A Little Good News

[kygirl]

High School Wrestler With Down Syndrome Finishes His Final Season Totally Undefeated

 

Cedric Lehky is a force to be reckoned with.

 

Cedric was first invited to join his wrestling team when he was in eighth grade. Although Cedric has Down syndrome, he performs with as much ability as his teammates — and many of them say they couldn’t be a team without him.

 

Fellow wrestler Aaron Hertel says Cedric is “a big part of this team. When our morale is at the lowest when we are cutting weight, you know, our energy is at its lowest, he brings us up.”

 

But Cedric isn’t just a morale booster on his team – he’s also an incredible wrestler. When he won his last match on January 12, 2018, it was his final win in an undefeated season.

 

Even fans of the opposing team cheered for Cedric as he finished his impressive season.

 

While Cedric is considered a bit of a celebrity at school, his mom, Jeanette Brinkley, says he’s so much more than that. She says Cedric’s amazing accomplishments “give hope to any other parent with special needs [children]. He does everything that everyone else would do, and I just never had any expectations that [weren’t] well exceeded, and it’s beyond amazing.”

[kygirl]

Arizona Trooper Pulls Unconscious 3�� Pound Man From Car Seconds Before Train Hits It

 

An Arizona Department of Public Safety trooper has been credited with saving a man's life after he dragged an unresponsive 300lb driver out of a car that was hit by a train seconds later.

[kygirl]

Anonymous NFL Player Donates Bone Marrow To Stranger

A Kansas City man received life-changing bone marrow from an anonymous NFL player, and now he's heading to the Super Bowl to meet him for the first time. After years of aches and pains, chemo treatments and visits to the doctor, Roy Coe remembers the day a donor came forward for a bone marrow transplant.

For two years after the transplant, Coe often wondered who the donor was. On Tuesday, the mystery was finally solved.

Staff at the University of Kansas Cancer Center revealed to Coe that the donor is an NFL player. While the player's identity still remains a secret, Coe will have a chance to meet the donor this week during a special trip to Minneapolis for the Super Bowl.

[kygirl]

Snowboarder goes from coma to winter Olympics medal contender

 

“What I love when it comes to my discipline of snowboarding: The only person who decides whether I win or lose is me,” he said. “I don’t have a judge. I have complete control over my outcome.”

 

Muss, who is ranked 16th in the world, heads to Japan Feb. 2 for an acclimation period. He will attend the Feb. 9 opening ceremony, and then it’s just a matter of staying sharp until the Feb. 21 qualifying rounds. The finals are Feb. 23.

 

“I’m not going to the Olympics just to be at the Olympics,” he said. “I’m going there to win a medal.”

 

His family, including professional-surfer sister Alexa Muss, will be at the bottom of the hill, rooting him on.

 

“We are so elated,” Arlette Muss said.

 

She knows if A.J. makes it to the medal stand, his story could inspire countless people.

 

“The main thing A.J. wants kids to know is that they can do it,” she said. “Go out there and believe in yourself. It definitely hasn’t been easy, but each time there has been adversity, it actually made him that much stronger.”

 

And wiser.

 

“Appreciate the journey,” he said, “because it can be taken from you at any time.”

[kygirl]

Sharing the love: Valentines pour in for children in hospital

 

The hospital is Cincinnati Children's-click on the link in the article if you would like to send a valentine which does make a difference to these kids in the hospital.

[kygirl]

Fire victims get generous donation from woman touched by story

An act of kindness is helping a single mother and daughter after a devastating fire in Mt. Airy, Ohio.

 

Brittany and Zyaire Richardson were sleeping when their apartment building caught fire on W. North Bend Road early Monday morning. They had to jump from their second floor balcony to safety.

 

"(We lost) everything. I don't have nothing but what I have on, and my keys and that's it. I don't have anything," Richardson told WLWT on Monday.

 

Kristen McKenzie said she saw the story on WLWT News 5 and wanted to help.

 

"She just looked devastated. She looked like she was so lost and just didn't know where to turn and I just started crying," McKenzie said.

 

McKenzie immediately took action and was able to connect with the Richardsons to give them a generous donation in gift cards to local stores and restaurants so they can buy new things for their home and spend some quality time together as mother and daughter.

 

"It's not too often that I feel like people help and for her, reaching out to two people that she doesn't even know just, like, warms my heart," Brittany Richardson said.

 

"I feel great because the fire was really scary. So when my mom, she really helped me out and this lady, she really helped us," Zyaire Richardson said.

 

The Richardsons are staying with family while they search for a new apartment and they plan to stay in touch with their new friend McKenzie.

 

"We have to all learn to just give back, even if it's at this little local level and I couldn't sleep at night if I didn't do something," McKenzie said.

