids?

The significant decrease in the number of children who read for fun means that many will miss out on the incredible benefits of regularly curling up for a good book. Studies show that children who read for pleasure enjoy improved cognitive performance, language development, and academic achievement. Reading is also linked to fewer mental health problems, less screen time, and more sleep. Findings suggest that kids get the optimal benefits of reading when they do it for around 12 hours a week.



“You forgot empathy,” one commenter added. “People who read are better at empathizing because they have been able to put themselves in the shoes of others and learn about different perspectives, people, cultures, experiences.”

StillATeacher has seen these incredible benefits first-hand.

“But I'm telling you, the handful of kids I teach who do read are built different. Kids who read have stronger critical thinking skills, more success across all academic areas, and, honestly, just a stronger sense of self. Because reading helps you figure out who you are as a person,” the teacher said.

The decline in young people's reading is a serious problem that must be addressed. So, it’s terrific that the teacher used her platform on TikTok to bring it to the public’s attention. Interestingly enough, she says that TikTok is one of the few platforms encouraging kids to read.

“And honestly, thank goodness for BookTok because I think it is one of the only drivers of adolescent reading that still exists,” she concluded her post. “Isn't that sad? Like, the schools aren't doing it, TikTok's doing it. We gotta start a movement here.”

This story originally appeared last year.

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Community

Woman who lives on a cruise ship shares the hardest part about her otherwise dream life

"I could have anything I wanted, and I want it, I absolutely want it,”

via Christine Kesteloo/TikTok and Cagri Gurbuz/Pexels

Christine Kesteloo has one big problem living on a cruise ship.

A lot of folks would love to trade lives with Christine Kesteloo. Her husband is the Chief Engineer on a cruise ship, so she gets to live on the boat pretty much for free as the “wife on board.” For Christine, life is a lot like living on a permanent vacation.

“I live on a cruise ship for half the year with my husband, and it's often as glamorous as it sounds,” she told Insider. “After all, I don't cook, clean, make my bed, do laundry or pay for food.“

Living an all-inclusive lifestyle seems like paradise, but it has some drawbacks. Having access to all-you-can-eat food all day long can really have an effect on one’s waistline. Kesteloo admits that living on a cruise ship takes a lot of self-discipline because the temptation is always right under her nose.

cruise ships, dieting, all you can eat, living on a cruise ship, tiktokA woman eats and drinks while enjoying the view on a cruise shipImage via Canva

“One of the hardest things about living on a cruise ship is that I know right now, if I just leave my cabin, I can go and have cookies, pizza, a shake, I could have anything I wanted, and I want it, I absolutely want it,” she said in a TikTok video that received over 400,000 views.


@dutchworld_americangirl

The hardest part about living on a cruise ship is that I am surrounded by free food all of the time anything I want I just had lunch but it’s 2 o’clock in my body tells me it’s either cookie time or time for a hamburger. The hardest part is telling myself not to eat. #hardestpart #cruiseship #livingatsea #koningsdam #weliveonacruiseship #cruisefoodie #foodtok #itsaproblem #halcruises #hollandamericaline


“I am laying here. It is 2 pm. I had a salad for lunch, I had some fresh fruit, but that didn’t fill me up,” she continued. “Right now, all I can think about is eating a burger with some French fries and some mayonnaise.”

“And that, folks, is the absolute hardest part about living on a cruise ship,” she said. “I am surrounded by food all the time.”

She added, "The hardest part is telling myself not to eat.”

cruise ships, eating on cruises, buffets, all you can eat, diets, living on a cruise ship, life on cruise shipsA person refusing a hamburger and friesImage via Canva

Kesteloo’s trouble is a common problem among people on cruise ships. A study by Admiral Travel Insurance found that over 60% of people who go on a week-long cruise anticipate gaining weight. Seventeen percent of people say they gain 2 to 3 pounds on a cruise, while 14% say they gain 4 to 5 pounds.

Other estimates show that the average cruiser will put on 5 to 10 pounds on a weeklong cruise. Imagine living on a cruise ship for half the year, like Kesteloo. She could quickly put on 100 pounds a year if she's not careful.

"I’d be huge if I lived there. I would feel like I’m on a constant vacation, and who diets on vacation?" Theresa Gramelsapcker-Wilson wrote in the comments.

"This is my main reason why I couldn’t do this HHAHAHAHAHAA," Cara Mia added.

"I never thought about those who actually live on a cruise ship. I would be 500 pounds," Lucky Penny2468 said.

Kesteloo’s battle with temptation shows that in every life, a little rain must fall. Nobody ever truly has it perfect. Kesteloo seems to be living the perfect life on board a cruise ship, but she still has to fight temptation every moment of the day or make good use of the ship’s gym facilities. But, obviously, having access to too much food is far better than having too little.

This article originally appeared three years ago.

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Joy

A pianist on stage realized she'd prepared the wrong piece. Then she pulled off a miracle.

The encouraging conductor helped turn her "worst nightmare" scenario into a viral, magnificent feat.

