STORY TO BE TOLD

Gus Ruelas / AP file

Poison lead singer Bret Michaels was recovering from an emergency appendectomy which he had in San Antonio, Texas, on April 12.
source: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/

Bret Michaels suffers huge brain hemorrhage
Source: Singer rushed to hospital after experiencing excruciating headache

By Anne Marie Cruz
Latest news from
updated 4:56 p.m. ET April 23, 2010

Bret Michaels's health has taken a turn for the worse, PEOPLE has learned: After an excruciating headache late Thursday night, the star was rushed to an undisclosed hospital where doctors discovered he suffered a massive subarachnoid hemorrhage (bleeding at the base of his brain stem), according to a source close to the situation.

Michaels, 47, is currently in critical condition. "After several CAT scans, MRIs and an angiogram, [doctors] decided to keep Michaels in the ICU and are running several tests to determine the cause. [It] will be touch and go for the next few days while he is under intense observation," the source says.

The rocker's latest hospital visit follows his emergency appendectomy in San Antonio, Texas, on April 12. There is no word yet whether this new development is related to the rocker's recent appendectomy or to his diabetes.

After his appendectomy, Michaels remained in the hospital under his doctors' care — then transferred to a rehab facility specializing in diabetic patients.

As he was recovering, Michaels — who was still in the running to win this season of NBC's Celebrity Apprentice — seemed to be in good spirits and updated fans on his progress.

"They told me that if I had gone on stage like I wanted to, [my appendix] likely would have ruptured and I could have died," he wrote in a note to his fans. "There is just no way around the fact that getting your appendix out HURTS. I have a pretty good threshold for pain, but this one hurts."


Bret Michaels suffers huge brain hemorrhage
Source: Singer rushed to hospital after experiencing excruciating headache

Thanks to Buddy, firefighters got to the scene in time to save the Heinrichs home.
source: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/

By Mike Celizic
TODAYshow.com contributor
updated 9:12 a.m. ET April 23, 2010

It’s not just people who have to be tough and resourceful to live in Alaska; even the pets have to be made of sterner stuff. After all, those woods are full of bears and wolves and moose.

Enter Buddy, a German shepherd who lives in Caswell Lakes, Alaska, considerably north of Anchorage, with his best friend, a 23-year-old human named Ben Heinrichs, and Ben’s parents, Lynnette and Thomas Heinrichs.

Buddy is the star of a 1-minute video shot on a state trooper’s dashcam, and it’s one of the most amazing things you’ve seen this side of the old “Lassie” and “Rin Tin Tin” TV shows and films. Except this wasn’t a movie, and Buddy wasn’t taking cues from trainers off-camera.

‘Get help’
Ben lives with his family in an area of winding country roads. On April 4, he was working in a workshop in a shed when a heater touched off a fire fueled by chemicals in the shop.

According to the Anchorage Daily News, Ben, who suffered minor flash burns on his face, fled the shop and slammed the door to confine the flames. Realizing that Buddy was still inside, Ben went back in to rescue his pet.

When he got Buddy outside, he told the dog, “We need to get help.”

That’s pretty much what TV’s Timmy used to say: “Lassie, go get help!” And, like the star collie, Buddy took the advice to heart and took off running.

The Daily News reported that Ben initially thought Buddy may have run off to hide. The dog is rather shy, according to the family.

Instead, Buddy was actually looking for help. The dog dashed off and down the road, looking for someone — anyone — to help.

Lost trooper
Meanwhile, neighbors has seen the fireball erupting on the Heinrichs' property and called the state police. Trooper Terrence Shanigan was dispatched to check it out, but his GPS froze up on him, and he was semi-lost in the twisting rural roads and about to take a turn in the wrong direction when he saw a dog in the road.

The dog was our hero, Buddy. When Buddy saw the trooper’s car, he turned and started running back home.

Shanigan’s dashcam caught it all. A German shepherd takes off running down partially snow-covered roads, but keeps looking over his shoulder to make sure the car is keeping up.

