Jacksonville News

They were married 57 years, Grace and Harles May but on January 22 the union was broken when she died. “It is bad and it is still bad for me just losing my wife and I’ve got to go through this,” said Harles May.

Three days after his wife’s death the social security office declared he was dead for no explained reason. “I can’t get a credit card, nothing, because I’m dead,” said May.

Over the last six months, Shands Jacksonville has been working to get a new 3D mammogram machine online. The machine, called Hologic’s Selenia Dimensions, is designed to make it easier for physicians to see potential problems that a traditional mammogram would not catch.

The machine not only takes a regular 2D image of a woman’s breast, but also takes 15 different angled images in a 4 second sweep. This type of screening is called “tomosynthesis.” A computer then uses those images to put together a 3D view of the breast. Doctors can isolate one “slice” of the images to discover if or where there may be an abnormality.

Shot through the upper back on a rooftop in Afghanistan and gasping for breath after a bullet ripped through his chest, Marine Sgt. Ben Tomlinson had a fear worse than death.

Heat and shock from the round damaged his spinal cord, paralyzing him from the chest down. This injury was so much worse than one nine months before, when he’d been hit by a mortar blast during his first tour in Afghanistan. Yet through all the pain, Tomlinson was haunted by the idea people back home wouldn’t remember him, that they wouldn’t even know he was hurt.

The statistics he saw on paper and the people he saw at his eight-year-old dental practice led Franklin Rios to worry about the state of Jacksonville’s teeth and gums about 60 percent of U.S. residents have no dental insurance, he said, and many of those who do have minimal coverage. Among his first-time patients are children who had no previous dental care and adults who delayed seeking care so long they had to have teeth pulled.

There had to be a way to provide affordable dental care, particularly preventive treatment, for those people, he told the Times-Union.

This one could be the nastiest, most personal debate yet. Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney are each signaling a willingness to go nuclear on the other in Thursday night’s Republican presidential debate in Jacksonville, a crucial face-off just five days before the primary in Florida. More >

Transitions of Western Illinois commented on how the closing of the Jacksonville Development Center might effect them. Sean Eifert, Director of Sales and Production, said, “We’re willing to do whatever we can to assist the State in transitioning people back into the community.”

Transitions did lose business in their laundry service program because they provide laundry services to Jacksonville Development Center.

Tuesday a crowd of about 2,000 people stood in the afternoon sun, waiting for wounded war veteran Ben Tomlinson to return home.

At about the same time Tomlinson, 24, was leaving Anniston’s airport in a van with his family, bound for his home. As they traveled along Alabama 21 signs and even a billboard read “welcome home Ben” and people stood along the roadside to welcome him. The Anniston Fire Department displayed its trucks in tribute and firefighters turned out in a show of respect.

The Jacksonville area is home to 37,100 professional services sector employees at 4,487 companies for an annual payroll of $2.2 billion, a new analysis of U.S. Census Bureaudata by On Numbers shows.

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By Jacksonville junior 152-pound wrestler Hugo Rubirosa was in surgery Wednesday at Pitt Memorial Hospital after injuring his neck during a match at West Carteret on Tuesday night, according to his coach. More >