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Vol. III, # 50, July 22, 2005
PH has not read the new Harry Potter book, but
PH was at the Harry Potter party last Friday night at Barnes and
Noble. However Shepson Brenda had completed reading the new book
by Monday and daughter Elizabeth had completed it by Tuesday night.
Both of these readers have read all of the previous five books.
What follows is a PHA first; or early short reviews of the new Harry
Potter book.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
by J K Rowling
 "Harry
returns to Hogwarts for his sixth year at the age of sixteen.
The wizarding world is at war with the dark side (He-who-should-not-be-named).
Harry encounters teenage angst and finds love. The reader learns
a great deal about Voldemort as a boy and how he became the person
that he is. J. K. Rowling does a wonderful job in entwining the
wizarding world with the Muggle world. In chapter one the reader
meets the prime minister of England who is having an unexpected
meeting with the Minister of Magic. This book is full of adventure,
uncertainty and sadness. This book paves the way for an interesting
book seven which will cover Harry's last year at Hogwarts."
Elizabeth Holland, First grade teacher
"This is a good book." Brenda Holland,
Speed reader and Shepson of a few words
Good News Regarding Jared Oliver from Margaret
and John
Thanks for all your concern and prayers for Jared.
He arrived at Ft. Bragg late last Saturday from Afghanistan by way
of Kyrgystan and Turkey to US. They had to drive their military
vehicles from Bagram Air Base to Kyrgystan where they were put on
military  planes
for transport back to US. Then the long trip back, but arrived safe
and sound. The guys were given 4-day leave within a few hours after
arrival. He is back on base now for debriefing before getting home
for good. EXCEPT - we understand they will be kept on 90-day active
status prior to termination of his National Guard contract. Let's
hope there will be no serious situations to occur that would result
in being called back to duty
Margaret and John (grandparents)
Kidney Stone Pain
It is often stated that Kidney stone pain is similar
to labor pain except that kidney stone pain is rather constant until
the stone passes or is blasted. Labor pain usually brings a baby.
Minister of Students Mary Mann had to deal with kidney stones last
week and fortunately she passed all of them. The labor pain comes
next month. Mary wrote PH the following:
Henry,
"Last week I passed 3 stones from my left kidney and 2 from
my right, all within 24 hours. It was not a pleasant experience.
Unfortunately, the doctor has found some more stones, but with
the pregnancy, all I am able to do is "wait and see"
what happens with them. Hopefully they will be uneventful until
after the baby comes next month. It’s amazing that things
so small can be so incredibly painful.
Nonetheless, I have recovered well and am awaiting
the arrival of the baby. She is doing marvelously, and her condition
is all I am really worried about at this point. I will be just
fine; it’s just a tough row to hoe during pregnancy (or any
other time for that matter). Thank you so much for your thoughts."
Mary R Mann
PH has leanred that choir member Jeanette Gholston
is recovering from surgery for the insertion of a heart pacemaker
and for the surgical repair of two fractured ankles. She is currently
at Westport Manor.
Remember in your prayers: Jared Oliver, Mary Mann,
Jeanette Gholston, Don Bunn, Kay and Bob Culpeper and the family
of Stuart S Sanderson, Jr. Elmer West, Sandra Sizemore's Great Aunt
Myrtle Kurz and the family of Myrtle Kurz, Philip and Shanna Davis,
Arlene and Cecil Perry, Audrey Thomson's sister Sharon Ruben and
Sharon's family, the VCU BSU, Julia Tyler and her parents, the youth
of the church, the Church clergy and the church staff. Prayers should
also be offered for our men and women in the armed forces and for
civilians around the world in harm's way and for those only known
to you
 Chances
are that Chris will dazzle us again. This week his title is:
The Counter-Cultural Church, Since that is what some think we are
now
Come early, get a seat and hear the third installment of Chris Lindbloom's
Catacombs Lectures for 2005.
The CrossOver West Medical Clinic is close to signing
a lease for medical office space in western Henrico County. The
new clinic  needs
both medical/healthcare volunteers and general volunteers. A Grand
Opening Celebration is scheduled for Saturday, October 15. Also
CrossOver Ministries is scheduled to present a missions program
for the Wednesday night supper on October 5. More details will be
forthcoming regarding CrossOver West's opening. If you would like
to volunteer, information can be found on the CrossOver Ministries
website at http://www.crossoverministry.org/
 All
cooking Shepsons should be aware that the SSBSC will be responsible
for the after service snacks and goodies on Sunday, August 14. This
is an early warning to think about what you will bring to satisfy
the masses. If Wayland likes it, it will probably be just fine.
