Disease

Jeff Tully Burbank High softball player Cassidi McCarty is battling Hodgkin's disease. More about the cancer from the National Cancer Center: WHAT IS IT?: Sometimes called Hodgkin's lymphoma, it is a cancer that starts in the lymphatic tissue. Lymphatic tissue includes the lymph nodes and related organs that are part of the body's immune and blood-forming systems. RISK FACTORS: Scientists have found a few risk factors that make a person more likely to develop Hodgkin's disease.

Jenna Bordelon MISSION HILLS -- A disease that can lead to amputation of feet if not treated will be the focus of a panel discussion Thursday. The latest treatments for diabetic neuropathy, a nerve disorder caused by diabetes, will be the topic of a forum from 10 a.m. to noon at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center, 11600 Indian Hills Road, Mission Hills. A neurologist and a podiatrist will discuss medical options for the more than 50 percent of diabetes sufferers who also have neuropathy.

Beginning today, resident John Dlugolecki will be part of a group of about 120 that will spend eight days bicycling from San Francisco to Los Angeles, a 520-mile trek. Participants in the 2002 Amgen California Coast Classic Bicycle Tour will be helping raise funds for the California Arthritis Foundation. Some more about the disease from the Arthritis Foundation: THE AFFECTED: Nearly 43 million Americans have arthritis, including 300,000 children.

Ryan Carter Tammy Gonzalez and her friends want to help spare others the suffering that comes with not knowing enough about a rare but potentially devastating disease. For the second year in a row, Los Angeles resident Gonzalez and Shanna Christoffersen, of Burbank, have organized the Annual Los Angeles Histio Walk to be held from noon to 5 p.m. Sunday at Robert E. Gross Park, 2800 W. Empire Ave. The goal of the event is to raise money and awareness of histiocytosis, a rare and potentially devastating childhood blood disease caused by an excess of white blood cells.

Paul Clinton MEDIA DISTRICT WEST -- Instead of delivering a release print to a studio office or rushing between production meetings, the Hollywood workers at Warner Bros. were moving their feet for a different cause. During Sunday's MS Walk 2000, members of the studio and public raised money to fight multiple sclerosis. Nearly 5,000 walkers raised more than $800,000 to help fight the crippling disease, said event spokeswoman Beverly Magid. "It was admirable," Magid said.

Raising awareness was just as important as the $20,000 raised at the inaugural Walk-n-Roll put on by the Southern California Chapter of Families of Spinal Muscular Atrophy on Sunday at Johnny Carson Park. More than 200 people participated in the event by finding sponsors and bringing friends and family to complete the 5-kilometer trek around the park. "In everyone's opinion it was a huge success," said Rosie Roope, the president of the Southern California chapter of the group.

Molly Shore Dan Linegar has been cancer-free for five years. He is one of the fortunate people who survived esophageal cancer, a particularly vicious form of the disease that typically strikes middle-age white men, and offers no better than a 20% survival rate. Linegar, 57, who recently lost a friend to the same type of cancer and thinks he is about to lose another one, will join community members at a rally Wednesday night to plan Burbank's first Relay for Life, a 24-hour festival to raise cancer awareness.

May 15 was Advocacy Day in Sacramento. I got a chance to go and join the mission. The California Council of the Alzheimer's Assn. put this together as part of the Public Policy Program. Alzheimer's disease is very costly to family members, businesses, and to our government. There is progress being made, but there is still much work to be done. After all, the baby boomers are aging. The chance of getting Alzheimer's increases as one gets older. At age 80, the chance of getting it is about 20%. At age 85, it is 50%. For those of you who never took care of a loved one with the disease, it is horrible.

Erin Park TOLUCA LAKE -- Golfers on the practice green set the backdrop as the star of the Chairman's Cup celebrity golf tournament sat in the shade of a tree and dangled her legs from her chair, her sneakers barely skimming the manicured grass. Nine-year-old Amy Drummond fielded questions from reporters and smiled shyly for the cameras at the daylong event held Monday at Lakeside Country Club. Organized by Childrens Hospital in Los Angeles, the second annual event raised more than $100,000 for pediatric eye cancer research, hospital officials said.

Robert Blechl HILLSIDE DISTRICT -- Each time their running shoes strike the asphalt along the withering 26.2-mile course, Jim and Rosie Roope will have only one thought in their minds: the health of their 2 1/2-year-old son, Tyler. Tyler was diagnosed in November 1998 with Spinal Muscular Atrophy, a group of inherited, and sometimes fatal, diseases that destroy the nerves that control walking, crawling, head movements and other voluntary actions.

