Cystic Fibrosis

They ran, jumped, shot, pulled, hit, yelled, pained and strained on Saturday at Villanova's football stadium. It wasn't for the Olympic gold but for cystic fibrosis, and their efforts netted $45,000 for the organization. "The real winner today is cystic fibrosis," said Harold "Spike" Yoh of Bryn Mawr, chief executive officer of Day & Zimmerman Inc., sponsor of the second Day & Zimmerman Sports Challenge. A total of 36 corporations from around the Philadelphia area sponsored teams of 10 men and women to compete in six events: tug of war, obstacle course, basketball shoot, softball throw, relay race and standing long jump.

Anne Rachael McFarland, 19, 1972 poster child for the Delaware Valley Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, died yesterday at St. Christopher's Hospital for Children in Philadelphia. Miss McFarland, of Willingboro, received John F. Kennedy High School's Distinguished Achievement Award upon her graduation in 1987. "She was a real plugger, despite the breathing handicap," her father, Harry W. McFarland, said last night of his daughter, who was a member of the high school varsity tennis team.

Jim Wilson describes himself as "an adrenaline junkie. " It began with motocross racing when he was a teenager. Later in life, he became a mountain and ice climber, scaling peaks all over the world. "I really liked ice climbing," Wilson says. "It's like doing a dance with ice. The ice is always changing and different. " In 2009, realizing that he was courting more fatal risks, Wilson quit climbing and turned to mountain biking, which he had taken up in the mid-1990s to reform his body.

The comedian Kenneth Keith Kallenbach died of complications from cystic fibrosis, according to an autopsy report released yesterday by the Delaware County medical examiner. Kallenbach, 39, was best known as a member of the "Wack Pack" on Howard Stern's radio show. He suffered from the inherited disease and died April 24 at Riddle Memorial Hospital after being transferred from the George W. Hill Correctional Facility in Thornbury, where he had been held since mid-March. After an autopsy in April, the medical examiner said further investigation was needed to determine the cause of death.

A little more than two years ago, I stood at my friend's bedside and urged her to hang on. Medical researchers were about to find the gene causing cystic fibrosis, I told her - maybe in just a couple of years. After all, they had isolated the chromosome. But Nellie shook her head. She knew she wouldn't make it - and she didn't. Now she's missing the fanfare, as are countless others. I didn't realize when I first was diagnosed that cystic fibrosis killed people. I was only 4 years old. Last week, I read a report that the gene had been isolated.

Ilene Hollin likes to zap her teammates and coaches with one-liners and jokes. Then, when the laughter dies down, she awes them with spellbinding desire and determination. Hollin, a Plymouth-Whitemarsh junior, is not the fastest player on the Colonials' lacrosse and field hockey teams. She is not the strongest or most talented. She may be the most inspiring, though. Hollin has cystic fibrosis, a disorder of the lungs and digestive system, but her teammates and coaches say they can't tell by the way she plays and practices.

A new genetically engineered drug is able to chop up the thick mucus that clogs the lungs of cystic fibrosis patients, making it easier for them to breathe. Researchers, in today's New England Journal of Medicine, say the experimental drug might help extend the life of cystic fibrosis patients, who usually die of respiratory complications by their late 20s. The drug is one of several new treatments being tested for cystic fibrosis - the most common fatal inherited disease in the country, affecting about 30,000 people.

Sometime this spring, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania plan to squirt a liquid containing a common cold virus into the lungs of cystic fibrosis patients. This might seem foolhardy, considering how dangerous colds can be for someone with this deadly lung disease. In this case, though, the scientists will have tinkered with the virus so it won't really cause colds. Instead, it will be used to carry healthy copies of the cystic fibrosis gene into the patients' lungs.

Now in his 10th season as an NFL quarterback, Boomer Esiason has regained the proficiency of his Pro Bowl years to shoot down rumors that he is all washed up. Esiason's good left arm, which supposedly had lost its strength and touch a month ago, has accounted for five touchdowns in taking the New York Jets to a 2-1 record heading into Sunday's matchup at the Meadowlands with the Eagles (3-0). Esiason has the NFL's highest completion percentage, 72.3, and average gain per pass, 9.67 yards.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania began gene therapy treatment yesterday on a 32-year-old woman with cystic fibrosis. The treatment marks the first time human gene therapy has been tried in the Philadelphia area. The woman, who is from South Jersey, is the fourth person with cystic fibrosis to undergo gene therapy treatment in the United States. Scientists are excited about the prospect of gene therapy because it means it may be possible, for the first time, to find a cure for deadly hereditary diseases such as cystic fibrosis by correcting genetic defects in the body's cells.

