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Friday, January 31, 2014
66 year old cancer survivor John Ciempa meets New York firefighter Chris Howard - the man who saved his life...
How do you thank the man who saved your life when you meet him for the first time?
With a bear hug in front of a roaring crowd. At a ceremony in Brooklyn, N.Y. on Wednesday, John Ciempa, 66, wrapped New York City firefighter Chris Howard in an emotional embrace as a room packed with firefighters and cancer survivors cheered.
“He’s like another son to me now,” said Ciempa. “I just had to hold on.”
Ciempa, who’d been given six months to live before receiving a bone marrow transplant from Howard, is one of the many cancer patients who’ve benefited from the New York City Fire Department’s remarkable commitment to providing donors. More than 8,000 FDNY personnel have signed up for the New York bone marrow registry, and they account for 10 percent of all state donors.
For Howard, 31, the motive for donating was the same reason he became a firefighter in 2005 -- helping people -- but the fact that the recipient is the father of twins made the donation especially meaningful.
“It definitely means a lot more to me because I don’t have my dad anymore, so it’s that much more special that they get to keep theirs,” said Howard.
Howard is the son of a 9/11 hero. George Howard, a Port Authority police officer, responded to the call for help from the World Trade Center on his day off and died in the collapse of the second tower. George Bush carried his police badge in his pocket throughout his presidency.
Courtesy Chris Howard
George Howard, a member of the Port Authority Police Department emergency services unit, died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York City. He had responded to a distress call from the World Trade Center on his day off. His mother presented President George Bush with his badge, and Bush carried the badge with him throughout his presidency.
In 2010, Ciempa, a New Hampshire contractor, had just retired and moved to Lakeland, Fla., when he was diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome. The condition often leads to leukemia, and doctors told Ciempa he needed a bone marrow transfusion.
Ciempa said that on learning the diagnosis he accepted the possibility that he might die very soon. “I said to myself, this has been a very good life,” he recalled. “I had a lovely time with my family, and if God wants me, here I come.”
Dr. Zenko Hrynkiw Walks 6 Miles Through A Snow Storm To Perform Emergency Brain Surgery...
BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- Dr. Zenko Hrynkiw was at Brookwood Medical Center Tuesday morning when he was needed for emergency brain surgery at Trinity Medical Center.
The problem was the sudden snowstorm had locked down traffic, and the neurosurgeon didn't get farther than a few blocks.
"The cell service was bad so we were fading in and out," said Steve Davis, charge nurse in the neuro intensive care unit at Trinity. "At one point, I heard him say, 'I'm walking.'"
Davis had alerted authorities, and they were looking for him. There were supposed sightings, but no one could find him.
"The police were looking for him," Davis said.
Hours had gone by since the initial contact in the morning.
"He finally called me and said where's the patient? What's the status?" Davis said. "He spoke to the family and went off to surgery."
It was an emergency surgery for a traumatic brain injury. Hrynkiw is Trinity's only brain surgeon, Davis said.
View full sizeDr. Zenko Hrynkiw
"Without the surgery, the patient would have most likely died," Davis said. "But he is doing well."
Davis said he and colleagues at Trinity were estimating the hike to the Montclair Road hospital at about eight miles, although Google Maps puts it at about six. The extreme weather Tuesday has been blamed for five deaths statewide and it stranded untold thousands away from their homes.
"This just speaks volumes to the dedication of the man," Davis said.
"He's on call about 330 days a year," Davis said. "He's dedicated. Right before we started the surgery, I told him, 'You're a good man.'"
Hyrnkiw's response: "I'm just doing my job."
Davis said Hrynkiw takes good care of himself and frequently walks for exercise.
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Jorge Mata returns 78-year-old's missing bank envelope with cash & ID inside and he gets a surprise reward in return...
It's not every day a bank envelope full of money is left on the ground.
Inside, $60 in cash and an elderly woman's Texas ID card.
Jorge Mata couldn't believe she dropped it Tuesday in the parking lot of a San Benito restaurant.
"It reminded me of my mom and I said well if it was my mom I would have wanted somebody to return the envelope to my mom as well.... So I went to look for the lady," he explained.
Jorge checked first with the staff at Vicky's, the restaurant where the envelope was found outside.
Then he drove to the address listed on the ID.
"But it took me into an empty lot," Jorge said.
With nothing but dead ends, he turned to social media.
The Brownsville man posted a picture of Zeferina Ramirez's ID with her personal information blocked out and listed his phone number to see if anyone recognized her.
"I thought I was going to get a hit pretty soon, but I had to post it in different groups and stuff," he explained. "So after a while some other gentleman posted on his page and that's when it took off."
