By TOM KISKEN, Scripps Howard News Service

Eleven years ago, Karen Erickson was told she had two years to live.

Erickson, 45, with lungs that work at less than 20 percent, was diagnosed with a disease so little known that the physician's assistant who delivered the news didn't get it quite right.

Patients are getting charged as much as $3,000 for screenings they thought would be free under a federal health care reform mandate that promises free preventive care.

The woman leaning against a pillar didn't know more Americans -- twice as many -- take antidepressants than go to movie theaters weekly. She hadn't heard that a federal study found the meds are used by 23 percent of middle-aged women -- almost one in four.

But she knows Prozac.

"Good stuff," she said, remembering how it helped her deal with a splintering marriage.

Tragic déjà vu.

It's how John Enriquez, who says he was sexually abused by a Catholic priest as an altar boy, sees the wave of allegations of molestations and cover-ups involving Penn State University.

After giving birth to three boys, Laura Diamond wanted balance. She wasn't going to take chances.

"I really, really wanted a girl," she said. "I was going to do whatever I could to make it happen."

Drug companies Johnson and Johnson and Amgen battled each other so bitterly in a market share war that they pushed drugs and dosages jeopardizing patients' lives, said the author of a book about Johnson and Johnson whistle-blowers.

The popcorn served in the theater was 7 days old, rubber-band-chewy and about as inviting as four hours of someone else's home movies.

"Actively unpleasant," said David Neal, the psychologist who used the stale bird feed in a study on human behavior that is turning heads and stomachs.

VENTURA, Calif. - At Tena Alonzo's nursing home, residents sleep as late as they want. Care schedules revolve around their convenience, not the staff's. If they're used to a small cocktail at night, they have one.

And they eat what they want -- chocolate or dessert before dinner -- regardless of their health.

VENTURA COUNTY, Calif. - The business analyst, the Spanish professor, the homemaker and the others hang out at graves shaded by coastal pines or hotels haunted by rumors. They use gadgets to track strange electromagnetic fields and record a disembodied voice in the empty room that says "hello."

Call them ghost hunters. They prefer their official title: the "Paranormal Housewives."

Diane Maestri figured it out first.

Her husband, Don, is a 5-foot-9, 190-pound handyman from Camarillo, Calif., who looks likes what he is -- a retired middle-school gym teacher with big hands and fingers too beefy for rings, too thick to even think about the piano.