Mercy Medical Center

For Mary Catherine Bunting, giving is adiverse enterprise. The former nun sometimes drops by a local homeless shelterwith fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, offerings from her own garden. She helps anelderly neighbor with her oxygen tanks. And she volunteers once a week withthe Hospice of Baltimore, sitting at the bedsides of the dying. This fall, Bunting also presented Mercy Medical Center with the largest philanthropic gift in its history, an undisclosed amount that will help build the hospital's new 18-story facility, to be named after her. Previously, the largest gift was $10 million.

What's your idea of a "top hat and tails" night out? Is it a visit to a '40s-style martini lounge, complete with a Frank Sinatra impersonator crooning tunes? Maybe a little time spent in a classy casino? Or perhaps Irish fiddlers putting you in fine fettle? You could find all of the above, and then some, at Mercy Medical Center's gala, "Hats Off to Mercy!" at the Hyatt Regency Hotel.Among the 500 in this cosmopolitan crowd were Tom Mullen, president and CEO of Mercy Health Services Inc.; Dr. Lauri Kane and Rosemary Wahler Mullen, event co-chairs; Sister Helen Amos, executive chair of Mercy's board of trustees; Dr. Sheri Rowen, Dr. Bernie Chang and Dr. Neil Rosenshein, directors in the Mercy Center for Women's Health and Medicine; Ron Briggs, WBAL-TV account executive; Michele Emery, director of managed care for Park West Medical Center; Tom Giannopoulos, president and CEO of Micros Systems Inc.; and Jim Chakedis, director of international transportation for Ringling Bros.

In Baltimore CityBishop Murphy admitted to Mercy Medical CenterBaltimore Auxiliary Bishop P. Francis Murphy, 66, who has been fighting cancer since January, has been admitted to Mercy Medical Center, where his condition is deteriorating, according to officials of the Archdiocese of Baltimore.A recent CT scan revealed a regrowth of tumors in Murphy's liver, which indicates a sudden reversal in the effectiveness of his chemotherapy, the bishop said in a statement released yesterday.Other tests revealed cancer cells in Murphy's spinal fluid and in the lining of his brain, which are not treatable through chemotherapy.

Eyes flitting everywhere, five children from James McHenry Elementary School next door bounded into the new House of Mercy in West Baltimore and checked out the bathrooms, the closets, the windows, the elevators, the kitchen.The kid things.Sure, the adult places were fine -- the community room, the library, the offices, the computer room all still empty. But, said 10-year-old Alphonso Jones, the little places were the best.The children were the first to visit their much-awaited $1.1 million facility.

Sister Helen Amos, who has built strong programs -- and marketed them adroitly -- in eight years as president and chief executive officer of Mercy Medical Center, will become board chairwoman of Mercy's new parent organization July 1.She has led a hospital that has remained independent in a period of mergers, has drawn more patients as the number of patients in the state was dropping, and has thrived downtown while other hospitals were chasing business in...

Oswaldo Guayasamin, 79, considered Ecuador's top painter this century, died of a heart attack yesterday at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore, leaving unfinished his masterpiece, the Chapel of Man. Mr. Guayasamin had traveled to Baltimore for treatment of his eyes.Peggy Cass, 74, who won a 1957 Tony Award for her portrayal of Agnes Gooch in "Auntie Mame" on Broadway and reprised the role on film, died Monday in New York. Ms. Cass was a panelist on "To Tell the Truth" and other television game shows of the 1960s.

Howard County's Sexual Assault Center and Howard County General Hospital want to fund a program to train nurses to collect forensic evidence from rape and sexual assault victims.If their joint grant proposal is approved by the state, specially trained nurses would be on call 24 hours a day to treat and examine rape victims admitted to the hospital after an assault.Cheryl DePetro, executive director of the Sexual Trauma Treatment, Advocacy and Recovery (STAR) Center and the grant's co-author, says evidence collected during a hospital exam begins a process that ends in a courtroom.

Police Blotter is a sampling of crimes in Baltimore and Baltimore County.Northeastern DistrictRape: A warrant has been issued charging Joseph Jefferson, 26, of the 3100 block of Montebello Terrace with raping and assaulting a woman in his home Tuesday. Jefferson allegedly forced a woman into his car in the 2500 block of Harford Road, said Detective Richard Petrey of the sex squad. The woman was treated at Mercy Medical Center.Western DistrictOfficer assaulted/arrest: Officer Yolanda Jones was assaulted Monday when she ordered a woman to stop loitering in the 2200 block of W. North Ave. Jones was struck in the chest and shoulder but did not require medical treatment.

A city school bus driver suffered a diabetic seizure and passed out at the wheel yesterday morning on the Jones Falls Expressway, causing the vehicle to collide with a car before hitting a concrete barrier, police said. No children were aboard, and no one was seriously hurt.A quick-thinking aide, 65-year-old Pauline Pritchett -- who police said does not drive -- shifted the bus into park, preventing a more serious accident. "She doesn't know how to drive, but she stopped the bus," said Officer Angelique Cook-Hayes, a police spokeswoman.