Joe De Leon remembers getting the call about his grandmother.
"Yesterday morning, I was just getting ready for work and one of my aunt's called me and said, 'Joe there's a picture of your grandma on Facebook,'" he said.
Zeferina says she didn't even realize that the envelope was missing until her grandson inquired about it.
"When I found out it was gone, I though what can I do, it was terrible," she explained.
That's because the 78-year-old lives on a fixed income.
It made Jorge's efforts personally rewarding to him to know that he helped someone in need.
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
16 year old Mackenzie Wethington, who survived 3,500-foot sky-diving mishap, is 'miracle child'...
In a recovery being described as a “miracle,” a Texas teen was being transferred out of intensive care on Tuesday after surviving a Saturday skydiving accident that caused her to plummet 3,500 feet and slam into the ground.
Mackenzie Wethington, 16, will remain hospitalized in Oklahoma for a lacerated liver and kidney, a broken tooth and broken bones throughout her body — but at a press conference on Tuesday afternoon, hospital officials said she’s in good condition.
“Amazingly enough, she required no surgery for any of those injuries,” said Dr. Jeffrey Bender, the OU Medical Center trauma surgeon who oversaw Mackenzie’s care on Saturday night. “I have no idea how she survived.”
TODAY
Mackenzie Wethington, 16, was excited for her first skydive, which was a birthday present from her dad.
Mackenzie desperately wanted to go skydiving, so her father Joe Wethington arranged a trip with her as a present for her 16th birthday. Her mother, Holly Wethington, didn’t want the trip to happen, though. At Tuesday’s press conference, Holly said she resisted signing the necessary release forms until she was assured that Mackenzie would be doing a tandem jump, riding on an experienced skydiver’s back.
Dad with cancer, Garth Callaghan, writes his daughter Emma 826 napkin notes to last long after he's gone....
Courtesy Garth Callaghan
Garth Callaghan slips a handwritten "napkin note" into the lunchbox of his 14-year-old daughter, Emma, every school day.
Garth Callaghan started slipping notes into his daughter Emma’s lunchbox when she was in kindergarten. She could barely read at the time, so he kept the napkin notes simple with easy words, sometimes using drawings or symbols.
Today, Callaghan's eighth-grade daughter has come to depend on those brief missives as a daily source of inspiration — and a reminder to never take her dad for granted.
Callaghan, 44, has battled kidney cancer twice over the last several years and currently lives with prostate cancer, a slow-growing disease. Recent blood work shows “no evidence” of kidney cancer these days, but Callaghan said his oncologist has bluntly told him that people with his medical history only have an eight percent change of surviving the next five years.
"This isn’t a story about cancer, because any parent at any time could be hit by a car or have a heart attack," he said, explaining to TODAY.com about why he continues to write "napkin notes" to his daughter. "This is really about leaving a legacy so that she can understand some of my life philosophies and how much I love her.”
Courtesy of Garth Callaghan
One of the notes Garth wrote for his daughter Emma.
Callaghan is now striving to reach a goal of writing 826 napkin notes, one for each school day his daughter has left until her high school graduation. He came up with the goal after reading an article about “because I said I would,” a non-profit group that stresses the importance of keeping promises.
“That’s when I thought, I can write out napkin notes ahead of time, and have them ready if I can’t fulfill my own promise if something bad happens,” he said.
Callaghan has only about 40 notes left to write — the finished ones are sitting in a cabinet in his home office in Glen Allen, just outside the Virginia capital of Richmond. But he hasn’t slipped any of the notes he's banked into Emma's lunchbox yet — he's leaving those for his “just in case” pile. Every morning, he writes a brand-new note for his daughter.
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
10 year old Keegan Keppner who has terminal brain cancer feeds the homeless - "its what makes me feel good"
Keegan Keppner is only 10 years old, but he knows what it's like to struggle. His parents are both unemployed and he has been fighting a rare and terminal form of brain cancer that has required multiple rounds of chemotherapy.
But this week, he is not worried about himself. He wants to make sure the city of Eugene takes care of the homeless, who are being shuffled out of a tent community called Whoville camp.
"It's sad to see them suffer," Keegan, fourth grade math whiz, told ABCNews.com. "There are a lot of nice people down there."
On Jan. 15, the city replaced "no camping" signs with "no trespassing" signs, which, if violated, could result in arrests, according to the local television station, WVAL.
So Keegan and his stepfather, Steven Macgray, decided to cook up a pot of rice and beans and take it down to the 18 or so homeless people. Magray said Keegan had been worried about the city's homeless population since last December.