[kygirl]

Newly arrived baby shares birthday with mom, grandmother

The odds of this happening are 1 in 48 million.

[kygirl]

She gave him a kidney. They renewed their vows atop the Empire State Building.

 

The people wanting to donate a kidney to Epps, including his younger brother and his former wrestling coach, Cirigliano wound up being the perfect match.

 

About 5,000 of the more than 93,000 people waiting for a kidney transplant in the United States will die annually, according to the Living Kidney Donor Network. Survival rates are significantly greater for transplants from living donors than cadavers, and a middle-aged man on dialysis generally does not live longer than eight years.

 

“He’s asking for her hand (in marriage). She’s giving him her kidney,” Epps' father, Kurt, of Perth Amboy, said days before the couple were engaged.

 

“For him to find his love match is one thing. For him to find the person that helps save his life is another," Kurt Epps said. "Through this (transplant) they are bound forever. It’s more than just spiritual."

 

“It’s mind-boggling in a way," Brett Epps' father said. "It’s kind of like the perfect love story.”

[kygirl]

Abandoned baby finds new home after visit to hospital

 

TALLAHASSEE, FL - His newborn legs were bare and cold to the touch.

 

That chilly May 6 morning, his short-sleeve onesie was wet, his diaper was soiled, his white bib was stained. Curled up in the bed of a Nissan pick-up truck, he was without a hat, a blanket or a name.

 

He was less than a week old. And he was all alone.

 

No one knows when the baby was stowed in the truck bed or how long he was lying there. It would be a college student who, drawn by the sound of hushed cries, discovered him while walking through the parking lot of the Meridian Apartments on High Road. Rattled, the 22-year-old called the police. It was 8:26 a.m. Within minutes, an officer arrived, followed by paramedics.

 

As events unfolded, helpful strangers found themselves at the right place, at the right time to help an abandoned baby out of place in a cold world.

 

And just a week later, as if by divine design, that baby had a name, a home and a grateful mother who longed to nurture a newborn as her own.

 

His name is Caleb, but his mom and dad call him Charlie.

Edited February 19, 2018 by kygirl

[kygirl]

Just before the Stanford men’s basketball team played Oregon a few weeks ago, the players were given a pep talk by the day’s honorary captain.

 

“I’ve fought for the last year. Now you need to fight in your season!’’ he told them. “I want you to beat the quack out of the Ducks!”

 

They did just that, by 35 points, Stanford’s most lopsided Pac-12 win in 16 years.

 

The inspirational and effective speech was delivered by 11-year-old Ty Whisler of Tahoe City (Placer County ), who has been battling brain cancer for nearly a year and a half.

 

He was back on the Stanford bench Thursday night and again the Cardinal won big, beat ing Washington 94-78.

 

“He’ll have to bomb a plane ticket when we go to Arizona” next week, forward Reid Travis said.

 

On Sept. 4, 2016, three days after being diagnosed, Ty had part of a pingpong-ball-size tumor removed in an operation at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in Oakland. Doctors couldn’t get all of it because it was wrapped around his brain stem. A biopsy revealed that the tumor was malignant.

 

At Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford, he underwent six weeks of radiation and then seven months of chemotherapy, missing all of fourth grade.

 

During that time, Tom Orlich, assistant to head coach Jerod Haase, contacted the hospital to see if any patient wanted to hang with the players. A social worker said the staff had just the kid, a sports nut who was going through a very painful treatment.

 

In January 2017, Stanford players Dorian Pickens, Robert Cartwright and Christian Sanders visited Ty for the first time at the hospital. “It was literally love at first sight,” said his mother, Jill, a dietitian at a Tahoe hospital.

 

Center Grant Verhoeven, who graduated in June, took him miniature golfing. Michael Humphrey and Pickens played catch with him at Stanford’s Quad. Sanders, who now works on Wall Street as a financial adviser, still stays in touch with him.

 

“These players and coaches took him in as if he was their own child or their own brother,” Jill said. “It helped so much with his healing process. As a parent, you can never say thank you enough.”

 

She said the players even adopted Ty’s brother Nathan, 15, and sister Sydney, 3, “realizing they’re having a hard time leaving their little brother to this disease.”

 

Ty attended practices, took part in pregame meals and dribbled with the players in pregame warm-ups. Besides giving the pep talk at the Oregon game, he sat on the bench during the game and joined the players in huddles during timeouts.

 

They dubbed him their good-luck charm.

 

“Our guys have taken a genuine interest in him, and Ty’s taken a genuine interest in our team, so it’s been fun,” Haase said. “Hopefully, we’re a good-luck charm to him as well.”

 

As young Ty sees it, yes, they have. Their support “has been huge,” he said. “They’ve helped me not think about all the medical stuff. It takes away some pain.”

