By TSC Staff

Connie Culp's facial movements are still a bit stiff, but she can talk and smile, a remarkable achievement given that she survived a shotgun blast in 2004 that left a massive hole in her face.  Today, Connie's speech can be difficult to understand and she looks bloated, but she's an extraordinary member of the Survivors Club.  This week, the 46-year-old Ohio woman stepped forward to reveal that she is America's first face transplant recipient.  In a 22-hour operation, doctors at the Cleveland Clinic replaced 80 percent of her face with bone, blood vessels, muscle, nerves and skin from another woman who had just died.

Read more below about Connie Culp's remarkable story from the Associated Press...

By TSC Staff

His greatest hope is to be able to hold his 13-year-old daughter again.  That's one big reason Jeff Kepner, 57, of August Georgia, underwent nine hours of surgery at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center where surgeons performed the nation's first double hand transplant.  A decade ago, Kepner's hands and feet were ravaged by a blood infection. At the time, his daughter was three years old.

For more of the gripping details on this extraordinary member of The Survivors Club, here's the Associated Press report...

By Ben Sherwood
The Survivors Club

Long before you'll ever come down with swine flu, you'll be exposed to another kind of virus sweeping the world: A global outbreak of online scams and swindles preying on your fears of the so-called aporkalypse. In coming days when you receive emails offering a variety of ways to ward off swine flu, you can be sure of one thing: it's hogwash.

Computer viruses earned their name for good reason: They multiply and spread just like human viruses. And right now, Internet security experts say, swine flu scams are spreading at pandemic levels.

To protect yourself, they say, watch out for four kinds of threats:

By TSC Staff

Sen. Arlen Specter visits the White House today to shake hands with his new best friends President Obama and Vice President Biden.  Specter, a longtime Republican Senator from Pennsylvania, shocked the political world on Tuesday, announcing that he will run for reelection in 2010 as a Democrat.

Specter is a consummate member of The Survivors Club many times over.  For the last three decades, he has battled all kinds of serious health challenges.  In 1979 at age 48, he was told he had ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease but found out several months later it was a misdiagnosis.  He survived brain tumors in 1993 and 1996 and coronary bypass surgery in 1998.  In 2005, he was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma, Stage IVB, the most advanced kind.  After extensive treatment, the disease went into remission and then recurred in 2008.  In 2008, he published his memoir, “Never Give In: Battling Cancer in the Senate."

In terms of his Survivor Type, Specter is a classic "Fighter."  Indeed, he borrowed the title of his memoir from Winston Churchill, who said famously: "Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy." 

By Ben Sherwood
The Survivors Club

In this 76th hour of the swine flu emergency, President Obama urges that we take "the utmost precautions." And the World Health Organization (WHO) has raised the pandemic flu alert level to 5 out of 6, warning that this international outbreak will pose a prolonged threat.

What do "utmost precautions" mean for all of us? What follows is a crib sheet on what we've learned so far about the swine flu, what we still don't know, and a few steps we can each take to reduce the likelihood of getting sick.

Jean Chatzky is the wonderful and talented financial editor of NBC's Today program and regular guest on the Oprah Winfrey Show. She has written a very readable and helpful new book called The Difference: How Anyone Can Prosper Even in the Toughest Times.  As you'll see in the article below from The Daily Journal of Kanakee, Illinois, Jean has a lot of good ideas about surviving the recession.  She also invokes some of the ideas from The Survivors Club.

By Lee Woodruff
TSC Exclusive

Surviving is a natural instinct.  Somehow deep in our beings we are programmed with a will to live.  I have thought at times about people who take their own lives.   To override the instinct to live must be the deepest level of despair and pain for a human being.  I know a little something about surviving.  I am married to a survivor and so I suppose that makes me one too.  When my husband Bob Woodruff was injured by a roadside bomb while covering the Iraq war for ABC News, I watched survival in the ICU in its most basic form.

It's been 10 years since the slaughter at Columbne.  Who can forget the morning of April 20, 1999.  Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold stormed the Colorado high school, murdering 12 classmates and a teacher, injuring two dozen, then killing themselves.

How are the survivors doing today?  Kate Snow of ABC News Good Morning America has a very good update here on Patrick Ireland, the "face in the window" during the massacre.  Ireland was shot twice in the head and once in the foot - and managed to survive.  The Associated Press also offers an excellent update.  "Many survivors," the AP says, "have moved on to careers in education, medicine, ministry, retail. But emotional scares still can trigger anxiety, nightmares and deeply etched recollections of gunfire, blood and bodies."

Here's the rest of the AP article...

By The Survivors Club Staff

How are people surviving the Great Recession?  The Survivors Club collects stories every day about different coping and thriving strategies.  We coe across all sorts of revealing facts too.  For instance, sales of vegetable seeds have skyrocketed as people plant gardens and grown their own food.  Some companies like Burpee even offer "Money Garden" seed packages - for $10 in seeds you can grow around $650 in food.

Judy Keen at USA Today jumps on the "economic survivalist" story with a very interesting article (copied below).  Take a look and visit TSC's Money Support Center for a variety of expert guides to the different financial challenges you're facing.