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A year ago, Laura Hall felt tired all the time, was losing weight and had a bad cough. The 41-year-old Spanish teacher from Shelburne, Vermont, went to doctors for three months before they finally nailed the diagnosis: active tuberculosis. “I was scared. I was horrified. Oh my gosh, how did I get this? Where did I get it?” Hall said in a video about TB survivors’ experiences. “I didn’t think that I could get TB, ever.” (Mercer, 5/12)

Felicita Soto remembers finding blood in the oddest places. On her pillow in the morning. In her sandwich after she took a bite. Once, a coworker whispered with disgust: “Felicita, you’re bleeding.” Soto felt mortified. She’d recently kicked a smoking habit she’d had since age 12. But it was too late for her teeth. Eventually, she found herself in a dentist’s chair, getting 23 extracted at once. ... Soto is one of a handful of former smokers sharing stories as part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s national Tips from Former Smokers campaign. Personal stories like Soto’s — emotional and sometimes jarring — run on television, radio, online and in print around the country. And they are intended to resonate with the nation’s major ethnic groups. (Wiener, 5/12)

Scientists are peeking inside living brains to watch for the first time as a toxic duo of plaques and tangles interact to drive Alzheimer’s disease — and those tangles may predict early symptoms, a finding with implications for better treatments. (Neergaard, 5/11)

Besides packing a toothbrush and some magazines, certain patients who check into a hospital need to bring something else with them: their sleep-apnea machine. In a new study led by a Thomas Jefferson University Hospital physician, patients at high risk for sleep apnea were substantially more likely to require a "rapid response" for an emergency or other sudden decline. (Avril, 5/11)

When parents tell Dr. Gregory Fox their boisterous child was stuck in a classroom all day, the Rhode Island pediatrician takes out his notepad and writes a doctor's order to send to school. "Please do not take away this child's recess," Fox writes. So many kids are being deprived of unstructured play time during the school day that a note from the doctor is one way parents around the country have gone over the heads of principals and teachers who can't find time in the school day for recess. (5/11)