"It's on his bucket list," said Macgray, 36.
"He would see a lot of homeless guys on the street and give them dollar bills here and there," he told ABCNews.com. "It's been controversial here – the homeless are getting pushed out of the city. One guy named Ken was crying on TV and it really struck Keegan. He looked at me and said, 'We really need to do something.'"
"He wants everyone to know that the homeless are just like you and me," said Macgray. "He understands some are there by choice and others are not there by choice."
Keegan told his parents he wanted to give up Christmas dinner to feed everyone. "I kind of put it off to the side and said, 'Let's hold off on that," said he stepfather. "'We're not in the best position ourselves.'"
Having no arms doesn't stop 10 year old Jahmir Wallace from playing in his school band...
This 10-year-old may have been born without arms, but nothing has stopped him from pursuing his dream of playing the trumpet.
Just four months ago, fifth-grader Jahmir Wallace played his first note on the brass by using his toes, and now the New Jersey student is playing in Green Street Elementary School's band.
Administrators and a local music store collaborated to customize a trumpet stand to hold the instrument in position for Wallace to maneuver the valves with his toes, WFMZ reports.
“To see how he moves his toes like we move our fingers,” Principal Raffaele LaForgia told the news outlet. “It’s amazing.”
The trumpet wasn’t Wallace’s first foray into the music world, either. Wallace also uses his toes to play the guitar. He holds a pick between the toes of one foot and strums the strings with his other foot, the Express-Times reported in 2011.
Monday, January 27, 2014
In the biggest game of his young life Spencer Wilson gets a huge assist from his friend Josh Rominger....
GREENSBORO, N.C. -- Just outside Greensboro, N.C., Bishop McGuinness boys' basketball team is coming off what may be the most remarkable game in school history.
"I still can't believe that even happened," one player says.
"I felt like there was no one who could stop us," says another.
Coach Thompson told each player to pick someone to dedicate the game to.
CBS NEWS
The game was against their archrivals, Mount Airy High School, but to fully appreciate what happened here, you first need to know how Coach Josh Thompson prepared them for this night.
It all started a few days earlier with an old ball and a gold Sharpie. Coach Thompson told each player to pick someone to dedicate the game to -- could be an uncle, a grandpa, one kid picked his parents. They all joined the exercise, but safe to say no one took it more seriously than junior guard Spencer Wilson. He picked his friend Josh Rominger.
Spencer Wilson
CBS NEWS
Spencer and Josh were two great friends with one lousy thing in common: they both had cancer. The difference was Spencer beat his, and Josh didn’t. He died nine months ago.
Before the game, Spencer wrote a letter to Josh's mom, explaining what they were doing and why he would be playing for Josh.
"His joy illuminated the room, and it was always apparent to me that he was special," Spencer wrote. "Just wanted to let you know the impact your son has on my life still to this day. I will never forget him. Play for Josh."
"I read it and cried," says Josh's mom, Denna Rominger. "They just had that bond. Nobody else knew how Josh felt except for Spencer."
Emergency room doctors putting their running shoes on to support the victims of the Boston Marathon...
One year after they worked their crowded emergency room at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, rushing to help the critically injured spectators and runners coming in from the Boston Marathon bombings, two ER doctors plan to honor those patients by crossing the finish line together in the first post-bombings marathon this April.
“There’s a bond,” said Dr. Eric Goralnick, an emergency physician. “For all of us within the Brigham community, the marathon really bonded us together.”
Goralnick and trauma surgeon Dr. Robert Riviello are running their first Boston Marathon to show their pride in Boston and solidarity with the bombing victims they worked on. The docs, both 40, have developed a friendship training together.
“We both have the shared experience of being first responders last year and running this year,” Riviello said.
In the hours after last year’s marathon bombings, Riviello treated patients and operated — removing nails, BBs and other shrapnel. He conducted more operations in the days and weeks that followed.
Goralnick, as director of emergency preparedness at Brigham and Women’s, kept order in the ER, making sure doctors and nurses were doing their jobs properly in the face of a terrible tragedy — the kind of event they train for but hope will never happen.
Goralnick said he felt particularly proud that day.
“I want to do the marathon because I’m proud of our community, I’m proud of our community’s resilience, I’m proud of our hospital,” he said. “This is my way of giving back to our community and our institution.”
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Community rallies around family in need...Good Samaritan steps up in a big way...
When the power went out in Don's house, he found a way to keep his family warm by walking several miles each day and picking up firewood from abandoned buildings in Detroit. When word caught on about Don's plight, the locals turned his small fire into a bright light.
