Fever

WNBA Finals, Game 5 Fever@Mercury 8 p.m. [ESPN2] Indiana missed a chance Wednesday night to clinch in front of Colts stars Peyton Manning and Reggie Wayne. Let's see if the Cardinals' Kurt Warner and Larry Fitzgerald show up tonight in Phoenix for the decisive fifth game. What would they see? Maybe a Hail Mary basket put up by the Fever's Katie Douglas, near left, or the Mercury's Diana Taurasi.

A 16-year-old junior at Annapolis High School died Saturday of bacterial meningitis, prompting Anne Arundel County health officials yesterday to seek people who had come in close contact with her and might have been exposed to the disease.The student, Cara Margaret Petrini, was taken to Sinai Hospital in Baltimore on Friday, after complaining of flu-like symptoms last week.The girl "was relatively better for a few days," said Dr. Sohail Qarni, a county Health Department consultant for communicable diseases.

Health workers moved swiftly last week to bottle up the outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in Zaire. But students of epidemics warn: Wait for the virus next time.As farmers clear jungles, as tourists trek into exotic locales, as airlines and highways stitch continents more snugly together -- microbes quarantined by nature for millions of years threaten to spill across the globe.Ebola was one.But dozens of others have appeared in the past 30 years, including the microorganisms that cause AIDS, Lassa fever, Lyme disease, Legionaire's disease, Rift Valley fever, Brazilian purpuric fever, Venezuelan hemorrhagic fever and hanta virus pulmonary syndrome.

The athlete in your house isn't feeling right, maybe has a cold or fever. But practice or a game is coming up. What to do? * If it's just a sniffle, it's OK to play. * Got a cough or mild fever? Don't play. The athlete may have a viral infection, which increases the chance of injury because tendons and muscles tend to tighten and be more sensitive while the body fights a virus. * Warning: Playing sick can lengthen or worsen an illness (not to mention spreading it to others). * Back in the lineup: If the athlete has been fever-free for 72 hours, it's OK to play.

Soccer -- D.C. United traded defender Bobby Boswell, the 2006 Major League Soccer Defender of the Year, to the Houston Dynamo yesterday for goalkeeper Zach Wells and a conditional 2009 draft pick. WNBA -- The Indiana Fever hired Lin Dunn, an assistant on Brian Winters' staff with the Fever the past four years, as its eighth coach. Winters was 78-58 in four seasons and took the team to the playoffs three times, but the Fever averaged just 72.9 points last season and Winters was let go with one year left on his contract.

Local actress Joy Ehrlich reprises her tour-de-force performance in Wallace Shawn's one-person show, "The Fever," at Villa Julie College Feb. 19-21.Ehrlich, an instructor at Villa Julie, first performed "The Fever" at the Theatre Project last season. In the Obie Award-winning play, she portrays a woman tormented by guilt over the inequity between the privileged classes -- of which she is a member -- and the impoverished, tortured citizens of the war-torn, Third World countries she visits.

150 years ago in The SunOct. 6: FEVER AND AGUE -- Fever is always caused by a disorder of the blood, struggling to free itself of something that encumbers it; in fact, every kind of fever is nothing more than a struggle between the blood and corrupt humors, and as soon as the corrupt humors are expelled you have no more fever.100 years ago in The SunOct. 9: DEATH FROM CIGARETTES -- Mr. Wm. Joseph Bandell, son of Mr. John H. Bandell, died yesterday at 1 o'clock at his home, 437 North High Street, aged twenty-six years.

Q: Our son is almost 2 years old. Last weekend, he suddenly had a seizure. The doctors said a fever caused the seizure. He seems perfectly fine now, but we're afraid it might happen again."

In an article yesterday about alleviating cabin fever, the channels listed for Comcast Cable subscribers in Howard and Harford counties to receive the Disney Channel free through tomorrow were incorrect. The channel in Howard County is 57; in Harford County, it's 68.The Sun regrets the errors.

I came down with a nasty case of retriever fever after watching UMBC's promotional video for Midnight Madness. To make matters worse, this obnoxious pop song has been stuck in my head for the past hour or so. Enjoy.