Photo credit: Canva

Imagine showing up on stage to play a piano concerto and finding out you have to play a different one in two minutes.

You know that nightmare where you show up to the final day of class and there's a huge test and you panic as you realize you've missed the whole semester and haven't studied at all? Or how about the one where you have to give a big presentation at work and you show up totally unprepared—no notes, no visuals, no speech—and you have to wing it?

For musicians, the equivalent is showing up on stage to perform without preparation or rehearsal, which is exactly what happened to Portuguese pianist Maria João Pires when she was on stage in front of an audience of 2,000 people in Amsterdam in 1999. As the orchestra started to play, she quickly realized she was in trouble—she had prepared the wrong concerto. As the musicians played the two-and-a-half-minute intro to Mozart's Piano Concerto No.20, Pires sat at the piano in terror. She had not practiced that piece and she didn't even have the sheet music for it.

She had, however, played that concerto before, and in an inspiring feat of musicality, muscle memory, and sheer human will—along with some encouraging words from conductor Riccardo Chailly—Pires got herself centered and locked in, playing the correct concerto in its entirety, miraculously without missing a note.

The full story actually feels even more daunting for those of us who can't sit down and pound out a piano concerto at will. It turned out that Pires wasn't even the original pianist who was slated to play at this concert. She was asked the day before to be a replacement for the pianist who couldn't perform, so she didn't have a lot of time to prepare anyway. However, she'd misheard the number of the Mozart piece over the phone and thought it was a piece she had played only a couple of weeks before. If that had been the case, she would have been fine, even with the short notice. But having the wrong concerto in mind and then not even having the sheet music for the correct one was an extra pile-on from an already high-pressure situation.

The fact that it was a general rehearsal and not the official performance wasn't much consolation, since it was an open rehearsal with a full audience. A rehearsal audience is likely more forgiving than an audience that paid top dollar for a concert, but it's still mortifying to have thousands of people expecting you to perform something you have not prepared for.

Thankfully, Pires had performed the concerto multiple times, most recently about 10 or 11 months prior, so she wasn't clueless. But perfectly recalling something you did nearly a year ago at that level and under that amount of pressure is absolutely incredible.

The conductor who encouraged her later talked about how impressive it was. "The miracle is that she has such a memory that she could, within a minute, switch to a new concerto without making one mistake," said Chailly. However, Pires insists that her memory is not exceptional at all and that she is "very, very average" among musicians.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

But it wasn't the only time this happened to Pires. "I must say, this happened to me another two times in my life. In total, three times," she told ClassicFM's Joanna Gosling. "I hope it never happens again."

Pires already gets nervous about performing, despite being a world famous concert pianist.

"I normally feel very stressed on stage," Pires said. "It's not the stage, it's not the public, it's the responsibility. I feel insecure. And that's why I'm not a stage person somehow. There is one side of me that feels okay—I feel okay with the people. But being on stage and being responsible for something can give me some panic."

As Gosling points out, if you were just listening to the performance, you'd never know there'd been an issue. But the camera on her face tells an entire story during the orchestral opening as we see her grappling with the crisis she'd found herself in. Watching the moment she decided she had no choice but to just go for it, whatever happened, is remarkable. A true testament to the power of repetition and the resilience of the human spirit, and a reminder that musicians truly are magicians in so many ways.

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Friendship

Watch this groomsman go from cringey to fierce as he learns to nail the 'chicken head' dance

He spent the whole bachelor's trip learning the dance in time for the wedding.

Photo credit: Canva

Watch groomsman learning to dance go from cringey to fierce.

Rhythm is something that people are naturally born with. It makes things like learning how to dance or keeping time with music a lot easier. Of course people who don't have a natural ability to catch the rhythm of a beat can still learn to dance through learning to count the steps. Practicing while watching others who do know the specific dance helps move things along a bit faster.

This sort of group effort is likely why some people have very little trouble line dancing but have a hard time with any sort of freestyle type of dance. Phil Sloves, a Broadway actor, was recently in a wedding, but before he watched a friend commit to eternal love, he was determined to learn how to dance. But not just any dance. The actor wanted to learn a dance called "chicken head." Unsurprisingly, the dance involves a lot of rhythmic coordinated movements designed to make the person's head appear to move like a chicken's would move.

Sloves decided that the best time to learn the dance would be while the guys were away on the bachelor trip. The group of men recorded Sloves' progress over several days leading up to the wedding. At first the man's efforts were seemingly off beat and uncoordinated, but they appeared smooth. The next attempt looked like Sloves might have taken a few steps back in progress because he seems even less coordinated than the previous attempt.

gif of mustached man dancing Fathers Day Dancing GIF by Saturday Night LiveGiphy

As the trip progresses, so does the man's dancing skills as the other men demonstrate and give him pointers. By the time the wedding rolls around, the Broadway actor has officially gone from cringe to cool when he kills the dance move at the reception. The amount of effort he put into perfecting this dance likely means he will be breaking out the "chicken head" well into his nursing home days.

