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Strike Out Cancer Co-Ed Softball Tournament
From June 30 to July 1, the family, friends and supporters of Jacob Villegas will be hosting a softball tournament. Villegas is a 8 year-old San Pedro kid who has been fighting for his life for the last two years after developing orbital eye cancer.
Jacob has been in remission thanks to Miller Children’s Hospital at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center. To give back while paying off the medical bills, the Villegas family along with friends and supporters that have followed the family’s battle with cancer are hosting a fundraiser. Half of the funds raised from this event will go towards help paying down the medical bills incurred during Jacobs illness while the half will be donated to the hospital.
There will be food, raffles, and a deejay. You can also get your car washed while you’re there. There are currently 11 teams competing teams, but organizers would like add a 12th team to complete the tournament. The two day tournament is from 8a.m. to 8p.m.
Details: Arthur Ybarra (213) 985-5748
Venue: Bloch Field
Location: Bloch and Harbor Blvd., San Pedro, between 7th Street and 22nd Street
PTSD: One Survivor’s Story
By Arthur R. Vinsel
I cried myself to sleep that night, praying, ‘Oh God, God, what the f… is happening here?’—Adam S.
War is no video game.
No matter how a bloody battle may end, weary, surviving fighters trembling with spent adrenaline, reeking of sweat and smoke, are wounded by what is seen and done.
Healing has taken nearly 20 years for Adam S.,whose surname is abbreviated to protect his privacy. He survived the explosive cloudburst of Desert Storm, the swift 1990 invasion of Iraq as a U.S. Army infantry foot soldier. He had been deployed initially for Operation Desert Shield, to protect Saudi Arabia after Iraq overran Kuwait and threatened to invade Arabia next.
PTSD Trials Start At Long Beach VA: The Quest For Answers to America’s $650 Billion Question
By Arthur R. Vinsel, Contributing Writer
Research is flourishing into brain chemistry’s role and new treatments for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the single costliest injury in wars spanning America’s history.
The $650 billion — the estimated cost for the next 20 years of PTSD disability benefits to men and women who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and came back home scarred by emotional wound — question is how to cope with it.
This is aside from the current annual treatment cost of $6,000 (counseling) to $30,000 (medication and other treatment) per man or woman, for thousands more Veterans Affairs patients who served in Iraq or Afghanistan. Cost estimates are up to $3.7 trillion to date, for two un-won wars, states Reuters News Service.
Modern weaponry virtually eliminates most close personal combat contact, but as the saying goes, “War is hell,” and it still takes a terrible toll.
Government records show 761 American troops were killed in action, from the 2002 invasion of Afghanistan until mid-2010, but during the same period, 817 committed suicide, mostly Army and Marine troops.
A recent document filed in the 9th Federal Court of Appeals states 18 veterans commit suicide every day in America and one in every four is enrolled in the VA medical system. Every month, 1,000 vets attempt suicide, VA records show.
The search for a successful treatment regimen continues on several fronts but there is no magic silver bullet to quell the costly torment that still hounds aging vets under treatment, 40 years after the Vietnam war, as well as the 1950-53 Korean Conflict.
Medication and psychotherapy remain standard, but fail in many cases. Psychotropic drugs perform differently in different patients and prolonged therapy disrupts employment and family life.
Many vets finally give up, but no treatment at all exacerbates problems such as alcohol and drug abuse, crime, violence and societal costs including law enforcement and social services, including welfare.
One experiment that utilizes a prosaic method is about to begin at the Long Beach Veterans Affairs Medical Center. It involves injecting an anesthetic — buprivicaine — into the right side of the neck, which is called the stellate ganglion block (SGB). It takes about 10 minutes.
The buprivicaine is injected into a star-shaped juncture of six nerves near the C6 spinal vertebra. The nerves are killed in one to three shots within one to three years.
Similar trials at other facilities show promise rather than perfection, although some patients with severe PTSD symptoms claim “miraculous” results with relief in 30 minutes.
Back in 2005, renowned Chicago anesthesiologist Dr. Eugene Lipov developed the SGB approach and retitled it The Chicago Block, to distinguish a safer method of injecting the anesthetic into the neck.
Previously, it was given in the C7 vertebra area closer to the heart and lungs, and without the benefit of X-rays to put the needle on target.
Buprivicaine has been around since 1925 when it was used as an epidural shot to ease labor pain during childbirth. That dosage wears off within a few hours.
“It’s amazing how many drugs long available turn out to be useful for something else later,” says Dr. Michael Hollifield, a psychiatrist in the Long Beach VA Medical Center’s Program for Traumatic Shock.
He and anesthesiologist Dr. Mike Alkire (the needleman) and supervising Dr. Christopher Reist are the three principal SGB researchers in Long Beach, but have other duties as well.
“We’re about to start recruiting and interviewing men for our study,” says Hollifield, a tall Southerner who joined the team 15 months ago, just before the hospital Institutional Review Board began vetting its parameters. “All three of us have been interested in PTSD for quite awhile. We have about 3,500 in our department, accounting for 23,000 visits in the past year.”
They hope to begin in a few weeks with 12 subjects, six from the Vietnam era and six fresher from the ordeals of war in the Persian Gulf action. Age will be a study factor, for PTSD never heals and goes away unaddressed, though symptoms may alter.
Prior to Long Beach, others have investigated SGB, as well. The U.S. Naval Medical Center in San Diego, Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. and the Pentagon have all tested or evaluated the nerve block method and were impressed.
