A few years ago, Jordan Heald marched into the office of A Touch of Understanding and said she wanted to be a speaker for the organization.

The Granite Bay nonprofit’s Executive Director Leslie DeDora asked what she would speak about.

“I’ll never forget what she said,” DeDora said. “She said she has dyslexia and her younger sister does too, and she doesn’t want her to be teased the way she was. who can say no to that?”

Jordan joined the group’s Youth FORCE, which stands for Friends Offering Respect creating Empowerment, and visits schools to spread awareness about disabilities.

Now a freshman at Granite Bay High School, Jordan, 14, isn’t able to volunteer as much as she once did. But she still wants kids to know that it’s wrong to make fun of someone else because of a learning disability.

“I was made to feel bad inside because I wasn’t like them,” Jordan said. “But now I feel so confident. I don’t care what other people think.”

October marks National Dyslexia Awareness Month. one out of every 10 Americans struggles with dyslexia, according to the International Dyslexia Association.

Dyslexia is considered an “invisible disability,” unlike blindness or an amputation. When A Touch of Understanding gives class presentations, they teach students about visible and invisible disabilities at the same time.

They want to show how a dyslexic person can’t just easily read a book any more than a paralyzed person can just hop out of a wheelchair and walk around.

“it is not a matter of will,” DeDora said.

Dyslexia is a brain-based learning disability that impairs a person’s ability to read, write, spell and sometimes speak, according to the National Institutes of Health. A person with dyslexia has trouble translating messages received from the eyes or ears into understandable language.

Cases can range from mild to severe and include three types: trauma dyslexia when there is injury to the brain, primary dyslexia when there is a dysfunction of the left side of the brain and developmental dyslexia, which typically diminishes as the child matures.

Symptoms include difficulties with word recognition, mixing up similar words and poor spelling and decoding abilities.

Dyslexic people don’t read backwards, although spelling can look jumbled because they have trouble remembering letter symbols for sounds and forming memories for words.

A Touch of Understanding volunteers demonstrate dyslexia at a “frustration station” — where people attempt to write letters and trace around shapes by looking at a mirror and not at the paper. It’s not easy.

“we give students an idea of what it might be like to have that challenge,” DeDora said. “But you’re just as intelligent as before you sat down at the mirror.”

Dyslexia occurs in people of all intellectual levels. People with dyslexia may be gifted in areas that don’t require strong language skills, such as art, computer science, design, drama, electronics, math, music and sports.

A list of prominent dyslexic people includes John Lennon, Ansel Adams, Jay Leno, Erin Brockovich, Nobel Peace Prize winners, politicians and astrophysicists. Jordan was diagnosed with dyslexia when she was in third grade.

“My first reaction was, ‘Let’s get her fixed,’” said her mom, Lavena Heald.

Her daughter was bullied and didn’t have any friends as a child. DeDora said some kids with dyslexia may feel misunderstood or ostracized. some might overcompensate by becoming the class clown, or sit silently in the back of the classroom.

“They are thought to be less intelligent and that’s more of a burden to bear than the disability itself,” DeDora said.

Jordan was carted off to tutoring. She tried homeschooling, then a charter school and then back to a public school — Cavitt Junior High School, where she made the group of friends she still has today.

Through the years, she experienced much frustration. it was hard figuring out words. She took a long time reading directions on school assignments. She reads at a lower grade level than her peers.

Dyslexia runs in families and Jordan’s younger sister, Marissa, 10, also has the disability. Their dad Steve does, too.

And instead of trying to “fix” Jordan, her parents decided to encourage the areas where she shines.

“Let’s work on everything she’s really good at,” Lavena Heald said. “it just changed her … to over-the-top confidence.”

Jordan is a talented musician. She writes her own country music and performs cover songs at gigs around town. She plays the guitar, which she learned visually by watching her teacher. She’s also practicing the piano.

“She can’t read music,” Lavena Heald said. “But she can jam on the guitar.”

Sena Christian can be reached at . Follow her on Twitter at SenaC_RsvPT.———-Problems experienced by dyslexics:

• Learning to speak• Learning letters and their sounds• Organizing written and spoken language• Memorizing number facts• Reading quickly enough to comprehend• Persisting with and comprehending longer reading assignments• Spelling• Learning a foreign language• Correctly doing math operationsSource: International Dyslexia Association———-For more information on A Touch of Understanding’s Youth FORCE (Friends Offering Respect creating Empowerment), visit touchofunderstanding.org or call (916) 791-4146.