 

The players marvel at his outgoing personality, undiminished by his ordeal.

 

“His charisma, his energy, his toughness, his overall happiness regarding life is great,” Pickens said. “As much as we make him happy, he makes us even happier.”

 

Ty was 9 when he was diagnosed with what’s known as medulloblastoma. According to the St. Jude Children’s Hospital website, the tumor starts in the base of the skull and tends to spread quickly to other parts of the brain and the spinal cord.

 

From 250 to 500 children are diagnosed with it each year in the U.S., according to the website, which said the survival rate is 70 to 80 percent if the disease has not spread. The Stanford doctors have him in a clinical trial with the St. Jude Research Center. He has his spinal fluid checked every three months.

 

“The chance of it recurring and spreading are (greatest) in the first two years,” Jill Whisler said. “After two years, they’ll potentially let us make it every six months, if it doesn’t spread.”

 

If the youngster hadn’t gotten accidentally kicked in the head as the goalkeeper in a soccer game following the first day of school in 2016, the tumor probably wouldn’t have been detected until it was too late.

 

He was immediately groggy, according to his father, Alan, a firefighter. “He kicked the ball back into our goal,” he said. “He wasn’t sure which way to go.” His head was extremely sensitive, Jill said.

 

“For the grace of God, he went into concussion-like symptoms,” his mother said. “The doctor in Oakland said he had been growing this tumor for about six months. It’s a very aggressive tumor. The doctor said that in two weeks it would have caused stroke-like symptoms. We would have never caught it. We got lucky — very, very lucky.”

 

But he’s not home free. “St. Jude said if it comes back, there’s no other treatment we can do,” she said. “It would be a quality-of-life issue at that point. Does he want to live the rest of his life in a hospital, or do we just let him live it out?”

 

Just before the Oregon game, Haase and some of the players were reviewing game tapes when the youngster rushed into the room to tell them that, for the first time, the tumor was shrinking.

 

“They started clapping,” Ty said. “They were really happy. Coach Haase almost started crying.”

 

A brave 11-year-old inspires Stanford’s basketball players

[kygirl]

'Superhero' 4-year-old to donate bone marrow to save his brothers

 

The City of Brotherly Love is living up to its name thanks to one of its young residents.

 

Michael DeMasi Jr., 4, of South Philadelphia, plans to donate bone marrow on March 8 in an effort to save his twin baby brothers who suffer from a rare hereditary immune disease called Chronic Granulomatous Disease (CGD).

 

“I want to help them,” he told Philly.com. “I’m not scared.”

 

Not even by what Michael Jr. calls “a big, giant needle” doctors at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia will stick into his back to extract bone marrow that will be transplanted into his 4-month-old twin brothers Santino and Giovanni.

[kygirl]

Shawnee football players help out community affected by ice storm

 

Players and coaches helped fill a trailer with tree limbs that were weighed down by ice left behind by the storms. The help is part of a community service project to rid tree branches across Shawnee. The project makes good on the football team's promise to help those in the community who can't do it themselves.

 

"It feels good to me because I'm helping out the elderly people and the people that's served us and the people that can't do these things," Terrance Shaw said. California native Joy Pruitt said last week's frigid weather caught her off guard. "I thought, maybe, I should but I can go and pick them up one at a time," Pruitt said. "But this is so much nicer to get it all done and taken away."

 

It's gratitude that even the toughest of athletes can feel. "I'm very happy we could help this lady out," Jayce Arnett said. "I thought it'd be a great thing to do as a team and a great thing to do to help people out.

 

The team said it tackled six of the 42 homes that are on a list. Players and coaches will work all week until the work has been completed.

[kygirl]

Dolly Parton Donates 1 Millionth Book To Children

100 Millionth Book

Imagination Library sends free books to children from birth until their first day of school, regardless of their parents' income. The program, which originally distributed books to kids living in Dolly's hometown in Tennessee, now sends them to children around the globe.

 

Dolly says she started the program to honor her father, Lee Parton, who never learned to read or write himself, but was "the smartest person I've ever known."

 

Her father did live long enough to see the program grow beyond the boundaries of their hometown. "He was prouder of that than anything," Dolly said.

[kygirl]

Einstein the Parrot Celebrates Her 3th Birthday By Doing a Lot of Startlingly Good Impressions

 

Einstein the African grey parrot just turned 30 years old – and she has about five minutes of killer comedic material to show for it.

 

The Knoxville Zoo of Tennessee posted a video of their feathered impressionist earlier this week as a means of celebrating her birthday.

 

Too cute!

[kygirl]

This 93-Year-Old Grandma Is Flying To Kenya To Volunteer At An Orphanage