A boost in its credit rating will allow Mercy Medical Center to sell $30 million in bonds to finance capital improvements and other initiatives, the hospital said yesterday.Both Moody's Investors Service and Standard & Poor's Corp. gave Mercy an "A" rating, citing the hospital's ability to increase market share, recruit top surgeons and align with 70 doctors in Maryland Personal Physicians Inc., a group of Central Maryland primary care providers.The "A" ratings come after four years of cutting costs and repositioning the hospital as a top provider of women's health services, said Thomas Mullen, Mercy's chief financial officer.

A reader of our Picture of Health blog asked recently how to distinguish the symptoms of heartburn from the symptoms of a heart attack. It turns out to be harder than you might think. Dr. Richard A. Desi, a gastroenterologist at the Institute for Digestive Health and Liver Disease at Baltimore's Mercy Medical Center, discussed how to tell the difference. "That's actually not a very easy question," Desi said. "It's a difficult question for patients and for doctors." One key, he said, is to look for what are considered the classic symptoms of each.

Administrators at Mercy Medical Center used an aging, historic trowel on Friday to place an even older brick into the wall of the downtown hospital's latest expansion. Thomas R. Mullen, president and CEO of Mercy Health Services, and Sister Helen Amos, executive chairwoman of its board of trustees, had their hands on history. Cardinal James Gibbons had held the same trowel when the cornerstone was laid for the first hospital building in 1888. Cardinal Lawrence Shehan marked the construction of the current building on St. Paul Place in 1963 with the same trowel.

Avascular necrosis is a disorder of the bone. It affects the ends of long bones, primarily the hip, but the knee and shoulder and ankle can also be affected, says Dr. Marc W. Hungerford, director of joint replacement and reconstruction at Mercy Medical Center. In avascular necrosis the circulation in the bone is interrupted and dead spots can appear. If these dead spots are close enough to the joint, then the joint can collapse and the patient can develop arthritis of the involved joint.

Scoliosis, an abnormal curvature of the spine, affects roughly 2 percent of the population, according to the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. For National Scoliosis Awareness Month, Dr. Charles Edwards II of the Maryland Spine Center at Mercy Medical Center offers five things you should know about the disease. * Abnormal curvature of the spine is termed scoliosis. It typically increases in size during the years of most rapid growth. Children with scoliosis are evaluated with spine X-rays every six to 12 months.

Michael Kevin Quinn loved his horses. He co-owned a racer named First Sea Light and, over the years, kept a couple for countryside rides, one named Joker and the other - in honor of the land of his birth - Irish. When he got too old to ride, one of his sons said Sunday, he gave it up very reluctantly and always missed it. Formerly a doctor in general practice in the Lutherville-Timonium area, Dr. Quinn died Friday at Stella Maris Hospice at Mercy Medical Center after suffering for several years from Alzheimer's disease.

Ann Healey Oglesby, a retired private school admissions director, died of cancer Wednesday at Mercy Medical Center. The Harbor East resident was 62. She had suffered from carcinoid carcinoma, said her husband of 35 years, Dr. Thomas J. Oglesby, a psychiatrist. Born Ann Healey in Baltimore and raised on Old Court Road in Brooklandville, she attended Garrison Forest School and graduated from the Marymount School in Richmond, Va. She earned an English degree from Wheaton College in Norton, Mass.

Dr. James Russo, a retired anesthesiologist who established the department of anesthesiology at what is now Mercy Medical Center, died Saturday of heart failure at Stella Maris Hospice in Timonium. He was 91. Dr. Russo, the son of an immigrant Italian grocer, was born and raised in Norristown, Pa. He was a 1935 graduate of Norristown High School and earned a bachelor's degree from Ursinus College in 1939. "He had a brother who was 18 years older who had gone to medical school, and he wanted to follow in his footsteps," said a daughter, Elena R. Trentalange of Glen Arm. After earning his medical degree in 1943 from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, he completed an internship at what is now Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital in Darby, Pa., and an internship in anesthesia at the Lahey Clinic in Boston.

* Dr. Timothy G. Doyle and Dr. Jason E. Goodman have joined the clinical staff at Mercy Medical Center. They will see patients exclusively at Overlea Personal Physicians at 7602 Belair Road, Overlea. Board certified in internal medicine, Doyle has managed an internal medicine practice in Towson for the past 12 years. He earned his medical degree in 1993 from the Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia. He completed his residency in internal medicine at Penn State's Milton S. Hershey Medical Center in Hershey, Pa. Goodman is board certified in internal medicine and has been in private practice in Silver Spring for the past eight years.

For Sgt. Carrie Everett, it's a matter of principle. When a 27-year-old accused of killing his girlfriend wriggled free of his shackles last October and leaped to his death from the 10th floor of Mercy Medical Center, Everett was shaken - but confident that she was not in violation of the department's general orders for keeping watch over a suicidal suspect. Everett, who was a supervisor that day, and other officers would later be cited under a rule that "department members shall be held strictly responsible for the proper performance of their duties."

The greatest risk factor for cataracts, which occur when the eye's natural lens hardens and becomes cloudy, is aging, says Dr. Sheri Rowen, director of the Eye and Cosmetic Surgery Center at Mercy Medical Center. In fact, by the time they reach the age of 80, more than 50 percent of all Americans have a cataract or have been treated for cataracts with a relatively simple surgical procedure. Millions of people a year have cataract surgery. What are cataracts? Cataracts are the clouding and hardening of the natural, God-given lens of the eye [made mostly of protein and water, the lens is the clear part of the eye that helps to focus light on the retina]