The Terrebonne Mental Health Center is one of two locations in Louisiana and 35 nationwide selected to participate in the National Institute of Mental Health’s Recovery after an Initial Schizophrenia Episode, or RAISE, project. the study will test whether early intervention can help those with recent signs of schizophrenia or related psychiatric disorders to stay well and function better.

The National Institute of Mental Health is the federal government’s research branch that focuses on studying mental illness and its treatment.

“Our primary mission, as always, is to provide the best treatment possible, and clients don’t need to qualify for the study to receive treatment.” said Lisa Schilling, executive director of the South Central Louisiana Human Services Authority. “Early intervention has long been viewed as critical to long-term success, and we are honored to be a part of a program like this.”

The study was paid for with $16 million in federal stimulus dollars, according to the American Recovery Act website, Recovery.gov, which tracks the progress of grants.

Schilling said the Terrebonne Mental Health Center is actively recruiting patients for the study. it must meet a quota of recruiting at least two new patients per month for the next year, or the center will be dropped from the study.

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder that can make it difficult to tell the difference between real and unreal experiences, to think logically, to have normal emotional responses and to behave normally in social situations.

Schizophrenia and related serious mental-health disorders make up about 50 percent of the patients that come through the South Central Louisiana Human Services Authority programs for treatment, Schilling said.

With few mental health resources available in the region, Schilling said, “we see almost all of them.”

The local agency, which operates under the state Department of Health and Hospitals, sees about 10,000 patients a year. it works with Louisianans with issues related to addiction, mental health and developmental disabilities.

Schilling said there are only about 60 inpatient psychiatric beds in the area to hospitalize patients with severe mental illness. her agency treats locals on an outpatient basis.

Schizophrenia has proved one of the most expensive diseases to treat. the World Health Organization has rated schizophrenia the second-most burdensome disease in the world after heart disease.

Schizophrenia and related illnesses often strike young people in the prime of life. a third of all mental health care spending in the U.S. is spent on treatments for the disorder, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Schizophrenia also incurs many indirect costs, including time and money spent by the patient’s caregivers and law enforcement costs required when the disease isn’t managed properly.

The study will compare the effectiveness of early-treatment programs with traditional treatment. Early-treatment programs will be tailored to the patient’s needs, providing medication, therapy, family involvement, education and employment. the treatments will focus on reducing the patient’s symptoms and improving their ability to live a normal life.

“we have counselors and support staff working in all these areas,” said Sue Saia, Terrebonne Mental Health Center manager. “after a patient’s first psychotic break, we’ll give them all the support they need. we want to show that if you intervene early, this doesn’t have to be a tragedy in their life. it can be managed like any other mental illness.”

The study pays for the patients’ care, as well as a percentage of the salaries of local staff who treat them. the study also offers small incentives to participants for signing up.

The study is recruiting people between the ages of 15 and 40 who are experiencing the early stages of schizophrenia and related disorders, Saia said.

Symptoms include hallucinations, delusions and strange thinking patterns. You must not have taken antipsychotic medication for more than four months.

You also must live in Terrebonne, Lafourche, Assumption, St. Charles, St. James, St. John the Baptist or St. Mary parishes, the areas served by Terrebonne’s Region 3 state-run mental health center.

If you’re interested in participating in the study, contact Project Director Brooke Guidry at 858-2989 or Saia at 985-857-3615 ext. 109. You can also e-mail .

More information is available online at raiseetp.org.

Staff Writer Nikki Buskey can be reached at 857-2205 or nicole.buskey@houmatoday.com.

A Madison lung cancer expert will be featured on a nationaltelevision health show Thursday.

Regina Vidaver, executive director of the National Lung CancerPartnership, based in Madison, was in New York City last month fora taping of “The Dr. Oz Show,” which airs weekdays from 2 to 3 p.m.on WISC-TV (Ch. 3).

Vidaver discussed how anybody can get lung cancer, whetherthey’ve smoked or not. 

“One of the messages was that lung cancer can occur in anyone,”she said. “The highest risk obviously are people with a significantsmoking history, but people who have already quit smoking remain atrisk for 20 years or more.”

Her segment was about 10 to 15 minutes and she was on with Dr.Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society,and two survivors, Vidaver said.

Lung cancer is the no. 1 cause of cancer deaths in the UnitedStates, killing more people than breast, prostate and colon cancercombined, with cigarette smoking causing 87 percent of lung cancerdeaths, according to the National Institutes of Health. 

Vidaver, who has a Ph.D. in molecular biology from theUW-Madison, was asked about some of the other causes of lung cancerbesides smoking, and talked about secondhand smoke and radonexposure. “And that a genetic predisposition is also unfortunatelyone of the bigger risk factors,” she said.

