Brain Damage

Shirley Cabey saved all the letters--the ones that called her son a "nigger," that wished the boy had died, that threatened his life if he survived the gunshot that sliced through his spine. Each note, with its ugly words and racial venom, sits pressed today inside the Cabey family's Bible. The Good Book, like Shirley and her son Darrell, remains where it was when the letters arrived 10 years ago--in an apartment in a South Bronx housing project.

Orange County prosecutors said they are satisified with an arrangement under which a 79-year-old Costa Mesa man who shot his ailing wife five times while she slept was sentenced to six years in prison. Kenneth Leake pleaded guilty Friday to one felony count of voluntary manslaughter. A felony count of murder and a sentencing enhancement for personal use of a firearm were dismissed, court records show. "Every case is different, and after carefully investigating this as well as consulting with the family [and]

On Feb. 6, a baby boy was born, six weeks premature, at Sibley Hospital in Washington. His mother had been hospitalized during her pregnancy twice before--once for dehydration and again for very early labor--and the delivering obstetrician was on the lookout for more trouble. He got it. The baby didn't breathe properly and after a brief examination, he ordered him immediately transferred by ambulance to Georgetown Hospital's high-tech Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. He needed the best of care.

A Fontana police dog was evaluated for a possible brain injury or other physical damage after he was thrown out of a second-story window , allegedly by a parolee. Jaris, a 6½-year-old Belgian Malinois, was taken to a veterinary specialist Monday, The Sun reported. Authorities are waiting for test results to determine whether he suffered brain damage. "This is a first," Lt. Gary Aulis, head of the department's K-9 program, told the newspaper. "Of the dogs injured in the line of duty, we've never had something even remotely like this happen.

Alaina Dixon barely remembers the end of the last Houston marathon, on an unusually hot and humid Jan. 30. The 26-year-old interior designer collapsed 200 feet from the finish line: Her heart had stopped. Paramedics shocked her twice to restart it, then rushed her to the hospital. Doctors would later discover and fix the congenital heart defect that probably caused Dixon's collapse. But in the minutes and hours following the incident, their focus was on an entirely different organ: her brain.

BMX star Mat Hoffman woke on a vertical half-pipe ramp in Japan. Dazed, he looked over to his wife, Jaci, whose belly was protruding quite a bit. “What? We're having a baby?!” Hoffman exclaimed. Of course, he had long known they were having a baby. She had been pregnant for eight months. He had forgotten because he had just been knocked out. "I got to relive the whole moment of me becoming a dad again," Hoffman said of this 2000 incident, shortly before his wife gave birth to their daughter, Gianna.

Doctors have discovered a way for professional football players to see how much damage their brains have suffered through a bruising career before it's too late, according to a new study. UCLA researchers led a team of scientists that used a chemical marker called FDDNP to measure the degree of brain damage in five retired football players. That marker latches onto the tau proteins that build up in the brain when someone suffers from Alzheimer's or other cognitive impairments like chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

One of the big questions following WWE commentator/wrestler Jerry Lawler's heart attack during "Monday Night Raw" this week was whether he suffered any brain damage as a result. Doctors performed multiple CT scans on him, and got the results back Wednesday morning: No brain damage at all. As Lawler's ex-wife, Stacy Carter, wrote on her Facebook page: "Great news for Jerry!!! The results from the test are in. He has NO brain damage!!!! I'm not sure what the next step is or when he can go home, but this is such awesome news!

Artist Katherine Sherwood was just 44 when a hemorrhage in her brain's left hemisphere paralyzed the right side of her body — forever changing her artwork. Before the stroke in 1997, her mixed-media paintings featured strange and cryptic images: medieval seals, transvestites, bingo cards. Reviewers called her work cerebral and deliberate. Creativity, says the UC Berkeley professor, was an intellectual and often angst-filled struggle. After the stroke, she could no longer paint on canvases mounted vertically, so she laid them flat, moving around them in a chair with wheels.

A prestigious neurology clinic has launched an unprecedented brain study of professional fighters with the goal of advancing research to improve various treatments for brain damage. "We know what permanent brain damage looks like in its final stages, but we know so little about what causes it and what happens during cumulative trauma," said Maureen Peckman of the Cleveland Clinic. Peckman is coordinating the new study between the clinic's Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Las Vegas and officials with the Nevada State Athletic Commission.

