Women with breast cancer may soon have another way for doctors to give them a prediction of what the outcome of their disease will be thanks to a new way of studying breast tissue.

Work by researchers on what they are calling the freeways of connective breast tissue found in breast cancer tumors shows that the manner in which the collagen fibers are arranged could help in determining a woman’s diagnosis and treatment of this deadly disease.

Collagen both surrounds most of the body’s organs and helps to provide structure for the body and informs the body’s cells how to act. If you look at the collagen close up, it looks somewhat like a plate full of cooked spaghetti strands.

During the study, the scientists looked at cells from tumors from 200 women who had invasive breast cancer. The researchers discovered signs that the affected collagen started to behave differently as the tumors progressed.

They found out that cancer cells begin to yank on the affected collagen and makes it straighten out. This in turn forms a track on which the bad cells migrate. As the tracks get more developed, the prognosis for the women got worse, according to the researchers.

Now, the tests have to be validated so they can be used in regular practice. The scientists hope to be able to keep on with the study by doing more analysis in different groups of affected women so they can use the results to help future breast cancer sufferers.

To most people being neighborly might mean something like lending someone your tools, or maybe even a few dollars, but a house?

When Michael Wright’s leg was amputated when he got cancer, his neighbors, Micki and Billy Shreve, lent him their home.

Wright, a 40-year-old software consultant from Kansas City, had broken his right leg merely by walking across the street. He knew that wasn’t normal, so he went to his doctor to find out what was going on besides the broken bone.

Medical tests showed that the bone had been weakened by osteosarcoma, a bone cancer, causing it to break. He had multiple tumors in his leg and it would have to come off.

He was devastated by the news. First, he was losing his leg and fighting cancer, and second, he lived in a two story home and wasn’t sure how he would get around with just one leg. He and his family would have to move. They decided that they would have to build a special house that could accommodate Wright’s handicap, but it would take several weeks to complete and they didn’t know for sure how they would cope until it was built.

However, his neighbors had a plan. They lived in a one story home only a few doors down from Wright. They volunteered to trade houses with him until his new custom home was built. They also helped him list the house for sale, and it sold within a few weeks.

When the new house was done, tis neighbors helped the family move in. True neighbors helping each other out is rare, but Wright’s neighbors fit the bill in spades.

You may not think that lacrosse is something the average 18-year-old girl would be interested in, but Maygen isn’t average.

Maygen became in in 2009 with Swine Flu and strep throat, but it ended up turning into lumps being discovered on her neck and it wasn’t just strep throat after all. It was something far more serious — hodgkins lymphoma, a cancer of the lymph nodes.

Maygen had to undergo eight rounds of the chemotherapy treatments and the removal of the lumps. Shortly afterwards, her family was contacted by the Kids Wish Network. Her wish was to have season tickets to the Colorado Mammoth lacrosse games.

During the next year, she only missed one game and says that going to the games was inspirational and it helped her get through the chemo because she had something good to look forward to. Her seats are 4th row and right behind the glass and she is thrilled with the gift.

Besides going to all the games, Maygen is heading there for the “Black out Cancer Night” where the facility and team is planning something special in her honor.

Kids Wish Network is a nationally recognized non-profit organization dedicated to giving hope, making good memories, and making a better quality of life for children with life-threatening illnesses. Kids Wish Network has a “Guardian Angel Fund”, which uses 100% of its contributions to support the wish granting program.
If you know a child between the ages of 3 and 18 who needs wish granting services, or if you would like to contribute to a child’s wish, please call 727-937-3600 or toll free 888-918-9004.
For more information on Kids Wish Network, visit their website at www.kidswishnetwork.org.

Sometimes drivers are not able to react quickly enough when something all of a sudden appears in their path and they then crash into the other object or car. However, a brand new technology called Intellidrive  is being developed that can alert drivers to potential hazards in their path.

Studies show that driving is sometimes hazardous and that in 2009 more than 33,000 people died as a result of car accidents. This new technology could noticeably change this horrible statistic. In the next six or seven years, new cars may come equipped with a this new system called Intellidrive that can help prevent crashes.

