April 29th's Show: Sharon Brangman MD, chief of geriatric medicine at University Hospital and director of the CNY Alzheimer's Disease Assistance Center, updates us on Alzheimer's treatment and explains the enduring benefits of music for Alzheimers' patients.
For more information on the Alzheimer's Disease Assistance Center (ADAC) at University Hospital: www.upstate.edu/uh/geriatrics/adac_population.php
Health Information Center Resources on This Week's Show
Books:
- "The 36-Hour Day: A Family Guide To Caring For People With Alzheimer's Disease, Other Dementias, And Memory Loss In Later Life", by Nancy L. Mace, Peter V. Rabins. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.
- "Alzheimer's Activities That Stimulate the Mind", by Emilia C. Bazan-Salazar. McGraw-Hill, c2005. Chapter on musical activities for dementias.
Books available through bookstores and libraries, including the Health Information Center and Amazon.com.
Websites:
Videos:
Tutorial: How to Find Reliable Health Information on the Internet
HEALTH INFORMATION CENTER
at SUNY Upstate Medical University
Medical Speak Word of the Week - SYNDROME
Definition: A set of signs and symptoms that tend to occur together and which reflect the presence of a particular disease or an increased chance of developing a particular disease.
April 29th's News and Views... 
From The Post-Standard News
Archives - April 9, 2007
GROUP HELPS BRING PEACE TO BEREAVED PARENTS
By Sean Kirst, Post-Standard Columnist
Asyria Rush already had a name picked out for her son. She had a crib ready for the day when she would bring him to her home in Syracuse. For months, she had felt the child kicking in her womb. She could sense when he was awake and when he slept. Long before she had the chance to hold him, she felt, in that mystical way understood by mothers, a connection with the baby boy she planned to name Messiah. Last September, Rush was in an automobile accident. She was almost eight months pregnant. At first, after it happened, everything seemed fine. Within two weeks, the doctors could no longer find a heartbeat. Messiah was stillborn on Sept. 27.
Rush buried him in the children's section of Oakwood Cemetery. She did not have the money to give him a tombstone. Worried relatives, and hospital officials, helped her make a connection with K.J.'s Angels - a group created about four years ago by Linda Hicks, an Onondaga County probation officer, to provide financial help to parents whose babies have no tombstones on their graves.
A few weeks ago, Rush and Cindy Squillace, a Hospice of Central New York grief counselor involved with K.J.'s Angels, picked out a stone and the words that it will carry. That stone should be on Messiah's grave this spring. To Rush, what it means is almost beyond description.
"It was so hard for me to give that baby up," she said. "He was kicking, and I could feel him and everything. It made me ask, "How did this happen? Did I do something wrong?' This was a fully developed baby. Everything was in process. I was ready for my baby to come home. And it still hurts me because he's gone. "A stone was something I couldn't afford, something I couldn't do. But to go up to Oakwood and to have nothing placed there, just to know my baby didn't have a stone, that would have hurt me deep in my heart."
Hicks understood. Her motivation for creating K.J.'s Angels began after she and her husband, Kevin, lost an infant son, Kevin JaRon Donalson Hicks, in 2002. The baby, who had been born prematurely, had a choking fit and could not regain his breath. The family buried him in Oakwood, and Linda often visited the grave.
She was stunned at the number of infants, buried near K.J., whose graves were marked only with pinwheels, toys or paper flowers. To cope with her own grief, she decided to make sure those children weren't forgotten.
Since the creation of K.J.'s Angels, the group has provided up to $350 for more than 80 families who needed help with buying tombstones or paying burial expenses. The annual fundraising dinner for K.J.'s will be Sunday at the Holiday Inn in Salina. Valerie Samuels, who wrote a children's book about coping with the death of an infant twin, will be a speaker.
The thrust of K.J.'s Angels is quietly evolving, Hicks said. While the group will always provide help for parents who can't afford a tombstone, it is also moving toward another priority: trying to make sure families never go through the ordeal of losing a child.
Hicks points to statistics assembled recently by Syracuse Healthy Start, a county-administered agency whose mission includes reducing child mortality.
According to those figures, from 2004 to 2006, the infant mortality rate in Syracuse was 9.2 for every 1,000 live births, while the national average was 6.8. In the black community, the figure climbed to 15 deaths for every 1,000 births, compared with a national average of 13.8. "The numbers are staggering in our community when you look at all the children dying," Hicks said. "People get outraged when they hear about someone having 100 cats living in a house. But where is the outrage over all these babies dying? People need to be saying, "Oh, my God!" Toward that end, Hicks said, K.J.'s Angels is placing an emphasis on educating young parents about nutrition and other elements of wise prenatal care. Yet Hicks emphasized she will never forget her core reason for founding the group: the sense of devastation for any family that visits an unmarked grave.
Dan and Karen Ryan, of Jordan, for instance, learned about K.J. Angels when they met Squillace at Hospice. They were trying to find a way to cope with their sorrow. Their daughter Alicia was stillborn in 2004. "Everything was good until five months," Karen said. At that point in her pregnancy, she was put on bed rest. By seven months, she said, the doctors told her the location of her placenta made it hard to hear the heartbeat of the child. It wasn't until the ninth month of her pregnancy, Karen said, "that I couldn't feel her move."
The Ryans, who buried Alicia in Greenlawn Memorial Cemetery, decided to put a family tombstone on her grave. The full cost was beyond what they could afford. That problem was solved through Squillace, who introduced them to Hicks.
While Dan and Karen are now raising Savannah, a healthy infant daughter, Karen said the death of Alicia "is still devastating, and still feels like the first day." Because of that, she isn't sure she will ever make Hicks fully appreciate how the Ryans feel about the support of K.J.'s Angels.
"It means everything in the world," Karen said. "There aren't words to describe what it means to see something that can name your child, something that signifies that you had a child."
Sean Kirst is a columnist with The Post-Standard. His columns appear Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
If you go:
What: Fourth annual benefit dinner for K.J.'s Angels.
When: 3 p.m. Sunday at the Holiday Inn on Electronics Parkway in Salina.
Why: Proceeds go toward helping in the purchase of tombstones for families in financial need who have experienced the loss of a child.
Speaker: Valerie Samuels, author of a children's book that recounts how her family coped with the loss, in infancy, of a twin.
Information: Cindy Squillace at Hospice of Central New York, 634-2191.
The meaning of a child:
On his blog at http://blog.syracuse.com/kirst/, columnist Sean Kirst reflects on how the loss of an infant can have profound effects on the direction of a family. Kirst welcomes the reflections and thoughts of readers. Contact Kirst on his blog, or at skirst@syracuse.com or by writing to him in care of The Post-Standard, Clinton Square, Syracuse 13221. He also can be reached by calling 470-6015.
Copyright, 2007, The Herald Company