A man thought to be a transient was killed Monday night in a hit-and-run in downtown Los Angeles, police said. Initial information indicated the man was crossing Mateo Street near 6th Street when he apparently fell in the roadway, said Los Angeles police spokesman Richard French. The man was not in a crosswalk, French said, and it was not clear why he fell. A southbound light-colored vehicle struck the man shortly before 8 p.m., French said. Police believe the driver stopped, got out of his vehicle and "took a look at the person" before driving off, French said.

Swastikas and the word "skinhead" were painted at a Costa Mesa elementary school's baseball field, officials said Monday. Kaiser Elementary School Principal Deborah Granger said staffers first noticed the slurs when they got to school. Swastikas were painted on trash cans, and the word "skinhead" with a swastika had been painted on part of the backstop, Granger said. The tops of benches had also been painted white. Over the weekend, a usually locked gate that is used by other campuses had been left open, Granger said.

It's a highly toxic element that travels the world in mysterious ways, respects neither manmade nor natural boundaries and rapidly accumulates in people and the food they eat. Mercury's risks for human and environmental health have slowly but steadily come to light over the centuries, leading to ad hoc phase-outs of mercury-filled thermometers, dental amalgam and the felt-hat-shaping compound that caused brain damage in 19 th century milliners, giving...

Doctors have discovered a way for professional football players to see how much damage their brains have suffered through a bruising career before it's too late, according to a new study. UCLA researchers led a team of scientists that used a chemical marker called FDDNP to measure the degree of brain damage in five retired football players. That marker latches onto the tau proteins that build up in the brain when someone suffers from Alzheimer's or other cognitive impairments like chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

  WWE commentator/wrestler Jerry Lawler, who had a heart attack this week during a live broadcast of "Monday Night Raw," sent out his first public statement since his heart attack. Using the Tout social media platform, Lawler appears from his hospital room in Montreal and thanks his fans for their support since Monday. Lawler looks surprisingly good, all things considered. His voice is very weak, but he seems to be in good spirits and makes a joke about all the wires and tubes coming out of him. Doctors say that the fact there was a physician at ringside when Lawler had his heart attack probably saved his life, since he was able to receive CPR immediately.

One of the big questions following WWE commentator/wrestler Jerry Lawler's heart attack during "Monday Night Raw" this week was whether he suffered any brain damage as a result. Doctors performed multiple CT scans on him, and got the results back Wednesday morning: No brain damage at all. As Lawler's ex-wife, Stacy Carter, wrote on her Facebook page: "Great news for Jerry!!! The results from the test are in. He has NO brain damage!!!! I'm not sure what the next step is or when he can go home, but this is such awesome news!

A Fontana police dog was evaluated for a possible brain injury or other physical damage after he was thrown out of a second-story window , allegedly by a parolee. Jaris, a 6½-year-old Belgian Malinois, was taken to a veterinary specialist Monday, The Sun reported. Authorities are waiting for test results to determine whether he suffered brain damage. "This is a first," Lt. Gary Aulis, head of the department's K-9 program, told the newspaper. "Of the dogs injured in the line of duty, we've never had something even remotely like this happen.

A yearlong study of boxers' and mixed martial-arts fighters' brain activity has found those who fight for more than six years begin to experience damage and those who fight longer than 12 years expose themselves to an even greater decline each time they return to the ring. "What we've found suggests changes and damage in the brain happens years before symptoms emerge," said Dr. Charles Bernick, author of the study. "It's what we see in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's patients. " Bernick has supervised MRIs and computerized and cognitive tests of an estimated 170 fighters at the Cleveland Clinic's Las Vegas center in the past year.

Jerry Lawler, who suffered a heart attack during "Monday Night Raw" earlier this week, is being slowly taken off sedation and had his ventilator removed, but remains in serious but stable condition at a Montreal hospital on Wednesday. He had surgery Tuesday to have three stents put in his coronary arteries. Lawler can blink, nod and squeeze with his hands, but doctors still aren't sure as to the extent of the damage, if any, done to his brain until they get all the tests back Wednesday morning.