Sunday, July 28, 2019
Austintown doctor Dinah Fedyna was diagnosed with deadly ALS a year ago, and has a message for anyone dealing with symptoms doctors can't diagnose: “Be your own advocate. Read new things. Question tests. Even great doctors miss things.” Fedyna monitored her own symptoms for 15 months and visited various doctors before receiving the correct diagnosis of bulbar-onset amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and her persistence led her to a treatment that has prolonged her life, even as the disease has taken her ability to speak. But she is mobile. can exercise and garden, can drive her 17-year-old daughter Natalia to swim practice, and has learned to communicate through her cell phone and an E-tablet. She and her family also have learned in living with the uncertainty of the disease that time is precious and not to be wasted. Meanwhile, friends and colleagues have set up a scholarship in Dinah’s name for NEOMED students studying family medicine. Renee Brumbaugh of Warren was its first recipient June 4.
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources said last week it ordered Kinsman Lakelands Association to hire an engineer to study the ability of Kinsman Lake and the association’s Kinsman Dam to hold back flood waters and to make certain repairs in 2016, the agency confirmed Friday it conducted no follow-up. And ODNR spokesman Eric Heis told The Vindicator the reason was that the problems the agency found didn’t threaten the “safety of life, health or property of others.” He also suggested that the large amount of rain the area received is to blame for washing out part of the dam and cutting off the Lakelands neighborhood from its only access road. His remarks are similar to what Association President Skip LaPlante said Thursday and Friday. Even people in their 80s have never seen anything like the July 21 rain, which measured about about 7 inches in 24 hours, LaPlante said. “I saw it. It had nothing to do with the dam,” he said.
The Mahoning Valley Amateur Radio Association is celebrating its centennial this year. The association was founded in 1919, and is one of the oldest amateur radio organizations in the world. A dinner is planned for October for association members and some other club enthusiasts. Amateur radio, also called ham radio, can take the form of a hand-held transmitter similar to a walkie-talkie, a mobile unit for a car or other vehicle or a base station with an outdoor antenna used for local or long distance communications. The radios can contact people across the world through radio waves – no internet or wires required.
Association members provide support for the National Weather Service Sky Warn program, provide communications for local events and are trained and licensed to provide communication among first responders in the event of a disaster.
Two local foundations have funds available for charitable projects focused on the health and well-being of residents in Mahoning and Trumbull counties. Letters of inquiry are due Aug. 16 for the community health grant programs for both the Western Reserve Health Foundation and Trumbull Memorial Health Foundation. Full applications are due Sept. 27. Strong proposals will address underlying social and economic challenges contributing to poor health outcomes, extend past individual behavior or program-related services by modifying policies, systems and environments and demonstrate collaboration among sectors.
Lena Cooper has told reporters, police and others multiple times that she doesn’t believe her niece, Bresha Meadows, killed Jonathan Meadows Sr. in the family’s Hunter Street home in 2016. Now she’s offering a $5,000 reward with the hope that someone will come forward and tell what they know. Jonathan Meadows was Cooper’s brother and Bresha’s father. Bresha, 14 at the time of her father’s death and now 17 and a high school graduate, pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in his shooting death, and served about a year in Trumbull County Juvenile Justice Center, then six months in a Cleveland mental health facility before being released back home with her mother in early 2018. Cooper said after viewing the videotaped interviews police conducted with the people in the home that night left her with many questions.
For more details on these and other news and sports, subscribe to The Vindicator by calling 330-746-6561 or visit Vindy.com