Coming: Longer Life Spans: By SENATOR ALAN CRANSTON

Courtesy: Medical Miracles, from Readers Digest 1981. November.

From the frontiers of science and the far horizons of personal courage, these stories of medical triumphs and miracles will reaffirm your faith in the awesome powers of the human spirit. Dramatic victories and human triumphs.

Selected and edited by the editors of Readers Digest

The Old Testament set the length of man’s natural life-span at threescore years and ten, of fourscore “by reason of strength.”  Some 3000 years later, Elizabethan scholar Francis Bacon saw no reason to update the figure.  “From the time of Moses to these our days the term of man’s life hath stood about fourscore years of age.”

Neither Bacon nor the Old Testament sages confused that 80-years “term” with life expectancy.  A lucky few might live 70 to 80 years if they survived the army of diseases that preyed on infancy, youth and middle life.  But life expectancy—the time a person would live if he had average luck—was a different matter.  In the Bonze and Iron stages, encompassing Old Testament times, it was about 18 years.  And in Bacon’s time it was below 35.

Today, medical advances have more than doubled life expectancy in the world’s wealthier nations.  In this century alone (almost entirely through the eradication of diseases of the young) more than 20 years have been added to the average American’s life—now about 74 years for women and 70 for men.  Nevertheless, most people feel that life span is a different matter—fixed, constant, forever beyond human tampering and medical intervention.

I am convicted they are wrong.  New developments in gerontology, the science of aging, suggest that one day soon we will be able to push our natural span beyond the limits so long considered immutable.

In 1973 I conducted Senate hearings at which scientists discussed the possibility of people enjoying health and mental vitality beyond the age of 100.  When the hearings were over and Congress has set up a National Institute of Aging within the National Institutes of Health, I conducted to keep in touch with developments in the field.  Regularly, I invite groups of gerontologists and biomedical experts to informal sessions in my Capitol office.

What I learn from these encounters is mind-blogging.  Researchers across the nation are probing ever deeper into the mysterious biological activity—breakdown and mutation in cells and molecules—that we call the aging process.  They have already convinced a majority of gerontologists that we will be able to restructure the human aging process to our own benefit.  The question is not whether we will be able to control aging but when.

In the United States, medical science has already pushed life expectancy very close to life-span figures by destroying disease.  But the limits are not far ahead.  National life expectancy, which jumped 17 years between 1900 and 1950, inched up a mere three in the next quarter century.  The last appreciable gains we can expect will come when cancer and cardiovascular disease, today’s deadliest killers, are finally tamed.

Yet, even in a world liberated from cancer, heart attack and stroke, old people will continue to die (even if a little later) from the cumulative physical and mental collapse we call old age.  And what if killer diseases are eliminated but no remedy is found for the degenerative processes of old age.  We could be faced with a mushrooming population of dependent old people.

The prospect of life prolonged—but not enhanced—by dragging out its darkest years is chilling.  Fortunately, the aim of gerontologists is not mere prolongation of life; it is the prolongation of life’s most productive, satisfying years.  “Old age itself will not be longer, only later,” says British gerontologist Alex Comfort, “from 80 to 90, say, instead of 70 to 80.”  Or, as science writer Albert Rosenfield defined it, gerontology’s basic goal “is to keep people fully functional and in possession of all their faculties until very end.”  If gerontologists can pinpoint whatever it is that triggers and regulated its speed, the ability to extent human life and its good years will be in their grasp.

How close are they to this goal?  Scientists already posses the ability to extent life—and have done so repeatedly in experiments on laboratory animals.  But they are not certain just how the experiments worked.  Although they have manipulated the aging process, they have so far failed to define it.

But theories of aging are beginning to coverage in the notion that every living creature within it a biological “clock” that genetically programs the rate at which the organism will age.  As this clock ticks on, cells mysteriously loose their immunity to invasion and disease, their vitality ebbs, and eventually—along with the rest of the organism—they die.