In addition to Vivian and Mike, Clarice and Bob
Dibble will celebrate twenty-nine years of marriage on Sunday. Also
Ellie and Gene Cox will celebrate thirty-nine years of wedded bliss
on this Saturday.
 There
are also some Shepson birthdays this weekend. Peggy Pruden will
be twenty-nine tomorrow and Marian Judd will be twenty-nine on Sunday.
Shepsons Charlotte and Bill have already begun
shopping for bargains on school supplies. The School Supply Campaign
will continue until August 15.
 Our
emphasis again this year as in past years will focus on such essential
needs as #2 pencils, ball point pens, wide-rule notebook paper,
wide-rule spiral notebooks, crayons, washable markers, large pink
erasers, safety scissors, wooden rulers, large glue sticks, bottles
of glue, 3 X 5 index cards, yellow highlighters, loose-leaf binders,
composition books, pencil boxes, colored pencils, and large boxes
of tissues.
Contributions may be brought to the Shepherd-Simpson
Bible Study Class on Sunday mornings or to the Church office during
the week. If you would like to shop, but are unable to because of
work responsibilities or physical hardships, you may call Charlotte
and Bill Simpson at 285-3185 and they will shop for you.
For the last decade PH has been writing articles
for the Central Virginia
Post-Polio Support Group's newsletter (The Deja View).
Since PH does not have any original thoughts for this PHA, PH has
decided to share one of these articles with the readers of PHA.
This article was written earlier this year.
This January there was an article in the Richmond
Times Dispatch that reported the finding of an old iron lung
in a musty garage in Roanoke, VA. The all African American Roanoke
Hunton Life Saving and First Aid Crew had purchased this iron
lung and used it to transport African American polio victims to
African American hospitals during the polio years. In Virginia
and other southern states racial segregation was the law and even
rescue squads were segregated. When the Hunton Life Saving Rescue
Squad ceased operating in 1987, the building containing the iron
lung was sold to Leo Bazil Trenor. Trenor used the building for
storage. He was a collector of old cars and old machinery. Trenor
died last year and his survivors discovered the old iron lung
when preparing the storage building's contents for auction. This
iron lung is apparently in good condition and the Trenor family
is planning to donate it to a Roanoke Museum.
The iron lung was the icon of polio. Before the
iron lung was developed, six thousand polio victims died in the
epidemic of 1916 that involved cases in twenty-six states. There
were 27,000 reported cases of polio that year. In New York City
in 1916 there were 8900 cases of polio and 2400 deaths or a death
rate of about one in four. In 1928 at the Harvard Medical School
Philip Drinker and Louis Shaw introduced the iron lung for the
treatment of patients with respiratory failure from acute poliomyelitis.
The iron lung consisted of a sealed cylindrical chamber in which
the air pressure could be alternately increased and reduced. The
polio patient was placed in the chamber with his/her head emerging
from a port at one end. When the pressure inside the chamber was
reduced air would fill the lungs and when the pressure inside
the chamber increased, air was forced out of the lungs. The key
was creating a tight seal where the head emerged and the rate
of respiration could be set by controls. The bellows at the other
end could be operated manually in case of a power outage. The
iron lungs were manufactured beginning in the early 1930s and
John Emerson's company became the leading producer of iron lungs.
John Emerson's father had been the Commissioner of Health in New
York during the epidemic of 1916 and he vividly recalled the suffering
caused by polio. In 1931 Emerson produced the "tank"
respirator which simplified the heavy machine and is the one so
familiar to most of us in our memory.
My first introduction to an iron lung was on
September 23, 1950. I entered the polio isolation ward at the
Medical College of Virginia Hospital. I had a flaccid paralysis
with varying degrees of weakness from the neck down. I was not
in respiratory failure and did not need an iron lung. I was in
a six bed room and there were two iron lungs across the room from
me. Two teenage boys were in these iron lungs. I was haunted and
mesmerized by the sounds of those two iron lungs for five days
until I was moved out of isolation. Thirty years later I had a
neighbor who spent nights and part of each day in an iron lung
in his house. John Miller was his name and he relied on an iron
lung for over thirty years. He was a valiant, bright and courageous
man until his death from natural causes in the late 1980s. I last
saw an iron lung in the museum in Wytheville, Virginia on June
30, 2004.
