Rina Miller

Many Michiganders are among the more than two million Americans diagnosed with skin cancer each year. It's the most common malignancy.

The majority will discover they have basal cell or squamous cell carcinomas, but about 50,000 people will learn they have melanoma, which is particularly difficult to treat if not caught early.

A free phone application called UMSkinCheck helps people examine their skin and keep track of changes.

This “week in review” Michigan Radio’s Weekend Edition host Rina Miller and political analyst Jack Lessenberry discuss: Governor Rick Snyder’s State of the State speech, the possibility of no fault absentee voting, a positive report on Michigan’s housing market, and a possible tax amnesty program for Detroit.

People who take cancer treatments in pill form at home may not be using the medicines properly. 

A study by Michigan State University found that more than 40 percent of people took too many pills or missed doses of their oral cancer medications.

"Unfortunately, that can mean that it's not combating the cancer, or the medication is not able to work because the patient hasn't received enough of the medication," says Sandra Spoelstra, an assistant professor at MSU's College of Nursing.

In this week's edition of "That’s What They Say" English professor Anne Curzan and Weekend Edition host Rina Miller discuss words with split personalities in written form: words like 'all right' and 'every day.'

This week and review Michigan Radio’s Weekend Edition host Rina Miller and political analyst Jack Lessenberry discuss proposed bills to end lame duck sessions and make it easier to file freedom of information act requests. They also chat about the controversial right to work Pure Michigan ad that appeared in the Wall Street Journal.

A federal complaint has been filed against two Lenawee  County hospitals. 

Nurses at Bixby Hospital in Adrian and Herrick Hospital in Tecumseh say chronic understaffing is putting patients at risk. The nurses are asking the National Labor Relations Board to intervene. Dawn Kettinger  is with the Michigan Nurses Association.

She says nurses often have to care for six or seven patients at a time, and are mandated to work 16-hour shifts.

"All the research tells us all of these practices translate to medical errors, more infections, even patient death," Kettinger says. "If you or a loved one needs to use the services of these hospitals, we'll do the absolute best we can, but it's getting tougher and tougher to give you safe care."

Kettinger says staffing levels vary by units, but says on a medical surgical floor, one nurse should not have to take care of more than four patients.

This time on “That’s What They Say” Michigan Radio’s Rina Miller and English Professor Anne Curzan discuss adding an ‘s’ to words like ‘anyway’ and ‘toward.’

Miller says one of her pet peeves is adding an ‘s’ to words like backward, forward and toward, but Curzan says it is okay to do so.

“The toward/towards is mostly a British/American distinction. Brits will tend to use the ‘s’, ‘towards,’ Americans no ‘s’, ‘toward.’” Curzan says. “But at this point we are seeing the British ‘towards’ in a lot of American writing.”

Yet a lot of people cringe at the word “anyways.” Is that a word? Curzan says yes.

“The word actually goes pretty far back in English, used slightly differently. Used in a way that someone might say, ‘if he is in anyways involved,’ it’s more recently that people use anyways in a conjuctive role, to mean ‘in any case,’ and that’s the one that no one likes,” Curzan says.

A new law in Michigan will make it easier for sewage treatment plants to sell or give away their leftovers.

All the water we use in our houses and businesses goes down a municipal drain and ends up in a wastewater treatment plant. It's processed and decontaminated and eventually becomes something called a biosolid.

Some of it then goes into landfills, and some is used as agricultural fertilizer.

A law signed last week will allow Michigan's sewage treatment plant to sell or give away what's called "exceptional quality," or EQ biosolids.

For this week’s edition of “That’s What They Say,” University of Michigan Professor Anne Curzan spoke with us from Boston, where she was attending the American Dialect Society’s annual meeting, whose 200 members voted on their “Word of the Year.”

Rina Miller:         So the winner is?

Parkinson's disease could be added to the list of illnesses that would qualify for medical marijuana use in Michigan.

A public hearing in Lansing later this month will address the issue.

Parkinson's disease  is a disorder of the brain that leads to tremors and stiffness. It can cause difficulty with walking, movement, and coordination. 

Dr. Kelvin Chou is an associate professor of neurology at the University of Michigan. He says about one in every 1,000 Americans will be diagnosed with Parkinson's.

This week in review Weekend Edition host Rina Miller and political analyst Jack Lessenberry discuss how the "fiscal cliff" deal will affect Michiganders, some changes going on at Chrysler and what will happen with former Governor Jennifer Granholm's TV show now that Current TV is being sold to Al Jazeera.

Drivers can get high on lots of things , not just drugs and alcohol. So a new Michigan law has closed a loophole that allowed some drivers to escape prosecution for impaired driving.

More Michigan hospitals are using a new device to treat a heart condition without  invasive surgery. 

About 1.5 million Americans suffer from aortic stenosis. That's when a valve in the main artery carrying blood out of the heart doesn't fully open.

A new report finds Michigan is prepared for some public health emergencies. But it also says there's more work to be done.

A new report finds Michigan is prepared for some public health emergencies.

But there's more work to be done.

The report called Ready or Not looked at ten key indicators, including whether the state maintained or increased funding for public health programs in the past year.

Michigan did not.

“The federal, state and local budget cuts to public health preparedness, documented in the report, are very alarming and they are putting all of our past success at risk,” says Paul Kuehnert with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.