Others can't get enough of his failed attempts turned perfection with one person writing, "I'm not going to lie i did not have a lot of faith lmao but he ate thatttt."

Another person appreciates the support the others show, "It’s yall being so supportive and schooling him. He was a good student with good teachers."

man dancing at weddingGetting Married Party GIF by PartifulGiphy

"The way he unlocked his confidence once he knew he had it," someone else says.

"The facial expression in the hotel room when he got it is diabolical. GO PHIL," one person says while adding the fire emoji.

Clearly Sloves was dedicated to learning the dance and had a group of good friends willing to take the time to teach him. It may not seem like a big deal to some, but seeing the confidence grow as the video progressed lets you know that the actor was ready. Thanks to his friends being supportive, he was able to go into the wedding reception with full confidence in his ability to do at least one dance well.

@aneesanael My boi @Phil Sloves was on a mission fr. #trending #chingy @huggybruh ♬ Right Thurr - Remix/Explicit - Chingy

"He said I’m not going to embarrass you my boi," another writes.

"The joy on his homie face when he was finally hitting that shhh," someone else chimes in.

According to one person, this dance will be seen anywhere Sloves is present: "He’s about to be doing this, EVERY. WHERE! Grocery stores & all."

As one commenter says, "GO AWF PHIL." You've earned the right to do that dance for the rest of eternity. Way to go on trying something new and sticking to it until you got it right. We could all use these kind of supportive friends.

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Pets

Cow saved from slaughter thanks to a leg growing from its head

Having a 5th leg turned out to be life saving.

Photo credit: Canva

How a cow's extra leg that grew from his head saved his life

Cows are pretty interesting creatures. Most people are familiar with their best impression of a field of statues who occasionally eat the grass they're standing in. Their majestic eye lashes would make L'Oréal jealous and it's beyond cute when they decide to frolic through the meadow every once in a while. But not all cows get to live out their cow dreams in a field with their besties mooing at the passing cars.

Some of these gentle giants are sent off to slaughter so humans can enjoy steaks, hamburgers, or brisket. Connecting the adorable cows we see lazily grazing in grassy fields to what shows up on someone's dinner plate can be uncomfortable to say the least. But while we know this is simply the way things go, we still root for them to escape the inevitable—and Manny the cow was able to do just that thanks to a unique flaw.

Manny, the beautiful black and brown cow, was born with a leg on his head. The cow has exactly four legs holding him up to stand but a fifth leg sprouts from his forehead like an odd unicorn horn. As strange as it may sound, the extra leg also has a hoof that dangles just out in front of the peculiar cow's nose. It was that fifth leg that saved his life, making him one lucky bovine that just happens to look a little funny.

gif of a cow in a wigHair Wind GIFGiphy

The condition Manny has is called Polymelia which is a rare condition that leads to an extra limb being formed somewhere on the body before birth. Manny's extra limb just so happened to sprout from his head, which is called Cephalomelia. But Manny doesn't know he's any different. He is a cow after all and the dangling appendage doesn't slow him down.

Manny is an Aberdeen Angus cow who was born on a beef farm but due to his glamorous extra gam, the farmer didn't believe the slaughter house would accep thim. Good thing, too, because Manny is much cuter as a plucky cow with the zoomies than he ever could be as an Angus beef burger at Burgatory. Lucky for us and luckier for the furry pasture dweller, he was spared the slaughterhouse and picked up by Uncle Neil’s Home, a sanctuary in Bridgeton, New Jersey.

gif of a cow looking at the cameraCow Beef GIF by Nutrena FeedGiphy

"This condition, people say horrible things about or make judgements about him, and it granted Manny the chance to live. When we took in Manny, we wanted to see if he was healthy, if he was in any pain. Our vet came and did X-rays, and everybody agreed and concluded that Manny was happy, healthy. He didn't know any different. He didn't know he looked any different," the sanctuary told The Dodo.

After arriving at the sanctuary, Manny had to be under quarantine so they tried to make sure he had lots of attention and treats. But the cow wasn't interested in nibbling on hay bales; he wanted to practice his WWE moves. The five-legged cow would body slam himself up against the hay bales, happily bucking and pushing it around the pen. He even played games of catch with one of the workers where the worker and Manny would take turns pushing the hay bale back and forth to each other.

Before long, quarantine was over and it was time to introduce Manny to the cows without extra legs growing from their heads. If you thought the cows rejected him, you'd be wrong. The cows were so excited to see a new friend that the entire herd got the zoomies and began excitedly running around their enclosure. Cow zoomies has to be up there in the top ten of random adorable things animals do, though you probably don't want to be inside the enclosure when these 1,000 plus pound animals get to running around wildly.

Manny is settling into his home nicely and has a best friend that he spends a lot of his time with. They two cows are often near each other eating, playing, or just standing around. Manny is proof that different doesn't mean less, and happy endings can happen no matter who you are or how many limbs you have.

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