My life has been saved and extended thirty-eight
years because of positive pressure ventilators. The positive pressure
ventilator is a descendent of the negative pressure iron lung.
The positive pressure ventilator moves air into a person's lungs
via a tracheostomy tube, an endotracheal tube or a mouth piece.
The body does not have to be enclosed in a tank. The positive
pressure ventilator is a more invasive method of respiratory support,
but the entire body is approachable for any necessary medical
tests or procedures. I started with a large MA-1 Bennett positive
pressure volume ventilator. In 1970 I had a permanent tracheostomy
performed. This hole in my neck made it possible to connect the
ventilator to the trach tube in my neck and provide ventilator
driven respiratory support at night. I would plug the trach tube
during the day and my respiratory muscles were rested and functioned
well during the day. This routine went on for almost thirty years.
In 1996 Post-Polio Syndrome became more severe and I used the
ventilator during the day as needed with a mouth piece. In June
2002, my oxygen saturation started dropping during the day and
my physician ordered me to use my vent 24 hours a day seven days
a week.
The size of ventilators have been reduced over
the years. Today I use a Newport ventilator which weighs only
sixteen pounds and can do everything and more than the iron lung
did a half century ago. I am quite mobile with my vent and power
wheelchair. I feel blessed that the technology has advanced in
such a way that I am still able to practice in a limited capacity
in my home office. I am doubly blessed to have Brenda who provides
daily support and emergency support whenever needed.
With this little article I am offering a word
of tribute to the icon of polio, the iron lung. There is no way
to really know how many lives the iron lung saved during the epidemic
years of polio in the twentieth century. If the death rate for
polio before the iron lung was around 20% as reported in 1916,
then it is clear that the death rate after the introduction of
the iron lung dropped to below 5%. Hopefully, the iron lung will
gain a historically positive status for the lives it saved when
it was so effective.
Without the iron lung a child's respiratory death
from acute polio in New York in 1916 could not be prevented. Dr.
Francis Peabody wrote the following description in 1916.
"One little child of four, so helplessly
paralyzed that she was unable to move, but with a mind that seemed
to take in the whole situation, said to the nurse clearly but
rather abruptly between her hard taken breaths, 'My arm hurts';
'Turn me over'; Scratch my nostril'; and then when the doctor
approached, 'Let me alone, doctor!' 'Don't touch my chest.......'The
child is nervous, fearful, and dreads being left alone. The mouth
becomes filled with frothy saliva which the child is unable to
swallow, so she collects it between her lips and waits for the
nurse to wipe it away. She likes to have her lips wet with cold
water, but rarely attempts to take it into her mouth for she knows
she cannot swallow it. During the whole course it is remarkable
that cyanosis is absent. There is a little bluish tingeing of
the lips and tongue, but much more distinctive is the pallor,
which is sometimes striking. Sweating is profuse. Then, as respiration
gets weaker, the mind becomes dull, and with the occasional return
of a lucid interval, she gradually drifts into unconsciousness.
An hour or more later respiration ceases. This peculiarly alert,
keen mental state has been much less noticeable in small babies.
They tend to be dull and drowsy most of the time; but in the older
children this alertness has been such a characteristic feature
of the fatal cases, that it is preferable to find a child in a
stuporous condition, rather than with a mind whose nervous acuity
seems due to a perception of impending danger."
Let us not forget that the iron lung offered
polio patients a chance for survival and usually the opportunity
to lead a productive life.
Attached to this PHA is a photo of the iron lung
in the Wytheville, VA Museum.
: References:
Rogers, Naomi, Dirt and Disease, Rutgers
University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey,1992, pp 10 - 11.
Gould, Tony, A Summer Plague, Yale University
Press, New Haven and London, 1995,pp 17 - 18
Richmond Times Dispatch, January 8, 2005,
article from the Roanoke Times by Lindsey Nair.
The Internet at http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blrespirator.htm
http://www.canoe.ca/CNEWSFeatures9908/22_lung.html
http://reference.allrefer.com/encyclopedia/I/ironlung.html
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Ranch/5212/ironlung.html
PH
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