“We also talked about the different symptoms, particularly acough that won’t go away, if you cough up blood and unexplainedpain in the chest or shoulders,” Vidaver said.

Vidaver has been the group’s executive director since 2004.

But now that traditional incandescent light bulbs are being phased out as California leads the nation in adopting stricter energy efficiency standards, Scalapino is one of a committed group of incandescent light bulb lovers who are buying them in droves.

The new federal regulations, which went into effect on Jan. 1 in California, require a traditional 100-watt incandescent bulb to produce the same amount of light using 28 percent less electricity than it did before. Bottom line: the traditional light bulb as we know it will soon be obsolete.

They will be sold as long as existing stocks last.

Migraines are not the only health impact associated with fluorescent lighting. There are concerns that the small amount of mercury in the bulbs or tubes can be released as a vapor if a bulb breaks. Compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) are supposed to be disposed of as toxic waste, but only about 5 percent of consumers do so, said Heidi Sanborn, executive director of the California Product Stewardship Council.

Still others, including Linda Berg in Sebastopol, are concerned that flourescent lighting emits a dangerous radio frequency. She said she plans to start a support group for people who are “electrosensitive” and react to cell phones, CFLs or computers with skin issues, fatigue or heart problems.

Assemblyman Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, introduced light bulb legislation in California that he said paved the way for the federal lighting standards. he thinks concern may be overblown.

“this whole issue is probably a tempest in a teapot, because no one is saying you have to buy fluorescent bulbs,” Huffman said. “anyone who just doesn’t like fluorescent lights, or thinks that they’re transporting conspiracy signals from the government or whatever, can just buy a different kind of light.”

There are alternatives on the market that meet the new efficiency regulations, including halogen incandescent lights, CFLs and light-emitting diodes (LEDs).

But fluorescent lighting opponents fear that the popular CFLs will proliferate once the old fashioned bulbs are phased out, because they are more efficient than some alternatives and less expensive than LEDs.

“It’s a documented fact that fluorescents trigger migraines,” Scalapino said. “Because it is a fluorescent world, I have to schedule all of my appointments, whether it’s a doctor, or physical therapy, or anything I need … all on the same day.”

For Scalapino, the biggest concession she made to fluorescent lighting was to leave her job of 20 years as a teacher after attempting unsuccessfully to have the fluorescent lights in her classroom replaced.

About a third of the population experiences mild to moderate symptoms such as headaches and nausea when exposed to radio frequencies emitted from household appliances such as cordless phones, wireless routers, baby monitors and flourescent lighting, said Dr. Magda Havas, an associate professor of environmental and resource studies at Trent University. She said a smaller group, between 2 and 3 percent, are extremely sensitive and can pass out from such exposure.

Dr. Allan Bernstein, a neurologist and former director of the Headache Clinic at Kaiser Permanente in Santa Rosa, said that nearly one in five women suffer from migraines, and about half of those migraines are triggered by fluorescent lights. he said fewer numbers of men and children, between eight and 10 percent, experience migraines.

Bernstein, who runs a headache support group in Sebastopol, said that migraine sufferers have hyper-sensitive brains that react to odors, altitude, skipping meals and other triggers. Fluorescent lights and some computer screens have a flicker that can trigger migraines, he said.

“I suspect that the new LED lights will do fine, because they don’t flicker, but they’re very expensive,” Bernstein said. “Until you’ve got those down to a reasonable cost, it’s going to be hard to change out in your house, your school or your office.”

Marianne Campbell, co-founder and director of new Horizon School and Learning Center in Santa Rosa, said she has been buying as many old-fashioned light bulbs as she can for her private school that caters to students with learning disabilities.

Campbell said she tried fluorescent lighting in the school, but too many students were sensitive to lighting. Instead, they rely on traditional incandescents and the natural sunlight that filters through lace curtains in their school on third Street.

Campbell said the right lighting can help students with dyslexia who have difficulty distinguishing letters while reading. “what happens is, it becomes distorted even further sometimes, if the lighting is wrong.” .

Campbell said she tried halogen bulbs in some rooms, but was told by fire officials to remove them because they posed a fire hazard. She also tried LED lighting, but said it didn’t provide the optimal characteristics to help students distinguish words from the page.

“I’m hoarding,” Campbell said. “I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

She also said she was concerned that mercury could cause learning disabilities.

According to the National Resources Defense Council, CFLs contain 2 to 5 mg of mercury, while older thermometers contain about 500 mg of mercury. the Environmental Protection Agency offers instructions on how to safely clean up a broken CFL bulb that include evacuating pets, turning off heating and airing out the room for several hours.