Jim Wilson describes himself as "an adrenaline junkie. " It began with motocross racing when he was a teenager. Later in life, he became a mountain and ice climber, scaling peaks all over the world. "I really liked ice climbing," Wilson says. "It's like doing a dance with ice. The ice is always changing and different. " In 2009, realizing that he was courting more fatal risks, Wilson quit climbing and turned to mountain biking, which he had taken up in the mid-1990s to reform his body.

IT WAS the day she had longed to see, one that for years seemed likely to elude her as she battled cystic fibrosis. But Ashley Owens had just received a double-lung transplant, in November 2009. The organs had been donated by a young boxer, Francisco "Paco" Rodriquez, who had died of head injuries at the Blue Horizon. The operation gave her the ability to breathe again without obstruction and enabled her last June 25 to walk down the aisle and exchange vows with Jesse Quinter at Blue Falls Grove in Reading.

Shelley DeLaurentis gets a little annoyed every time she's asked how she and husband Michael coped with what Shelley refers to as their double whammy - two of their three children suffering from life-threatening diseases. In particular, caring for the youngest, cancer-stricken Susanna, until the inevitable end. The question suggests they had an alternative. Of course, no parent ever does. "I never really dwelled on it," says Shelley, 62, a slight woman with a no-nonsense haircut and a familiar demeanor.

"The Mayor of CHOP is back in office," Chris Nestler posted on Facebook. The mayor would be his son, Conner, 19, who has been coming to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia so long, so often, you'd think they'd at least give him a room with a flat-screen TV to watch the baseball playoffs. Children's did get the NFL channel since his last visit in June. Sitting in his hospital room Wednesday, watching the Phillies, ordering takeout wings with the nurses, Conner looked like a normal sports fan, albeit one who flushes his own IV as if he were Conner Nestler, M.D. After the first three batters in the top of the first inning, Conner said, "This is going to be a long game for St. Louis.

By Mike Hoyt A few years ago, my old boss David Laventhol had an extended conversation with Rupert Murdoch about newspapers. It was after some sort of big-deal journalism dinner, and they talked long after the tired waiters wished they'd go. David had a storied career in newspapers. He helped invent the Style section of the Washington Post when he was a young editor there. He was editor and publisher of Newsday, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, and president of Times Mirror, finishing his career with me at the Columbia Journalism Review.

When Francisco "Paco" Rodriguez died of head injuries in a 2009 bout at the Blue Horizon, his wife Sonia signed an authorization form that permitted seven of his organs to be used for transplants. Ultimately, that courageous stroke of a pen by a grieving widow saved the lives of five people. With the help the Philadelphia-based Gift of Life Donor Program, Sonia wrote four of the recipients a letter (the fifth had been a family member). In it, she described the abiding love Paco had for her and their baby daughter and said she hoped one day they could meet.

Blessed by Paco: Five survivors cherish gifts of life from boxer DEATH WAS NEAR. They told her that. Chances were it could be weeks - perhaps longer but not significantly unless she had a lung transplant. For years, Ashley Owens had known that she would not live to be 30 or even 25, that cystic fibrosis would sweep her away one day before she would have a chance to have a career or a wedding or children. It was a given she had come to accept. But now that she was coughing up blood and was in what her doctors called the "the end stages," the sudden finality of her circumstances terrified her. All of it seemed to be happening too soon.

Brian McTear is haunted by the time he almost met his best friend, the person he came to call his "soul mate," Bobby Wolter. It happened in the meat section of the Thriftway in Fishtown, up on Aramingo. Brian never uttered a word to Bobby about that day, but he finally wrote a confessional on his blog in August: I knew it was you, because you were dressed in the same clothes as your Myspace photo at the time . . . and you had on an Urban Outfitters shirt (. . . which I figure only an Urban Outfitters employee would be caught dead in, right?

Samantha Marie Grosse, 22, of Lansdale, a senior at the University of Florida, died Monday at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center in Philadelphia after an 18-year battle with cystic fibrosis. Miss Grosse was at the center for treatment when she was found unconscious overnight in the bathroom inside her room, said her father, Jeffrey C. Grosse. Autopsy results were withheld pending laboratory tests, said Jeff Moran, spokesman for the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office. Spokeswoman Kim Guenther said that under hospital policy, any "unexpected death" is handled by the medical examiner.

The comedian Kenneth Keith Kallenbach died of complications from cystic fibrosis, according to an autopsy report released yesterday by the Delaware County medical examiner. Kallenbach, 39, was best known as a member of the "Wack Pack" on Howard Stern's radio show. He suffered from the inherited disease and died April 24 at Riddle Memorial Hospital after being transferred from the George W. Hill Correctional Facility in Thornbury, where he had been held since mid-March. After an autopsy in April, the medical examiner said further investigation was needed to determine the cause of death.