Buddy sprints along for about a minute in a black-and-white landscape, the only things visible being what is illuminated by the police car’s lights. Finally, the dog takes one last turn. As Shanigan turns with the dog, his windshield lights up with a bright yellow ball of fire that used to be the Heinrichs’ workshed.

When Shanigan got out of his car, Buddy jumped up and made sure the trooper continued to the house. Then, according to the newspaper, Buddy retreated into the woods, seeing that his work as done.

A hero’s reward
Shanigan was able to guide fire trucks to the scene, in time for firefighters to save the Heinrich’s home. The workshop was a total loss.

"Buddy's valiant actions saved Trooper Shanigan valuable time in responding to the fire," the Daily News quotes Alaska State Police Director Col. Audie Holloway as saying. "Buddy's pluckiness is a bright spot among an otherwise tragic event for the Heinrichs family."

In recognition of Buddy’s Lassie-like heroism, the dog and his best friends were to be at state police headquarters in Anchorage Friday afternoon, where Buddy will be honored for his heroism.

He’ll even get a prize — a silver-plated dog bowl engraved with his exploit.

He’ll probably be more impressed if there’s a fresh steak in it.

The Associated Press contributed reporting to this story.

source taken from: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/

Vall d'Hebron Hospital via AP
source: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/
In this combo of computer-generated images, the various steps undertaken to perform a full-face transplant on a young male patient in late March 2010 are graphically illustrated.

First total face transplant performed in Spain
The patient, a farmer in his 30s, accidentally shot himself in 2005
updated 12:25 p.m. ET April 23, 2010

MADRID - A hospital in Spain says it has carried out the world's first full-face transplant, giving a man a new nose, skin, jaws, cheekbones, teeth and other features after he lost his face in an accident.

Other transplant experts lauded the surgery but were not sure it could technically be called 'full-face.'

The operation was carried out by a 30-member medical team in late March and took 24 hours to perform, according to the Vall d'Hebron Hospital in Barcelona.

The patient now has a completely new face from his hairline down and only one visible scar, which looks like a wrinkle running across his neck, said Dr. Joan Pere Barret, the surgeon who led the team.

"If you look him in the face, you see a normal person, like anyone else we have as a patient in the hospital," Barret told The Associated Press on Friday.

Barret declined to name the patient or give details of the accident five years ago in which the man lost most of his face, saying only that he was a Spaniard between 20 and 40 years old and was recovering well. The man cannot yet speak, eat or smile, but can see and swallow saliva, the surgeon said.

Prior to the latest surgery, the patient had undergone surgery nine times and could only breathe and be fed through tubes. He also had problems speaking.

In Britain, the UK Facial Transplantation Research Team called the Spanish operation "the most complex face transplantation operation there has probably been in the world to date." It stopped short, however, of calling it the world's first full-face transplant.

Barret said the operation involved removing what was left of the man's face and giving him a replacement "in one piece."

"It is a little bit like the movie with John Travolta and Nicolas Cage," he said, referring to the 1997 thriller "Face/Off", in which Travolta undergoes a high-tech medical procedure to acquire the villain Cage's appearance and infiltrate his terrorist gang.

"He is coming along well. He sits up, he walks in his hospital room and he watches television," Barret said.

Barret said there have been 10 partial-face transplant operations carried out in the world so far but this was the first involving a person's whole face. The world's first partial-face transplant was done on a woman in France in 2005. Other partial-face operations have been performed in the United States and China, as well as in other Spanish hospitals in Valencia and Seville.

The Spanish operation is similar to a near-total face transplant carried out in 2008 in Cleveland, Ohio, on a woman who was shot in the face.

But the Spanish case "seems to us to be more complex," said Neil Huband, a spokesman for the British transplant research team, based at the Royal Free Hospital in London.

He said the patient in Spain had also been shot in the face.

Dr. Maria Siemionow, who operated on the woman in Ohio, said the Spanish team had done great work. But a diagram she says she has seen about the Spanish surgery does not make clear that the team replaced the man's whole face, leaving doubts about his eyelids and jaw, she told the AP.

"It would probably be much more safer for the Barcelona team to say near-total," Siemionow said.

source taken from: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/