Seizures

By midafternoon Saturday, the infield of Pimlico Race Course was an island of anarchy -- 68,000 people queasily afloat on a sunny sea of bawdiness and booze.Shirtless men wrestled in the grass. Whooping women removed their tops and climbed onto men's shoulders, cheered on by groping mobs. Wandering drunks vomited and passed out. Somewhere on the periphery, well out of harm's way, horses thundered by every half-hour or so, supposedly the day's main attraction.But for all the chaos apparent in this zoo of activity, the track's security forces decided to leave the cage door open, by not guarding long sections of the perimeter until the day's 10th and featured race, the Preakness Stakes, second jewel in the Triple Crown.

This past summer, Amber R., 15, of Lincoln, Neb., underwent a radical operation called a hemispherectomy to remove the whole left side of her brain. Sean H., 8, of Gurnee, Ill., had the same surgery six years ago. Today both kids are doing pretty well.Amber had Rasmussen's encephalitis, a rare disease that usually strikes young children. Doctors think it is caused by a virus or an immune response. For six years, she had been plagued with violent seizures that rocked the right side of her body.

COUNTY Police Chief Larry W. Tolliver made the right decision to separate vehicle seizures from his "zero tolerance" policy on drugs. There is nothing wrong with his get-tough policy on all forms of drug trafficking and possession. There was something fundamentally wrong, though, with Chief Tolliver's policy requiring officers to seize vehicles whenever they discovered drugs in a car, regardless of the amount.After 18 months, it is clear that fighting drugs by confiscating jTC cars isn't effective.

Last spring, Willy Wise was ready to board a plane at LaGuardia Airport that would take him to Las Vegas, where he was to serve as a sparring partner for Pernell Whitaker before his title fight with Oscar De La Hoya."

In the 15 years she has battled epilepsy, Erinn Farver has tried countless medications and even explored the possibility of a brain operation. But the drugs have done little but make her sleepy, and her seizures are not the type that disappear with surgery.Now, she enters the new year hoping that the latest innovation in epilepsy therapy -- an electronic brain stimulater -- will make the difference. On Dec. 15, surgeons at the University of Maryland Medical Center made her the first patient in the state to receive the device, which looks like a hockey puck and is inserted in the chest just beneath the collarbone.

Seizures of drugs from motorists along Interstate 95 almost ground to a halt last year primarily because of state troopers' reaction to an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit accusing the Maryland State Police of stopping drivers on the basis of their race, state police officials acknowledged yesterday.Col. David B. Mitchell, the state police superintendent, essentially confirmed charges leveled by Republican attorney general candidate Paul H. Rappaport that drug confiscations along I-95 north of Baltimore dropped dramatically from 1995 to 1997.

Meryl Streep's return to network television tomorrow night at 9 on ABC may not win her many friends in the medical profession, which, it suggests, is more interested in trying out new drugs than treating diseases.But it could do wonders for her standing among parents, who will appreciate her passionate, but uncomplicated, approach to the role of a mother whose son suffers from an apparently untreatable form of epilepsy." ... first do no harm," which borrows its title from the Hippocratic Oath all doctors swear allegiance to, casts Streep as Lori Reimuller, a mother of three living a fairly idyllic Midwestern existence with her truck-driver husband and three children.

By age 2, Dylan James Norwood was having 45 to 50 seizures a day, shaking violently and screaming. There was little for his parents to do besides feed him eight kinds of medicine -- until doctors recommended having half his brain removed."

PHILADELPHIA - In retrospect, Janine Swift had never been quite healthy. She didn't have much energy, rarely running or playing outdoors with other children, said her mother, Theresa, 41, of Collingswood, N.J."As a little girl, her hands sometimes used to tremble," her mother said, but doctors could offer no explanation. "We thought maybe she was just a nervous kid."There was nothing to warn of the latent disease that would suddenly attack her nervous system in March 1995, when Janine turned 16, a disease surprisingly common - yet unknown to many doctors - that is pushing scientists to the limits of microbiology.

Baltimore police are searching for a 41-year-old man who suffers from seizures and last was seen Dec. 18 when he walked out of Johns Hopkins Hospital after getting medication for his condition.Benjamin Dennis, who lives with his mother in the 1400 block of Carswell St. in Northeast Baltimore, apparently was headed back to his old East Baltimore neighborhood."This is six months," said his mother, Myrtle E. Brown. "He hasn't called me or anything. He wouldn't be gone that long."Brown said her son had surgery in 1992 to remove blood clots from his brain.

