Area Description: From Hwy 319 to right on Hwy 98, left on Carter Rd. Property at NE corner of Carter Rd.
Daycare rooms, large stage with mezzanine seating, kitchen & dining area, 400+ shared parking spaces Convenient access to I-75, 1.2 miles west from Exit #32 (Middletown / OH-122). Highly-visible corner of Cincinnati-Dayton Rd & Lefferson Rd. Wal-Mart, Lowes, Kohl's, Meijer, Kroger, Towne Mall, and several retail and dining op-tions in the immediate area.
Our organization is comprised of people committed to finding a balance between the human communities and the natural environment of Central Chile as well as the entire nation.
“We are aware of the environmental challenges involved in building a society that understands the interdependence of human beings and their environment.”
Our mission is to contribute to the development of a new society that will work together to create networks among actors concerned about environmental protection.
In Francisco Olea School our main goals are to contribute to the world wide work improving the academic family’s day-by-day habits. In addition, we would like to expand the work already done to invite more people to protect the environment and to be part of this project.
For the 9th stage of the impossible2Possible World Expedition Series a Youth Ambassador team will venture to a place where Founder Ray Zahab was pushed to the limit. In 2011 Ray ran 1200 grueling kilometers in 20 days across one of the driest and most unforgiving places on earth - the Atacama Desert in Chile! The i2P youth team will re-trace part of Ray’s expedition and run an average of a marathon per day for six consecutive days! The challenge will test their perseverance, resiliency, and dedication while they Educate, Inspire, and Empower thousands of students around the world! The i2P Youth Expedition Atacama is planned for May 2014. [br] Registration deadline: 1 Jan 2014.
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"American Idol" judge Randy Jackson lost more than 100 pounds after weight loss surgery. So did singer Carnie Wilson, weatherman Al Roker and MTV's Sharon Osbourne.
It's the kind of advertising money can't buy. But are unskilled doctors costing some patients their lives? Correspondent Harold Dow reports.
Dr. Julie Ellner is one of the country's leading bypass surgeons. She practices at the renowned Alvarado Medical Center in San Diego. And the results are dramatic.
"It never fails to touch me when a patient comes in and tells me how I changed their life," says Ellner. "I get hugs from my patients every time they come in. And a lot of doctors can't say that."
People come to Dr. Ellner when they're desperate. "They realize they're going to die early if they don't do something drastic about this," says Ellner.
And a gastric bypass is drastic. Using a laparoscope, surgeons cut and staple inside the body to re-route intestines and create a much smaller stomach.
"Your new little golf-ball size stomach is completely separated away from the old stomach, so the patients eat a very small amount of food, but they feel like they've just eaten a huge turkey dinner," says Ellner.
"I had tried everything. I had tried exercising, dieting, anything -- everything under the sun, I had done. And nothing worked," says Rachael, who decided to go to Alvarado last July to undergo gastric bypass surgery. She was one of the youngest Americans ever to do that.
"I played softball and it was getting hard, you know, out in the heat and the tournaments. And my feet weren't handling the weight well," adds Rachael. "It was awful. You know, just knowing that it got that bad. That I couldn't be mobile anymore."
"I like being able to fit into these clothes. It's really awesome. I like seeing myself in them. I'm really not that conceited. It's just weird seeing myself as how I look now, because I'm used to seeing something a lot bigger," says Rachael. "I'm just so blessed and lucky to have this - no pun intended - weight lifted off of me. It's just been great."
With results like that, it's no wonder the demand for weight-loss surgery is way up. Surgeons tell their patients they can go home from the hospital in three days, go back to work in a week, and start shedding pounds immediately.
Here's the problem: The demand is creating a gold rush, with doctors and hospitals racing to get in on this lucrative business. Surgical weight-loss centers are sprouting up all over the country -- but many of the surgeons being recruited just don't have the specific skills, experience, and training needed to perform the new procedure safely.
48 Hours Investigates found the consequences are devastating, even deadly: five dead in New England, six more in Iowa, and seven in Georgia, all within the last year and a half.