Huffman said he was concerned about the mercury in fluorescent lights, but noted the amount is minute.

“It’s an essential element of how fluorescent lighting works,” Huffman said. “and it’s one of the downsides, frankly, and why fluorescent lighting will probably be a bridge technology. Eventually it will give way to LED and other technologies that don’t present that downside.”

CFLs are popular in part because of their price. a 26-watt CFL, which emits the same amount of light as a traditional 100-watt incandescent, sells for about $5 at Target and lasts about 8,000 hours. a pack of four traditional soft-white incandescent 100-watt bulbs costs $4 at Office Max, and those bulbs typically last 750 hours.

“It costs more up front, but you get a pretty quick payback on your investment,” Withers said. “There’s no pulsation of light at all. the other advantage of course is they don’t have any mercury inside.”

Some, like Huffman, that prices will drop on alternatives to the beloved but doomed incandescent.

“this competition is going on out there, and the winner in that is the consumer and the environment,” he said.

Patients suffering cholera symptoms receive treatment at the St. Nicholas hospital in Saint Marc, Haiti. After at least 20 people died when Hurricane Tomas brushed past Haiti, officials are now turning their attention back to a worsening cholera epidemic that has killed more than 500 people and hospitalized more than 7,300. –AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa

PORT-AU-PRINCE: Health officials said Monday they are examining at least 120 suspected cases of cholera in Haiti’s capital, the most significant warning sign yet that the epidemic has spread from outlying areas to threaten as many as 3 million people.

Samples from patients in Port-au-Prince are being tested in a laboratory to confirm the presence of vibrio cholera bacteria, which has already killed at least 544 people in Haiti, Health Ministry Executive Director Gabriel Timothee told the Associated Press.

If confirmed, the bacteria could imperil an estimated 2.5 million to 3 million inhabitants, nearly half of whom have been living in tents or under tarps in easily flooded encampments since their houses were destroyed in the Jan. 12 earthquake.

‘‘We are working on the cases. … We don’t have confirmation yet,’’ Timothee said.

He said many of the hospitalized patients are believed to have recently arrived from parts of Haiti such as the Artibonite Valley, where the epidemic was first registered and has done its most ferocious damage. More than 6,400 of the known 8,138 cases to date have been in the agricultural region, clustered around the Artibonite River.

At least 114 of the people suspected of having the disease in the capital are in the Cite Soleil slum, the expansive oceanside shantytown at the capital’s far northeastern edge and its closest point to the valley.

Since its discovery in late October, the disease has spread to half of Haiti’s 10 administrative regions, or departments. More than 200 people have been hospitalized in the West department, where Port-au-Prince is located, but no cases of cholera have yet been confirmed within the limits of the capital city.

Cholera had never been documented in Haiti before its appearance last month.

In little more than three weeks it is suspected of infecting tens of thousands of people, though only about a quarter of people infected normally develop symptoms of serious diarrhea, vomiting and fever. Nearly four per cent of the thousands hospitalized have died, most from extreme shock brought on by dehydration.

Officials are concerned that floods triggered by Hurricane Tomas on Friday and Saturday could exacerbate the spread of the disease, which is transmitted through the consumption of fecal matter contained in contaminated water or food. the release of a dam on the Artibonite River caused the infected waterway to swell Monday, but there were no reports of major flooding.

Living conditions in Port-au-Prince’s earthquake camps have ‘‘deteriorated as a result of the storm,’’ Boston-based Partners in Health said Monday.

‘‘Standing water, mud, lack of garbage collection, and limited sanitation availability make the camps a potential flashpoint for cholera outbreak,’’ the group said.

Humanitarian groups and Haitian health care workers have been working in Port-au-Prince to prepare for cholera, informing residents about preventative measures such as regular hand-washing and sufficiently cooking food as well as setting up clinics in expectation that the disease would spread to the city.

The origin of the outbreak continues to be a source for debate. Analysis by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that the cholera outbreak in Haiti most closely matches a strain of the disease found in South Asia.

Public health experts, including UN Deputy Special Envoy to Haiti Paul Farmer, who co-founded Partners in Health, have called for an aggressive investigation into the origin of the outbreak.

They say that should include looking at the unconfirmed hypothesis that cholera was introduced by UN peacekeepers from Nepal, a South Asian nation where the disease is endemic. Those peacekeepers are at a UN base on a tributary of the Artibonite River, which has been found to be contaminated with cholera.

This syndicated post originally appeared at public.dawn.com/2010/11/09/cholera-epidemic-kills-at-least-544-in-haiti.html on 9 November 2010