Next time you face a challenge in life, think about a young man named Vince Biser. Biser, 21, just won the North American One-Armed Golfer Association championship at the tough PGA National course in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. Oh, Biser has two arms. But he was born with cerebral palsy and has limited vision and virtually no use of the right side of his upper body. Which means he swings a golf club with only one arm - his left. I watched him hit balls the other day on the practice range at the Country Club of Maryland, where he's a member.

Buprenorphine - the drug that is being more widely distributed to treat heroin addiction - is showing up with troubling frequency in illegal street sales. Police seizures of bupe in Baltimore and Baltimore County last year were at least twice as high as the year before, while methadone seizures decreased 45 percent. Efforts to control diversion of bupe need to be redoubled. But the drug is still part of the treatment solution to heroin addiction. The extent to which bupe is becoming a black-market product is important as the drug is increasingly being recommended as a treatment option.

Police seizures of buprenorphine increased rapidly in Baltimore City and County in 2007, the same year that local and state government began spending millions to expand use of the narcotic to treat opiate addicts, police drug lab data show. The numbers provide evidence of growing illegal sales and abuse of buprenorphine, a trend seen nationally. This month in Wise County, Va., authorities arrested seven people suspected of dealing buprenorphine, which is sold mainly as Suboxone. "I think [buprenorphine is]

Grace Rolle remembers the crash and the silence that followed. "You've heard of a mother's intuition?" she asked recently. "I heard a loud noise, and it sounded like somebody fell. After about two minutes, I thought that it didn't sound right. When I went downstairs to the garage, the papers were strewn everywhere." Then she saw her son, Samari, on the ground, conscious but dazed. "His lip was busted, his tongue was messed up and his neck was swollen," she said. "They have sharp, concrete stairs.

For eight weeks, Samari Rolle kept his condition a secret. "I didn't know if I could play, if I would be all right or anything," the Ravens veteran cornerback said. "It was very scary." But yesterday Rolle disclosed that he has epilepsy, a neurological condition that affects the nervous system and can cause seizures. He decided to publicly talk about his epilepsy "because it's under control now. Right now, I'm not scared." He has had three seizures this season, which have kept him out of six games.

WASHINGTON -- Rep. William J. Jefferson, the Louisiana Democrat under indictment on corruption charges, won a partial victory in court yesterday as an appellate tribunal ruled that federal agents went too far when they searched his office last year. The FBI agents violated the Constitution when they viewed legislative papers in Jefferson's Capitol Hill office, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled, citing a principle that goes back hundreds of years, to the time of all-powerful English monarchs.

Pharmacology FluMist study finds few big problems A government study has found no fatalities or unexpected side effects among 2.5 million people who took FluMist in the two influenza seasons since the nasal-spray vaccine was licensed, according to this week's Journal of the American Medical Association. Since June 2003, doctors have reported 460 problems including flu-like illnesses, allergic reactions, ear, nose and throat symptoms and fatigue. The vaccine, made by MedImmune Vaccine Inc. of Gaithersburg, is intended for healthy people ages 5 to 49. Serious problems were few, and were no more common than problems among those taking traditional, injected flu vaccine.

TO CALL IT a backlash would hardly do it justice. Calling it an unprecedented uprising to nullify a decision of the highest court of the land would be more accurate. In the four weeks since the Supreme Court sanctioned the seizure of private homes by municipal governments for private "economic development," a firestorm of reaction has broken out in dozens of state legislatures and in Congress. At the federal level, the House adopted by a 365-33 vote a highly unusual resolution deploring the court's ruling.

Alison Marie Hylan, whose struggle with epilepsy and determination to have a normal life became an inspiration to others, died Sunday at Drexel University in Philadelphia after a seizure. She was 18. Miss Hylan, a freshman screenwriting student, was born in Annapolis. She was raised in Pasadena and Arnold, where she moved with her family in 2000. "She started writing as a child, and when she was older she'd enter poetry contests and get her things published," said her mother, Jan E. Hylan, a second-grade teacher at Richard Henry Lee Elementary School in Glen Burnie.

Baltimore County police today asked the public's help in locating a missing man identified Gregory Hines, 56. Police described Hines as black, standing 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighing 160 pounds, with salt and pepper-colored hair, a goatee and no teeth. Hines was last seen around 9 p.m. Wednesday in front of his residence near the 2800 block of Yorkway in Baltimore. Police said he is without his daily medication required to alleviate symptoms of dementia and seizures. Unable to operate a vehicle, he is most likely traveling by foot, according to police.