Incredibly, there is no official certification or mandatory training for weight-loss surgery, as there is for cardiology or even cosmetic surgery.
"There are a lot of training courses, where surgeons can learn how to do this in a weekend, and then go back to their home institutions and say that they're laparoscopic surgeons and try to start up a program," says Ellner. "These are some of the highest risk patients you could possibly operate on. And if you aren't appropriately trained, you could kill people."
Jane Covington has difficulty talking about her daughter, Donna Collins: "She was a great daughter. She took care of me. She took care of her father. The year that I had cancer, she was my caretaker. The year she passed away, she was still my caretaker."
At 235 pounds, Collins had hoped for a new start. But less than three weeks after laparoscopic bypass surgery at a Houston hospital, she was dead.
Right after her weight-loss surgery, she developed a deadly infection — either from undetected tears or nicks in her intestines or from leaks in her sutures.
"She never really started talking. I mean, she just never came around," says Donna's husband, David. "She never left [the hospital.]"
Her family would like to sue her surgeon, Dr. Ramesh Srungaram, but they've discovered he's been sued so often, he declared bankruptcy.
Steve Burr, 30, is a warehouse manager who lived near Houston with his wife and kids Matthew and Casey. At one time, he weighed more than 260 pounds. "I was having some health problems, always felt worn out, and wanted to try to make a better life for myself, for me and my children," says Steve.
The Burrs went to a seminar sponsored by a local hospital, Cypress Fairbanks, and Dr. Srungaram. Steve became convinced surgery would do the trick: "I was under the impression I was going to spend two days, three days max, at the hospital and then be back at work within a week after that."
At 263 pounds, Steve only barely fit the profile of an appropriate candidate for surgery. His insurance company wouldn't cover it, but Steve would not be dissuaded. He decided to "get some loans off some credit cards to finance the surgery."
"I wanted him to have this great life that they promised. And it was the total opposite," recalls Denise.
Within 24 hours, Steve says he was in critical condition: "At some point, my kidneys shut down and my lungs collapsed. And they told my wife I only had a 5 percent chance to live."
During Steve's surgery, a serious mistake was made -- his intestines were nicked, allowing a toxic mix of acids, enzymes and waste to leak into his body. Srungaram rushed Steve back into the operating room to fix the damage, but he only got worse.
"After, I think, the second or third surgery, they said he probably wouldn't make it," recalls Denise, who fired Dr. Srungaram. "I just screamed at him, 'Are you trying to kill my husband?' And he started out of there as fast as he could. And I never saw him again."
Other doctors were called in, and three months later, Steve was finally able to go home. Steve says he ended up having a total of six surgeries. But to add insult to injury, his mounting medical bills – almost a million dollars, just in medical -- left the family bankrupt.
The Burrs had no way of knowing, but it turns out that two months before Steve's operation, Cypress Fairbanks hospital had temporarily suspended Srungaram's privileges -- because of concern about his high complication rate.
Then, two months later, right after the disaster with Burr's case, the hospital forced Srungaram to resign. But that didn't stop him from moving to another hospital, Highland Medical Center, in Lubbock, Texas.
Just six weeks after Steve Burr's surgery, Kaye Parsley, 41, got her gastric bypass from Dr. Srungaram.
"I talked to one of the nurses, and she said, 'We need to pray.' And I'll never forget those words,'" says Parsley, who was one of four women Dr. Srungaram operated on during a two-day period in Lubbock.
All four women developed major complications, and were removed from Srungaram's care and rushed to another hospital for emergency treatment. One of the women died; Parsley survived.
"I thanked God I was alive, because I had at that time a 3-year-old boy waiting for me at home," says Parsley. "All I could think of was getting back to him."
Now, Parsley says she still has trouble breathing, and memory loss: "I'm angry about what happened to me, and what makes me more angry, is that he's still performing surgeries out there."
Parsley is one of two-dozen former patients, including the families of four people who died, who sued Srungaram and the hospitals where he performed surgery.
