MMA Is Steady Voice of Courage
By: Tim Homa
“I have outlived my prognosis of six months by seven and a half years because I am able to travel through your service,” said Alice.
Alice, 55, uses Mercy Medical Airlift to fly from her home in Ohio to Arkansas, where she receives treatment at the Winthrop Rockefeller Cancer Center. In 2002, after a series of physical problems and the task of caring for her mother who had suffered three strokes, she was diagnosed with nonsecretory multiple myeloma. This is a rare variation of multiple myeloma, a cancer of the plasma cells in bone marrow. With nonsecretory multiple myeloma, the body fails to secrete a protein, and the bone marrow looks normal, allowing the myeloma to travel through the bones undetected.
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A rare disease can dim the human spark but in the case of three Chesapeake, Virginia brothers suffering from RP, or retinitis pigmentosa, the smiles are radiant. Ryan, 20, Justin, 18, and Jordan, 14, take Angel Flights every two years to Harvard Medical Center to be treated for a genetic eye disorder that gradually leads to loss of vision. The boys receive experimental treatment from the nation’s leading RP specialist, Dr. Elliott Berson.