Don, who asked that his last name be withheld, has been trekking miles through the snow each day looking for wood so that he and his four children could stay warm throughout the cold winter days and nights. The 53-year-old father was formerly employed as a butcher and commercial roofer, but recently lost his job and was unable to pay his utility bills.
A local news station took note of Don's efforts and brought his story into the spotlight on Wednesday. By Thursday afternoon, the community and one particularly generous Good Samaritan came together to give Don the money he needed to restore his power.
"An anonymous donor relieved the entire bill," Don tells the Good News blog. "I'm speechless."
Don says he owed around $5,000, yet that wasn't the only donation. FOX 2 Detroit notes there was an "outpouring" of support following the story's airing, and during our own conversation with him, a cyclist on the street approached Don and gave him $20, moving the needy father to tears.
"All I say to myself is that it's going to be alright and things are going to get better. I just can't stop," Don remarks. "Nothing comes to a sleeper, but a dream. If you don't do anything about your situation, you'll never achieve that point when you'll be successful… I've always been an individual who's been optimistic."
As inspiration, Don says his four children provide the encouragement he needs to tackle his obstacles. They range in age from 10 to 20, and while he admits they sometimes complain, he says they are learning about the world through their hardship.
"My thing is to prepare them for life," he comments. "They know there's no control over anything at this time, but they keep their noses to the grind."
Don says his goal is to regain the type of employment he's had in the past. He donates his plasma twice a week for money, but with the power soon restored, he will be able to dedicate his time to looking for work.
With life looking up, Don seems grateful he can dedicate his hours to getting things back in order, and being with his children.
"I guess I am a survivor," he remarks. "And I'm teaching my loved ones how to survive too."
Saturday, January 25, 2014
With her new clothing line...65 year old Grandma Karen Bowersox is making a difference in the lives of people with Down's Syndrome...
"I can't believe I'm making a difference," Karen Bowersox says, "all with a pair of jeans."
The 65-year-old is the founder of Downs Designs, a company that makes clothing for people with Down syndrome.
"When [people with Down syndrome] are forced to wear clothes from everyday stores, the clothing makes them look different. All you see is the Down syndrome," Bowersox told The Huffington Post. "When they wear our pants and they fit and they look and feel more comfortable, they can be confident in themselves. You don't see the Down syndrome anymore."
Bowersox's granddaughter, Maggie, inspired the endeavor back in 2010. Maggie, now 9, has Down syndrome, and it's been a challenge to find clothes that fit her, Bowersox told HuffPost.
Grandma had the solution.
After Maggie's mom first lamented to Bowersox that Maggie would trip over her too-long jeans, Bowersox tried to do some online shopping. She came up short. So the already-experienced businesswoman (she used to run her husband's medical practice in Mentor, Ohio) switched to researching designers in order to start her own company. She found Jillian Jankovsky, and Downs Designs was born.
Today, the company boasts 18 styles of jeans for men, women, teens and children. The specially made, elastic-banded pants don't have buttons or zippers so customers won't have difficulty pulling them up or down. They also offer long- and short-sleeve shirts.
Bowersox is hoping to continue to grow Downs Designs to include more styles and sizes. While her friends look to retire, she plans to keep working. She personally calls customers to review each order and said she stays at work as long as she has to because she doesn't view what she does as a job -- the payoff is too rewarding.
"I don't go to work," she said, "I go to love. Every second is pure joy."
Despite Cancer, Best Friends Zac Gossage, Six and Vincent Butterfield Seven, Strengthen Their Bond...
When Zac Gossage, 6, lost his hair to chemotherapy treatments for leukemia, he cried to his mother that he didn't want to go to school.
Luckily, he has a friend in 7-year-old Vincent Butterfield.
When Vincent's first grade teacher told their class at Central Elementary School in Union, Mo. that Zac had leukemia, Vincent told his dad he wanted to shave his head.
“I didn’t want him to feel like the only one without hair,” said Vincent.
Vincent’s mom, Karen Butterfield, said she was shocked back in November when her son and husband both shaved their heads. But she wasn’t surprised to learn why.
“Vincent is like that. He’s a compassionate little boy. When he sets his mind to it, he does it,” said Butterfield.
Zac's mother, Stacy Tooley, said that her son's worries about his own bald head went away after Vincent shaved his brown hair.
Courtesy of: Karen Butterfield
Vincent Butterfield sold scarves to raise money for his friend with cancer.
“I’m grateful that he has such an amazing friend,” said Tooley. Zac and Vincent have been best friends since kindergarten.
Zac says his BFF shaving his head did make him feel less alone.
“It made me feel awesome because I wouldn’t be the only one with no hair,” said Zac.
