Thyroid Cancer

It's hard not to like Jessie Gemerek's competitive spirit. The Gloucester Catholic junior softball star has 28 hits and has scored 13 runs this season to go along with a .444 batting average and an on-base percentage of .541. The leftfielder also has 81 career hits, a lofty number for just a third-year player. All those accomplishments pale when compared to her greatest achievement. The 17-year-old beat thyroid cancer. "I just tried to stay upbeat," Gemerek said of her six-month recovery.

Moose's men had vanished behind a wall of flame. On the industrial riverbank of Chester, a block-long warehouse roared with explosions and spewed noxious smoke. Fireballs somersaulted through its caving roof. Inside and out, stacked rows of rusting drums roasted in the heat. They swelled up fat, then blew and hurtled like 55-gallon missiles, spraying foul liquids. Staggering from the warehouse, retching and gasping for air, came Vincent "Moose" McLaughlin, 38, a tall, rugged fire captain revered by the men he now feared were lost.

Mechthild Schmid Sawallisch, 77, wife of Philadelphia Orchestra music director Wolfgang Sawallisch, died on the morning of Christmas Eve near her home in Grassau, Germany. Sawallisch had been recovering from treatment for thyroid cancer since summer, but a sudden decline forced her husband to rush her to a hospital in the nearby town of Traunstein, the Orchestra announced yesterday. Sawallisch was a friendly and gracious presence, always at her husband's side. Their relationship was unique, for she acted as his confidante, musical critic and companion.

We've been nuked. And tens of thousands of us may develop thyroid cancer as a result of fallout from nuclear weapons testing in Nevada in the 1950s, federal health officials said yesterday. Every man, woman and child born before the 1960s was hit by radioactive fallout wafting across the country from blasts at the Nevada Test Site, the National Cancer Institute said. But compared to some places, the Philadelphia area got off easy. Levels of fallout here were lower than the average dose across the country, while parts of Montana and Idaho took the heaviest hits.

Mark DiUbaldo plays for a Radnor football team that rarely wins, but that does not matter most to the Raiders' junior center. That he plays at all is the most important thing for a 16-year-old who sat out last season after learning he had thyroid cancer. "I watch him out there and I get choked up," said Sam DiUbaldo, Mark's father and a Radnor assistant coach. "It makes me cry. I'm real proud of him. " DiUbaldo expected to play last season, but a nagging back injury from freshman lacrosse would not go away.

When Frances Steele of Malvern found out she had cancer nearly three years ago, she was drinking coffee, eating sugar and consuming a lot of meat. After surgery, she underwent radiation treatment to try to keep the thyroid cancer from spreading. But it ended up in her lungs. A friend gave her a book about diet and cancer, and she followed its advice. When she last returned to her doctor, she said, he wondered why the cancer had not grown. "When I go back in September, it will be gone," said Steele, 56, who is convinced that she will win her battle against the disease.