"These people were desperate for surgery. And they fell into the trap," says Richard Mithoff, a Houston lawyer who represents 22 of Srungaram's patients.
Mithoff, however, says greedy hospitals are as much to blame as the doctor himself: "The real culprit in our view is the corporate hospital that continues to recruit third-rate physicians to do complicated surgery."
Last fall, after a year long investigation, the Texas Board of Medical Examiners determined that Dr. Srungaram failed to practice medicine in an acceptable professional manner.
He was fined $25,000, placed on probation for seven and a half years, and required, among other things, to have another doctor observe him for his next 100 weight-loss surgeries. But incredibly, he still has a license to practice medicine.
"I'm not a butcher. I never intentionally killed anybody," says Srungaram, who is addressing these allegations publicly for the first time. "Anytime anybody dies, it hurts like hell. It stings to your heart, you know? You are the cause of it. And everybody who has a complication or loss of life, I feel real sorry for them. But just part of the business."
But Srungaram admits he's better now than he used to be: "There is a learning curve. There is. In the beginning, it takes a little while to get used to it."
And that conclusion underscores the latest clinical findings – that complication rates go way down after a surgeon has done 100 of these cases.
Two weeks after 48 Hours met Steve and Denise Burr, they settled their lawsuit against Dr. Srungaram and Cypress Fairbanks Hospital. The dollar amount of the settlement is undisclosed, but it may approach $8 million.
However, it's a small consolation. "I went into this thinking this is going to give me a better life. I still chronically have pains every day. I'm in just as bad shape as I was when I went in for surgery," says Steve Burr.
"I can't sit down and play with my kids. I still have an open wound after a year and a half from surgery in my stomach. Nothing can justify any of that. Nothing ever will."
Former Chicago Bears player and head coach Mike Ditka, right, listens as former NFL player Brent Boyd, left, testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, June 26, 2007.
There is an old expression about NFL players: When you sign a pro football contract, you sign away your right to be middle-aged.
Many NFL players seem to drift overnight from being robust young men in their 20s and 30s to appearing staggered and elderly once they hit their 40s.
This isn't about superficial appearance, of arthritic knuckles or the altered gait that comes with age. It's about the long-term effects of brain injury and concussions. As William C. Rhoden wrote in The New York Times, "The legion of retired players has become a haunting presence for the National Football League and especially for the N.F.L. Players Association, which keeps one foot in and one foot out of the retired players' lives."
The health consequences of high-impact sports is not just an issue for old timers. Increasing numbers of present-day players are reckoning with the short- and long-term consequences of concussions and cranial trauma. This is partly because there is far more research and awareness about concussive injury. But the game is changing: Players today are bigger, stronger and faster than even ten years ago. In 1989, fewer than ten players weighed more than 300 pounds. Now there are more than 450. Washington Redskins safety Sean Taylor weighs 235 pounds and runs forty yards in less than 4.5 seconds. His job as safety is to do more than protect his defensive backs: It's to find people with the ball and with his scary combination of speed and power, remove their senses from their body. So the issue of possible trauma is not just for players who retired long ago.
This hit home when retired Philadelphia Eagles safety Andre Waters committed suicide in 2006 at the age of 44. The coroner's report revealed that Waters had the brain tissue of an 85-year-old man in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease. Waters's horror story is only one of many. And the tragedy of the walking wounded was on full display this week in the halls of Congress, where a hearing was held regarding the condition of NFL vets.
Rep. Linda Sánchez, D-Calif., chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law, set the tone early on, observing that the NFL was a "billion-dollar industry and yet the players who built the league are too often left to fend for themselves."
Central to the hearing was former Chicago Bears Head Coach Mike Ditka, who said, "I just think that to go back and pick up these people and take care of them is not that big a problem. It's right versus wrong, period."
But it's not so simple. A group of NFL vets have seized upon this atmosphere in recent weeks to reframe the debate from what the game owes these players to what the NFL Players Association — the union — is not doing for those retired with injuries. Led by Hall of Famers Ditka and Joe DeLamielleure, their push has been for the removal of NFLPA President Gene Upshaw. A movement that should be advocating for the rights of retired players is beginning to look like a move to discredit and weaken the union, while the owners kick back and allow the carnage to proceed.