Some researchers have suggested that the clock of aging is located in genetic material housed in the nucleus of every cell.  Others believe it may operate through the release of s-called death hormones” that remorselessly wear down the body’s maintenance-and-repair cells.  It may have multiple locations) cellular nuclei), or it may operate from a master control center such as the hormone-producing pituitary gland.  Though the clock’s location remains elusive, researchers claim its existence is confirmed every time their experiments successfully manipulate the aging rate in animal cells.

Denham Harman, University of Hebraska biochemist, believes aging result from wear and tear inflicted by “free radicals,” broken-off cellular debris that clusters on cells, clogging of “rusting” them and ultimately putting them our of action.  Herman’s experiment indicated that diet and antioxidant compounds such as vitamin E would offset free-radical damage.  In the rests he administered, the lives of laboratory rats were considerably lengthened.

Another supporter of the free-radical theory, Richard Hochschild of the University of California at Irvine, reports a series of experiments with mice, age 70 in human terms, were given substances that help to repair the membranes after free-radical damage.  The mice lived an average of 49 percent beyond their natural life spans.

Believers in hormone-triggered aging point to laboratory successes of their own.  Removing or retarding the action of certain glands has altered the aging process in test animals—often dramatically—.  For instance, removing the fish’s adrenal gland has eliminated the rapid spawn-age-and-die cycle in Pacific salmon.  Gerontologist W. Donner Denkla removed the pituitary glands from the brains of aged rats, then administered thyroxin and other vital hormones.  Close monitoring showed that a variety of the rats’ body functions had returned to “juvenile competence.”  Their coats were again thick and glossy, their movements quick and energetic.  The rats showed no signs of age or debility until almost at the point of death.

No doubt the methods to these biomedical pioneers will one day seem absurdly primitive.  But even these first steps have yielded effective techniques and drugs, already in limited use on humans in the treatment of advanced senility and otherwise incurable genetic disorders.

As methods are refined and targets narrowed, gerontologists may be able to reset man’s biological clock with precision to stretch out the young and middle years and minimize the period of decline leading to death.  We are on the brink of a major leap forward in medical science—nothing less than a profound redefinition of human life.

How soon?  An optimistic few believe we may hold the keys of life-span extension before the end of the century.  Others speculate that even without mastering all the secrets of aging we will learn enough to achieve major clinical breakthroughs in the next few decades (much as we practiced vaccination long before we understood the hows and whys of immunization).  Onesuch breakthrough would be elimination of the remorselessly slow degenerative aliments of old age; people would live free of illness or infirmity right up to the end of their span and then, with little advance warning, simply die.

Luck as well as individual and collective brilliance will determine whether or not our children or we will inherit the life-span revolution.  The rate of progress also hinges on availability of funds and the scope of the programs we launch.  “The control of the human rate of aging is going to happen,” says Alex Comfort.  “How soon it will happen depends upon the social pressure for research and the wisdom with which that research is applied.”

All too many promising leads and experiments are shelved for want of funds or public interest.  One reason is simply the credibility gap surrounding the notion of an increased life span.  Another is the reluctance of institutions to nurture ideas that challenge established assumptions or that fail to guarantee a return on investment.

In 1979 the federal government spent nearly $900 million in cancer research and almost $500 million in heart-and lung disease research.  Not everyone, fortunately, suffers from these diseases.  But aging—the one affliction that affects all of us—will get about $37 million for federally sponsored research.  Much of that will go for social, psychological and statistical studies of the elderly.  Only a portion will finance biological studies of the aging process—and just the smallest fraction of that will finance research aimed at extending life span.

Are we dragging our feet because we are afraid?  Could we be thinking of the strain that even a ten-years increase in life span would put on our overburdened social welfare and health services?  We should think again.  When our productive years fill out most of our life span, the social and economic dependence of age will be diminished problem.  With age freed of its present stigma and infirmity, society might at last profit from the wisdom and experience we now thoughtlessly throw away.