However, the Department of Defense has turned down four proposals from 2007 to 2011 for funding a large study of SGB efficacy by simply responding that approved PTSD treatments are available now.
Specialists including a Harvard PTSD expert say the existing military and VA treatment regimens are not highly effective, but seem to do no harm.
Lipov plans to seek private sector grant monies for a study large enough to yield substantive results.
Alternative therapies that got a trial hearing from the military include providing veterans recreational and bonding time with dogs and horses, with unknown effectiveness.
The Pentagon also approved $3.75 million for a touring theater company to present plays by Sophocles and other tragedians at 50 U.S. military sites on a theory they were used to help reintegrate warriors into society.
The Greek play therapy was also inconclusive in helping PTSD.
Rediscovering San Pedro From the Outside In
By James Preston Allen, Publisher
From Joseph Wambaugh’s new police thriller, Harbor Nocturne, about a recovering Croatian longshoreman who falls in love with an illegal Mexican stripper to the San Pedro Squeeze Accordion Festival at the Grand Performances this summer in downtown Los Angeles–everybody seems to be “rediscovering San Pedro.”
Of course, the flagship of this rediscovery expedition seems to be the lauded arrival of the USS Iowa. However, the big-town media has learned how to say “Pee-dro” not “Pay-dro” as some non-Spanish often attempt to pronounce it in Spanish. Thanks to both Wambaugh and the public relations arm at the Port of Los Angeles that would prefer that everyone knows that the battleship is not owned by POLA.
Five Days of Celebration– Can we stand having another holiday?
By James Preston Allen, Publisher
By all appearances, this coming July 4thcelebration is ramping up to be one of somewhat historic significance here in the Los Angeles Harbor Area, what with the San Pedro’s First Thursday on July 5, Swing Pedro’s dance party under the moon on a closed off Sixth Street July 6, and the USS Iowa’s grand opening that weekend. On July 4 itself, all of the usual festivities that come along with our national birthday will also be celebrated. The politicians will be giving speeches at the Korean Bell, civil libertarians will read the Bill of Rights at Liberty Hill and Cabrillo Beach will host, once again, a traditional fireworks display–thank you John Olguin. All of this takes place in the context of 5,000 various barbeques, a whole lot of beer drinking and the unrestrained exuberance of illegal neighborhood fireworks– some of which have become so extensive as to compete with the “official” shows. And then two weekend days to recover.
As Americans we love celebrations, and the bigger and more spectacular the better. What of course seems to be continually lost, for the most part, is why we’re throwing the party. In our own convoluted sense of history the idea of ratifying the Declaration of Independence and the pronouncement of these principles being the guiding light of universal human rights does get lost amongst the explosions and political hubris. When you hear one of our leaders speak of American Exceptionalism, they are in part referring to this founding document as evidence of being exceptional.
However nothing in our revered document of independence is there any reference to granting “person-hood” to corporations, which was recently upheld by our conservative majority “activist” Supreme Court.
From the blog Create Real Democracy, this sentiment was posted:
“We’ll believe a corporation is a person when: Arizona deports one. Texas executes one. Massachusetts marries two of them [how do you determine if they are of the same sex?]. The U.S. government issues one a Social Security number. The CIA extradites one to Guantanamo [presumably to be water-boarded]. One sacrifices its life in military service.” Obviously a majority of our Supreme justices believe differently.
The July 4th celebration is also our official kick-off of political campaigns that end in November in election years, particularly when it’s time to elect a president. No doubt, we’ll be treated to a media smorgasbord of images of Obama and Romney eating hot dogs and speechifying at various flag-waving events. Meanwhile, as we gorge ourselves with barbeque and beer, take a look at what MoveOn.org tells us about the condition of our (dis) enfranchisement to vote:
Florida: Republican Governor Rick Scott tried to kick 180,000 people off the voter rolls in his state and is now suing the Department of Justice after they stepped in to stop him. Rick Scott’s racist voter purge, which directly targets Latino voters is so egregious that every one of the 67 supervisors of elections in the state Democrats, Republicans, and independents has so far refused to carry it out.
Ohio: Republican Governor John Kasich signed legislation to eliminate Ohio’s “Golden Week” early voting period, which had allowed for voters to register and vote on the same day and eliminated all in-person early voting on Sundays when large groups of voters, including significant pockets of Democratic-leaning African American voters, often voted together after church.
Nationwide: According to the Center for Justice, “the states that have already cut back on voting rights will provide 171 electoral votes in 2012―63 percent of the 270 needed to win the presidency” and could prevent as many as 5 million voters from exercising their right to vote.
It seems all to obvious that far more people participate in the celebration of freedom and independence than who actually practice it by voting. Which leads me to the conclusion that what is needed is a second nationwide holiday to celebrate election day with only this caveat– that you wouldn’t be admitted to the party if you didn’t have proof you voted! It is something to consider while you are stuffing your face and watching the rocket’s red glare.
Vagina-Gate — A Good Thing
By Sherry Lear, Co-Chair of Miss R*EVOLutionaries
I have a confession — “V” is my new favorite letter of the alphabet. For months, I have been wondering what it would take for the mainstream media to pay attention to the onslaught of legislative attacks on women’s reproductive health rights in this country. Never in my wildest imagination did I expect that the words “vagina” and “vasectomy” would become a wake-up call.
Summer Beers
By Michael Koger
As summer approaches and the temperatures heat up, you’re going to want a beer that will quench your thirst but not completely overwhelm you with kill your palate alcohol content. Luckily, there is a wide selection of beers and beer styles that are perfect to quaff your summer thirst.