About two-thirds of pediatric cancer survivors experience at least one late health effect of treatment, and for more than one-quarter of survivors it is severe or life-threatening.

From the Los Angeles Times, an extended feature about young adults who have survived childhood cancer only to find that their health is now threatened by the very treatments that once saved their lives

Cancer therapies injure, starve or kill healthy cells along with malignant ones, and as a consequence, survivors have a heightened risk of health problems, including early heart attacks, second cancers, stunted growth and infertility.

… The developing brain — and psyche — can be affected as well. Radiation to the brain can result in a drop of 20 or more IQ points, causing learning disabilities for some. And while some cured youngsters enter adulthood feeling a renewed sense of purpose, others must deal with lingering bitterness and trauma from their treatment, which can emerge as depression or anxiety when they become adults.

… Only recently is the medical community understanding the importance of lifelong health monitoring to help them avoid, or detect early, the host of medical risks that could lie in their path.

Related links:

• Programs for childhood cancer survivors
• Survivors tell of their experiences with childhood cancer

Writing in the New York Times Magazine, David Bergner profiles an Iraq veteran who cannot speak and is barely able to move, the result of a traumatic brain injury that occurred when a mine exploded under his Humvee. Shurvon Phillip (left, with his mother, Gail) is one of an estimated 900 returning veterans with TBI, one of the war’s signature wounds.

Supported by his mother, as well as a pioneering neurologist and a Cleveland lawyer who took up the fight for his care, Phillip has made great progress in the three years since doctors thought him incapable of purposeful movement. Now, his mother says, this man who had been considered “the brains of the family” wants to earn a master’s degree.

The article’s conclusion:

… [When I heard that Phillip could correctly answer multiple-choice comprehension questions] I thought that there seemed little reason that Shurvon couldn’t someday earn a master’s degree. But at other moments the reasons appeared too immense ever to be overcome; the notion of college, let alone graduate school, seemed merely a soothing fantasy. And sometimes impossible to overcome, too, was the idea that Shurvon’s life might not be worth living; that I, in his place, would rather stop breathing, cease thinking, that I would prefer to die.

(more…)

From the New York Times:

Harvard neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor has become a media phenom thanks to her memoir, “My Stroke of Insight,” in which she documents the stroke that gave her a sense of blissful enlightenment. After surgery and eight years of recovery, Taylor emerged with a drive to teach others about the inner workings of the brain.

Today, she says, she is a new person, one who “can step into the consciousness of my right hemisphere” on command and be “one with all that is.”

To her it is not faith, but science. She brings a deep personal understanding to something she long studied: that the two lobes of the brain have very different personalities. Generally, the left brain gives us context, ego, time, logic. The right brain gives us creativity and empathy. For most English-speakers, the left brain, which processes language, is dominant. Dr. Taylor’s insight is that it doesn’t have to be so.

Her message, that people can choose to live a more peaceful, spiritual life by sidestepping their left brain, has resonated widely.

Taylor’s talk at the Technology, Entertainment, Design conference (TED) has drawn more than two million views on the internet, and she was also selected as one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world for 2008. See earlier post here.

From the Houston Chronicle:

Nearly half of the youths locked up in the Harris County Juvenile Detention Center [have] mental health problems — far more than the estimated 20 percent with mental disorders in the general youth population — figures released Thursday show. [Harris County includes Houston.]

These youngsters, mostly teenagers, have been diagnosed with maladies including bipolar and attention deficit disorders, according to data compiled by a group of organizations studying the issue. Nearly 20 percent have severe emotional problems, the data show, and a quarter had never been diagnosed previously.

“For the first time ever we’ve collected amazing data that really give us the hard facts about what issues are there and what diagnosis we need to treat,” said Betsy Schwartz, president of Mental Health America of Greater Houston. The nonprofit agency and the county juvenile probation department are coordinating Operation Redirect, a collaboration of local groups trying to prevent mentally ill kids from ending up behind bars.

See related posts:

• Mentally ill strain Georgia prisons
• Editorial: Help — not jail — needed for people with mental illness

From Time magazine:

South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius, a double amputee who races on carbon blades, is named to the list of the World’s Most Influential People in Time Magazine’s annual issue. Paralympian Pistorius is challenging the rules in an attempt to compete in the Beijing Olympics. (Earlier post here.) The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) ruled in January that Pistorius could not compete because his blades were said to give him an unfair advantage.

Time’s profile of Pistorius was written by Erik Weihenmayer, the only blind person to have climbed Mount Everest (earlier post here). Weihenmayer says Pistorius is “on the cusp of a paradigm shift in which disability becomes ability, disadvantage becomes advantage.”

Also featured in Time’s annual 100 issue:

• Jill Bolte Taylor, a brain researcher who studied her own stroke and became a powerful voice for brain recovery (video here);
• Cyclist and cancer survivor advocate Lance Armstrong;
• Suzanne and Robert Wright, founders of Autism Speaks

From the Orlando Sentinel:

An increasing number of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are losing their eyesight not because of bullet or bomb wounds but in what doctors suspect is a delayed reaction to the constant pounding of nearby explosives.

Studies conducted by the military have estimated that up to 20 percent of the 1.7 million troops who have served and returned from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from mild traumatic brain injury, most often as a result of roadside bombs, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars.

Bill Wilson, a blindness-rehabilitation specialist at the Orlando VA Medical Center, sees a coming wave of woe. “We won’t know for months,” he said. “We can see the individuals and they may be perfectly fine, and then down the line they have problems.”

… Preliminary results from a pilot study suggested that as many as 70 percent of severely wounded soldiers treated for traumatic brain injuries also complain of double vision, difficulties in reading, blindness and other vision problems.

Learning to deal with PTSD, lost limbs, brain injuries

From the Raleigh News & Observer:

With 1.5 million service members coming out of military duty in Afghanistan and Iraq since October 2001, colleges and universities across the nation have been striving to welcome them to campus. But it’s often not easy to help veterans cope with the consequences of their injuries.

Cheryl Branker, director of disability compliance at North Carolina State University, says many departments at the school have been slow to recognize that veterans may need accommodations for their disabilities. Many vets have returned with diagnoses of PTSD, tramatic brain injury, lost limbs or other chronic medical conditions.

“Not only am I a full-time student,” said one returning veteran, “I’m a full-time patient. It takes a toll, mentally and physically. Sometimes I’m there in class, but only in body. Not in mind.”