 Intellidrive was created by a group of major car manufacturers with support from the federal government. It uses a car’s GPS and wireless signals to talk to each other. A car can track its own speed and direction, and can determine the speed and direction of nearby cars as well through a GPS systesm. Intellidrive uses this same radar system to decide when you’re in danger of crashing into a car, pedestrian, cyclist, or whatever else is in your path and it gives out a verbal warning when you’re about to hit it.

The new technology also lets cars talk to the road infrastructure to alert drivers to problems with the highways or roads. For example, it might also warn you when you’re coming to on an area with unexpected heavy traffic or other issues.

Some GPS can already do traffic reports, but this would add to that technology.

When people are involved in a serious accident, often there are serious bleeding involved that can cause death before the victim can be helped. However, if an injured patient with serious bleeding were to get a cheap, injection of a widely available drug to help make their blood clot, many of these people could be saved.

Dr. Ian Roberts, Professor of Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), UK, showed that results from a trial of the medication show that if bleeding patients get an early administration of tranexamic acid (TXA) that it stops severe bleeding and saves lives, with no evidence of bad effects from unwanted clotting.

TXA, which is an off-patent generic medicine that cost about $4.50 per gram, should be listed as “essential” by the World Health Organization (WHO).  The trial, called CRASH-2, was a large, random trial involving over 20,000 adult patients in 274 hospitals across 40 countries, and was funded by England’s National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Technology Assessment program.  It is the premiere trial of TXA for injured patients, although smaller trials had shown that it reduces bleeding in patients having major surgery.

The drug helps by reducing clot breakdown. Though would be good in patients with severe bleeding, doctors were concerned that TXA might raise the risk of complications like heart attacks, strokes and clots in the lungs. The results of this large trial show TXA reduces death from bleeding and doesn’t have any increase in those issues.

For people ages five to 45 years, injury is second only to HIV/AIDS as a cause of death. It’s thought that around 600,000 injured patients bleed to death worldwide due to traffic accidents, shootings, stabbings, land mines, etc.

The study predicts that if an injured person gets TXA soon after injury it could stop up to 100,000 deaths per year across the world.

When the Buthelezi brothers lost both their parents to the HIV/AIDs virus several years ago, they didn’t seem to have a future to look forward too. They were frightened and didn’t know what would become of them, and were moved to a home for families and children affected by HIV/AIDS.

Once there, they met Amy Stokes and the people of Infinite Family, a nonprofit group that connects South African children with caring adults around the world via computer. Stokes says that these children badly need adult attention and guidance and need to connect with someone special in their lives.

Using a custom, Web-based technology, Infinite Family has been able to connect about 300 South African teens, called Net Buddies, with volunteer mentors all over the world. For at least a half hour each week, they pair off online, face to face on what is called Ezomndeni-net.

In Zulu, Ezomndeni means ‘everything related to family. The web-based program lets the mentors and kids login from different locations and then they can interact and share between them. It helps them to form a relationship, according to Stokes.

In addition to its regular Web-cam capabilities, the Ezomndeni-net has a interactive forums, a live chat function, a virtual “wipeboard” where pairs can play games, and areas to do homework and surf the Web together. There is also an alert SOS button that Net Buddies can use if they are in dire need of guidance between scheduled chats.

Since 2006, Infinite Family has made and operated five computer labs at partner organization sites across South Africa. Besides providing mentors for children, Ezomndeni-net also develops their language and technology skills, and gets them ready to compete in the global marketplace.

Mentors get a background checks, and training in areas such as mourning, HIV and developing relationships through e-mail. They sign up for a minimum of one year, but most continue beyond the requirement.

Thanks to a compassionate Southwest Airlines pilot, a loving grandfather was able to say goodbye to his dying grandson.

Mark Dikinson, who lives in Arizona, was visiting Los Angeles when he got some horrible news that his 2-year-old grandson, Caden Rogers, had been seriously injured by his mother’s abusive boyfriend. The boy was on life support, and he would only have a few hours to get there before it was taken away. Dikinson needed to hurry if he was to get there in time to say goodbye to his grandson.

 Dikinson wasn’t sure if could make it in time. He faced an extremely long security line at the airport, and didn’t get to the flight gate until the flight was supposed to have already taken off nearly 15 minutes prior to his arrival. Sure that he had missed the flight, and the chance to see his grandson for one last time, he sadly approached the gate. However, his wife had called the airport and told the pilot and crew about the horrible circumstances and the pilot had decided to hold the plane for him.

