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John-
Thanks for posting the info/science articles. They give me
hope-just the medicine I need on a rainy day during this
gloomiest time of year. As a former R.N., I used to keep up
with the journals/most of the latest research, but I have
gotten lazy. I know Maryse and some of the others do a fine
job posting research articles. Would you be adverse to me
doing the same thing? I promise to keep Elorac's antics on
the Sparkle list. :)
Carole Hercun

--- John Cottingham
<[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> The source of this article is Pilot Online:
> http://tinyurl.com/9f63q
>
> Former Navy nurse takes advocacy for patients to the FDA
> By JANETTE RODRIGUES, The Virginian-Pilot
> � January 28, 2006
> Last updated: 12:13 AM
>
>
> CHESAPEAKE � Katherine Decker had one goal when she was
a
> girl growing up
> dirt poor on a Georgia farm: Make her parents proud by
> getting good-enough
> grades to go to college and become a doctor.
>
> The summer after her freshman year in college, she worked
> as a nurse�s
> assistant, seeing first hand who the real caregivers are
> in medicine.
>
> �Doctors are only there for five or 10 minutes,� she
> said, sitting in the
> sun room of her Western Branch home. �And if you
don�t
> have a good nurse
> telling the doctor what is going on with that patient,
> the patient will
> suffer.�
>
> Decker cared for patients as a registered nurse, nursing
> school professor
> and longtime director of the nursing program at
> Portsmouth City Public
> Schools. Now she�s caring for them as a Parkinson�s
> disease patient
> advocate for a new Food and Drug Administration program.
>
> She�s one of only three people nationally selected for
> the role.
>
> Decker comes to her new job with a rare perspective. In
> 1993, she was
> diagnosed with Parkinson�s.
>
> The FDA believes the program, mirrored after ones for
> cancer patients, will
> help bring better and safer Parkinson�s drugs to
market.
>
> Parkinson�s has no cure. It is a chronic, progressive
> neurological disease
> that affects 500,000 people in America. It causes
> tremors, loss of motion
> and facial expression, impaired balance and coordination
> and sometimes
> dementia.
>
> �I have a mind that is active, but a body that is slow
to
> react,� said
> Decker, who uses a rolling walker. �Parkinson�s has
been
> a part of my life
> for so long. It really changes things., and frustrations
> occur.�
>
> When a pharmaceutical company applies for FDA approval of
> a drug, Decker
> will be among those who ensure that patients in clinical
> trials have a
> chance to weigh in while the medication is in
> development.
>
> This wasn�t always the case, she said. She and two
other
> Parkinson�s
> patients, a former business magazine editor and a
> clinical psychologist,
> were chosen by the federal agency last year.
>
> The patient consultants, all volunteers, will advise the
> FDA and drug
> companies on how to improve things like clinical trials .
> The federal
> agency provides the patient consultants with rigorous
> training that
> includes frequent teleconferences and a lot of reading.
>
> Decker, a former Navy nurse, taught practical nursing to
> Portsmouth for 35
> years. She loved it, seeing students go through the
> program and mature into
> licensed practical and registered nurses .
>
> Toward the end of her career, after she was diagnosed,
> she kept her
> condition to herself. When she went to Norfolk Sentara
> General to have a
> brain stimulator installed a few years ago, she ran into
> one of her
> students. The student had no idea she had Parkinson�s.
>
> But the disease has progressed . Her husband of 39 years,
> Richard, has
> assumed the role that was once her�s � caregiver.
>
> �Personally, I never really thought he would be able to
> do what he does,�
> she said, smiling. �He�s wonderful.�
>
> Parkinson�s doesn�t run in Decker�s family. She
didn�t
> know what was
> happening to her when she noticed an odd swelling on the
> right side of her
> body, from head to foot, while she was attending a state
> health occupations
> conference in 1993.
>
> She does have her suspicions. In March 1993, she began
> the first of three
> hepatitis B vaccinations. In few months later, she
> experienced tremors on
> her right side and difficulty writing.
>
> Two weeks later, she was in a neurologist�s office.
>
> �At the time, we didn�t make the connection with the
> vaccinations,� Decker
> said. �But if you look at the fine print on the
hepatitis
> B vaccination, it
> says �neurological symptoms.�
>
> She believes a patient consultant could have questioned
> the drug company
> and FDA about the little know side effect to the popular
> vaccination.
>
>
> Reach Janette Rodrigues at (757) 222-5208 or
> [log in to unmask]
>
>
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