Word: spinal
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...works like a drug. A quadriplegic patient tells herself it's not a matter of if they find a cure but when. Who's to say whether salvation is still 10 or 15 years away? After all, researchers have been injecting stem cells into paralyzed rats and watching their spinal cords mend. "Stem cells have already cured paralysis in animals," declared Christopher Reeve in a commercial he filmed a week before he died...
Cheerleaders for adult stem-cell research point to progress on everything from spinal-cord injuries to diabetes. Scientists at the University of Minnesota have used umbilical-cord-blood stem cells to improve some neurological function; in a paper published last month, Dr. Carlos Lima in Portugal wrote about restoring some motor function and sensation in a few paralyzed patients. At a recent conference of researchers from around the world, a team from Kyoto University in Japan reported success in taking a skin cell, exposing it to four key growth factors and turning it into an embryo-like entity that produced...
...physical exam was significant for hundreds of chicken pox lesions from head to toe, a slightly rigid neck and a refusal to cooperate with an eye exam. All indicators suggested that Sarah had meningitis as a complication of her chicken pox, but the vision complaint didn't fit. A spinal tap was indicated to confirm the meningitis diagnosis, but a CT scan, performed "just to rule out anything evil," showed a small resectable brain tumor pushing on her optic nerves. Sarah recovered well from both her chicken pox and the neurosurgery and remained relatively headache free until she needed glasses...
...extreme consequence is a bent frame and the so-called dowager's hump. In Cincinnati, retired Registered Nurse Daisy Randle Smith, 76, has a hump now, and despite wearing a brace, she has had spinal fractures in nine of the past ten years; one fracture was caused by a slight sneeze. "I'm in pain most of the time," she says, "and I've lost 5 1/2 inches since 1977." The loss of height is irreversible, as is the brittleness. Fractures like Smith's are common -- 1.2 million occur in the U.S. each year. Almost half are to spinal vertebrae...
...unmemorable stints in such films as Waterworld and The Jackal. He hates confrontation, and he's not arrogant enough to have ever told a director he thought he was being misused, but he did find that movies were a lot less fun than theater or Tenacious D, the Spinal Tap-ish band he created with fellow Actors' Gang alum Kyle Gass. "It wasn't about control," says Black. "It was about the co-lla-bo. There's great directors who treat actors like cattle, but I hated it, and I knew if I ever had a choice, I didn...