Let's start with Ditka. It's hard to take him seriously as an advocate for labor rights, when you recall he crossed the picket line in the 1987 strike. For all Iron Mike's "man of the people" posturing, he has the labor credentials of Sam Walton.
"It is the old divide-and-conquer move and, bluntly put, Ditka and his buddies are company men who never supported the union and were scabs when we struck," former NFL West Coast head — and former player — Dave Meggyesy told me.
Former Bears safety Dave Duerson, who played under Ditka for seven seasons, could hardly stifle his laughter upon hearing that Ditka was now deeply concerned for players' rights.
"Mike was not one who gave a damn about the players or their injuries when he was coaching," Duerson said in an interview with the Chicago Tribune. "He was very disrespectful of guys who got hurt and now he's trying to champion for a couple of guys. The fact of the matter is he's way off-base and he's late in the game."
This is why it is difficult to stomach Ditka when, playing for the cameras, he brings up the issue of players damaged by the game. At one presser earlier this year he told the unbearable story of Mike Webster, the Hall of Fame center for the Pittsburgh Steelers who suffered from mental illness widely attributed to head injuries. Webster died homeless in 2002.
"I can't tell you today if Mike Webster would've been alive today," Ditka said. "I don't know. But I do know he wouldn't have been a damn street person. I know his family wouldn't have had to sue to get his benefits. It's not right. It's just not."
But Duerson, despite his consistent criticism of Ditka, believes more needs to be done for retired players, and they are going to have to organize to get it.
"I tell retired players, 'Come into their meeting 200 strong, you'll get whatever you want,'" Duerson said. "That's the only way these current players are going to come to realize, 'That's our brotherhood and we're very soon going to be there.'"
The union's track record on retired players under Upshaw is far better than one may think based on the coverage. As NFLPA President Troy Vincent pointed out to me, the last collective bargaining agreement saw pensions for players who retired before 1982 increased 25 percent. After 1982, they went up 10 percent.
DeLamielleure says that nothing has changed "in twenty years," but for people disabled by the game has seen annual benefits rise from $48,000 to $224,000. For non-football injuries, the rates have gone from $9,000 per year in 1982 to $134,000 by 2000.
Upshaw "has done an excellent job," NFL player Mike Minter said to ESPN. "You've got a lot of older guys who are hurting and it seems like we're not taking care of them. But where we started, when the man took the job, to where we are today, it's unbelievable. For anybody to say that this guy is not doing a great job, doesn't know."
In other words, the union's efforts are stronger than Ditka and DeLamielleure would have us believe. It raises the question posed by Meggyesy, about who benefits from attacking the union. The anti-union posture was on full display from DeLamielleure this past week. Upshaw told the press that he wanted to "wring his neck," an idiotic and impolitic thing to say.
But DeLamielleure's response conveys a great deal more. "At first, I was angry... but then reality sets in," said. "My wife was petrified. We grew up in Detroit. You know what unions are. You hear about it. She goes, 'Hey, this guy is a head of a union, a powerful union, [and] when he makes a threat like that, you'd better take it serious.'"
Yes, Tank Johnson and Sage Rosenfels are going to show up outside DeLamielleure's house for a good old-fashioned Detroit union beat down. Upshaw's "threat" made him look foolish. DeLamielleure's response — and partnership with Iron Mike, make him look like someone who would rather take down the union than fight for the rights of retired players.
Instead of current and former players fighting over finite revenue, maybe the owners should kick in. In February, before he turned his attention completely to Upshaw, Ditka told a story about trying to raise money for Gridiron Greats Assistance Fund, the charity to aid infirm players. As the AP reported, "he sent letters to the 32 NFL owners asking for the same donation some time ago, he said he received one check for $5,000 and another for $10,000. He said he sent those checks back." But this has not been the target of Ditka's new crusade. It's hard to see how a divided union will help achieve goals for any players, past or present.