Even though the pilot had no authorization from anyone else, and could possibly have been reprimanded or lost his job, he knew it was very important that Dikinson get to Los Angles to see his dying grandson.

Dikinson was extremely grateful. Plus, the pilot, who didn’t want to be named, only got praise for his actions to hold the plane.

Southwest officials said that of course they can’t hold the plane for every late person, but in this case, the circumstances warranted it and the pilot absolutely made the right decision.

Howard Snitzer has a lot of people to thank for his survival on Jan. 5 when he had a heart attack while walking on a sidewalk in Goodhue, Minn. When he fell t the ground the Lodermeier brothers at Roy and Al’s Auto Service saw and ran t where he lay.

Snitzer had no pulse, and wasn’t breathing. For the next 96 the Lodermeier brothers, along with bystander Candace Koehn, and more than two dozen other first responders took turns performing CPR on him. This team effort is likely what saved Snitzer’s life, in what appears to be one of the longest, triumphant out-of-hospital resuscitations ever.

The emergency helicopter from the Mayo Clinic flew from Rochester, Minn., about 35 miles away. If not for the team effort CPR that the would-be rescuers did for Snitzer, he would have lost oxygen to his brain and died. Studies show that only about five percent of people who have a heart attack on the street survive.

Their teamwork kept blood flowing to Snitzer’s brain, making each rescuer a surrogate for his failing heart. “The brain survives, at best, five or six minutes when the blood flow stops,” Wilkoff says. Nationwide, only about 5% of people who suffer cardiac arrest on the street are resuscitated and leave the hospital, he says.

In this case, Snitzer, 54, did survive after spending 10 days in the hospital.

His story shows the importance of learning CPR, according to the paramedics who responded to his heart attack. They said the number one reason he lived is because people there started good, hard and fast CPR.

Ralph Morris, Aliquippa, Penn., has been volunteering every Friday morning for more than 30 years with Meals on Wheels to bring food to elderly needy folks in his area. However, he’s quite a bit younger than a lot of the people he brings the meals to because Morris is 90 years old.

Morris laughs when he recalls one of his visits when he told a 70 year old woman that she was still a kid. That was when he was in his late 80s and he’s 10 years older now. He has lived in Aliquippa his entire life and was the manager of the local power and utilities at steel mill there until he retired in 1982.

He and his wife, Dorothy lived there in a home he built in 1943 until her death in 2008 from Alzheimer’s disease. This year would have marked more than 70 years of wedded bliss for the couple had she lived.

Morris now lives alone, but doesn’t feel alone since he gets to see his neighbors every Friday when he delivers their meals. They all appreciate the meals he brings, as they can’t prepare their own. They are also impressed that Morris can still do the job and serve his community at his own advanced age.

Morris says he has no intention on stopping his deliveries any time soon. He plans to be volunteering to help bring Meals on Wheels food to his friends and neighbors for as long as he can.

Carol Adams of Hawthorne, Calif. is devoted to teaching children that there are peaceful ways to resolve difficulties without resulting in violence. She calls it the Peacekeeper’s Ark.

ARK stands for ‘Acknowledge and Reward Kids. It is a system designed by Adams that rewards kids for good behavior. Carol has been involved in peace efforts ever since the 1992 riots in Los Angeles. It’s a personal mission for her as well, due to the fact that her daughter lives in that very area.

Adams goes to local elementary schools where she tried her best to teach kids not to accept violence as a normal way to handle conflict. Some of these children had started believing that it was all there was open to them, and she has vowed to change that attitude.

As of now, more than 400 kids are enrolled in ARK, which teaches them the skills they need to solve things by talking instead of violence. The kids take part in a six part program that shows them alternative ways of resolving problems.

Then, the kids are also able to pass those skills on to others.
To reward the kids for good behavior, they get to do things like go on shopping trips, go backstage at local Laker’s basketball games or they can choose to splurge on new clothing at a major children’s clothing store in the area.

Peace is being given a chance thanks to Adams and the Peacemaker’s Ark.