Courtesy of: Karen Butterfield
Vincent Butterfield raised money for his friend with cancer by selling scarves.
Not only did Vincent shave his head for Zac, but in December he and his mother made scarves to sell as a fundraiser for his friend’s family. He set a goal to sell 10 scarves on Facebook and raise $100. Within five hours, he sold 20 scarves and was able to donate $200 to Zac’s family.
“I sold them so the doctors can fix him,” said Vincent.
These days, Zac’s dad said his son is doing well. He was diagnosed on June 17, and has more chemo ahead of him, but he is still going to school and only misses days when he has to go to the doctor for a spinal tap.
Vincent’s mother believes watching his best friend go through so much has taught him an important lesson about having a fighting spirit: “Zac has helped Vincent as much as Vincent has helped Zac."
Friday, January 24, 2014
Best man Korey Soderman, who has Cerebral Palsy, toasts his twin brother Kyle in amazing speech...
Korey, who has cerebral palsy, let some of those secrets fly during his best man speech at Kyle's wedding two weeks ago. Because Korey can't speak, Kyle read the speech out loud -- once he choked back happy tears, of course.
The Sodermans, from West Palm Beach, Fla., have never let Korey's condition get in their way. His mom, Wendy, started her own private school, IDEAL & Dream School, when she had difficulty finding a preschool for Korey, according to an A&E documentary about the family.
Korey, meanwhile, founded his own nonprofit, Korey's Krew, which works with teens and young adults with physical disabilities.
"I'm differently abled," he told the Palm Beach Post in 2010, after winning an award for his community service. "I can do what others do, I just do it differently."
You can watch Korey's full speech below. It starts at the 2:50 mark, after a clip of Korey and Kyle's appearance on TLC's "Miami Ink."
"Not Impossible" - Non-profit "printing" new limbs for those that lost theirs in the war...
A Californian non-profit has setup a lab for 3D-printing artificial limbs in Sudan so that the local community can supply the low-cost prosthetics to victims of war.
Not Impossible was founded by Mick Ebeling with the aim of helping create low-cost, open source, DIY solutions to healthcare problems. One of its first and most high profile successes was the creation of the EyeWriter, a crowdfunded eyetracking system developed by artists and engineers, originally to help a paralysed graffiti artist called Temp suffering from ALS (motor neurone disease) to paint again.
Like the EyeWriter, the 3D-printed limb project was inspired by the story of an individual, in this case, a 14-year-old boy called Daniel Omar living in Sudan's wartorn Nuba Mountains. In 2012 Omar told Time magazine how he had been tending to his family's cows in El Dar when government Antonovs flying overhead dropped a bomb. Omar lost both his hands. "Without hands, I can't do anything... If I could have died, I would have," he told Time.
"I read the Time article about him and had to help," explains Ebeling in a video depicting Omar's story and Project Daniel.
As with EyeWriter, Ebeling gathered together a team of leaders' in the field of 3D printing and prosthetics, each of whom share a passion for open source solutions. Key was the help of Richard Van As, who lost four fingers of his right hand in a woodworking accident. "Mainly it's the corporations in America who have the patents and the fingers that would restore it," Van As says, referring to the work being done with myolelectric prostheses and targeted nerve reinnervation. These, he realised, were "excessively expensive" -- so he decided to make his own. Robohand is a mechanical prosthetic 3D printed and custom fit using Orthoplastic.
Printrbot's Brook Drumm came onboard to supply the hardware expertise -- "I love the fact it gives some real purpose to what has for some amounted to a toy; to be involved in a project that has such intense purpose for an individual, how can you not jump in" -- while David Putrino, a physiotherapist with a PhD in the neuroscience of motor control, provided the "pragmatism" -- "[to make sure] it not only has the potential to work but actually is easy for the patients to use and comfortable for them to wear".
With a plan in place and the financial backing of Intel and Precipart, Ebeling finally travelled to meet Omar, now 16, in November 2013. "I came to Sudan with 3D printers, laptops, spools of plastic and the goal to print Daniel an arm."
Tom Catena, the American doctor who performed Omar's operation, helped with the adjustments and fittings at the lab, which has been setup in the local hospital. Within days, Omar had received the first version for his left arm. The functionality is fairly rudimentary, and miles off offering the kind of control a myoelectric limb could. But it has changed the teenager's life, enabling him to feed himself for the first time since the bombing.
Together with Omar, Ebeling recruited some locals whom they trained to continue the work after Not Impossible's departure. A week and a half after Ebeling left Sudan, four new arms had been 3D printed at a cost of $100 (£60) each.
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