A Massachusetts woman living with multiple sclerosis who has scaled six of the Seven Summits — and is attempting Mt. Everest in 2010 — will speak to patients in Burbank next week about her experiences living with and combating the disease through her climbs. Wendy Booker, who was diagnosed in 1998, will be joined at Acapulco restaurant Monday by Dr. Regina Berkovich, an assistant professor of clinical neurology at the MS Comprehensive Care Center at USC’s Keck School of Medicine.

Can you remember a time when you were going through a major crisis? If you take a moment to bring that season to mind, or perhaps you are in one now, do you remember wondering how you were going to get out of it? Would it ever end? Would you be the same? Was God listening? I remember when I first found out my daughter had a rare, potentially life-threatening disease. I spent literally years carrying that burden around. It was my burden alone as I went to hematologists, ophthalmologists, geneticists, lung doctors and kidney doctors.

BURBANK — As their attorneys shuffle between four similar lawsuits that allege the Walt Disney Co. has for decades contaminated groundwater with cancer-causing chromium 6 and other toxic chemicals, stories of ill health from the plaintiffs are beginning to emerge. In the latest lawsuit, filed last week in Los Angeles Superior Court by the Sacramento-based firm Kershaw Cutter & Ratinoff LLP on behalf of 16 people with strong ties to the Rancho District, the plaintiffs claim Disney dumped wastewater contaminated with hexavalent chromium from its on-site cooling systems down the centerline of Parkside Avenue, toward Parish Place and across Riverside Drive into the so-called Polliwog, an 11-acre parcel near the studio’s Imagineering facilities.

DOWNTOWN — A government study showing that a partial smoking ban had a dramatic effect on reducing heart attacks in a Colorado town may have implications for Glendale and Burbank, where similar ordinances have been passed in recent years, experts said. The study, published Dec. 30 by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, was the first conducted over a period as long as three years and showed a sustained decrease in hospital admissions for heart attacks, said Christine Nevin-Woods, the lead researcher on the study and the director of the Pueblo City-County Health Department in Pueblo, Colo.

Roughly 200 people from throughout the Southland walked the streets of Burbank on Sunday in support of the American Lung Assn.’s inaugural statewide fundraiser. Clean-air advocates took to the sidewalks in 11 California cities to raise thousands of dollars for ongoing efforts to reduce lung disease in a state where about 24,000 residents die prematurely due to the effects of air pollution, according to the association. Most of that particulate matter floating in the air is the result of Californians’ dependence on automobiles, but health advocates have also taken aim at second- hand smoke, scoring victories in a number of cities that have adopted strict anti- smoking regulations.

BURBANK — Vector control officials are asking the public to alter their water use as West Nile virus contraction rates continue to climb throughout the state despite an oppressive drought this year. West Nile virus rates are up since last year amid a record-setting dry spell mostly because homeowners are over-watering their lawns and neglecting small pools of water, officials said. The virus has not turned up in Glendale, but the city is now at the midpoint between two locations that have produced West Nile-positive mosquitoes in the county, said Truc Dever, spokeswoman for the Greater Los Angeles County Vector Control District.

While cover band Crawling from the Wreckage growled out high-energy renditions of top-40 songs, children stayed cool by squirting each other with water guns as cancer survivors and supporters made laps around Robert E. Gross Park Saturday. The field was enclosed by colorful tents and vendor booths for Burbank's fourth annual American Cancer Society Relay for Life, a 24-hour walk-a-thon aimed at raising money for cancer research and survivor support. Cancer survivors took a lap alone or with their caretakers at the beginning of the day, and later on that evening participants lighted candles in remembrance of those lost to the illness.

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight" (Proverbs 3:5-6). This popular proverb calls people to trust in God amid each and every one of life's circumstances. As I write this column, I am in New York at a conference for a rare disease called Hermansky Pudlak syndrome (a platelet dysfunction that can effect people with albinism). While I look around me at all the children and adults effected by this syndrome, my mind has countless thoughts and my heart experiences profuse emotions.

When Richard Forster first came to the adult center at the First Christian Church on Sixth Street, the 75-year-old painter had given up on his art. Alzheimer's disease had rendered Forster's once-precise brush strokes shaky and unfocused. A few months at the center, however, and Forster was back at work, producing a series of abstract paintings and drawings that would inspire the center's annual art shows, the second of which was held on Monday. "This is our main open house of the year," said Lauren Fox, the center's program director.