New Help of Dyslexia: By WARREN R. YOUNG

Courtesy: Medical Miracles, from Readers Digest 1981. November.

From the frontiers of science and the far horizons of personal courage, these stories of medical triumphs and miracles will reaffirm your faith in the awesome powers of the human spirit. Dramatic victories and human triumphs.

Selected and edited by the editors of Readers Digest

One child in every ten has it, to some degree, often with tragic impact on his schooling and life.  It probably kept inventor Thomas Edison, General George S. Patton and President Woodrow Wilson crom coping with ordinary schoolwork when they were young.  It made Hans Christian Anderson an atrocious speller all his life, even though he became a magnificent storyteller.  It most likely accounted for the nickname “Mr. Dullard,” give a schoolboy named Albert Einstein.

The specific problem these people have in common is called dyslexia (from Greek roots ‘dys’, “difficulty,” and ‘lexia’, “pertaining to words”).  Although it is unrelated to basic intellectual capacity, the disorder causes a mysterious difficulty in handling words and symbols.  Some subtle peculiarity in the brain’s organizational pattern blocks out an otherwise bright child’s ability to learn how to read, to write legible, to spell pr. Perhaps, to use numbers.  Letters in words perversely transpose themselves, ger reversed or even topsy-turvy—“dog” becomes “god”; “b” changes identity with “d,” and may even masquerade as “p” or “q”; a sign saying “OIL” flip-flops into “710.”  Many dyslexics also have difficulty orienting themselves in the three dimensions of space, which results, sometimes, in boldly awkwardness.

Ever since dyslexia was identified late in 19th century by German and British ophthalmologists, it has been studied and debated.  Because it is unaccompanied by outward scars or detectable neurological damage, and because its bizarre symptoms vary from victim to victim, some professionals insist that the problem doesn’t really exists as a separate entity.  Educators in particular have shown a preference for herding this problem along with others under the broad, vaguely defined umbrella of “learning disabilities.”  Yet frustrated classroom teachers, agonized parents and humiliated victims know that something—something unique devastating—is there.

The late Nelson A. Rockefeller was one of lthe most eminent dyslexics.  “I often see letters and numbers backwards, “he once said, ‘or even think them backwards.”  A few lines from his boyhood diary, written when he was 11, include such revealing notations as “lunc,” “picknick Lunch,” “Uncle Harold,” “engen repar schop,” “parak”(for park), and three tries at recording the disease his sister Abby had come down with –“mealess,” “measless” and “misless.”  Rockfeller never mastered spelling.  Yet he graduated cum laude from Dartmouth College, and earned a Phi Beta Kapp key.

There was no secret cure behind Rockefeller’s success in overcoming his handicap.  The key was simply learning to cope.  Coping to him meant concentrating very hard when something had to be read; he let aides fix up his spelling and he rehearsed speeches carefully before delivering them.

Other dyslexics also achieved celebrity status by adapting to the realties of their difficulty.  Woodrow Wilson did not learn the alphabet until he was nine, didn’t read until he was 11, and was considered by relatives to be dull and backward.  At Princeton University, his grades were only fair, but his brilliant oratorical style began to blossom at the same time, paving the way for his two distinguished presidencies—of Princeton and of the United States.

General Patton had even harder sledding.  At 12 he still could not read.  It took him five years to get through West Point, and at that he made it only by laboriously memorizing his textbooks word for word.

Not all dyslexics are so fortunate, or so tenacious.  Taunted by classmates, treated as lazy, stupid or mentally disturbed by teachers and parents, humiliated by schoolwork other children do so easily; many of them not only fail miserably in class but also become filled with frustration, rage and pain.  It is liter sting to note that the telltale signs of the problem can be detected in the diary of Lee Harvey Oswald.

Trying to pin down the precise cause of dyslexia involves a number of basic riddles.  How, really, do our minds work?  How do we learn to read and write?  How can intelligent child—or even an adult creative genius—look straight at a word and interpret some of the letters backward, upside down or transposed?  Why does the problem appear to turn up three times as often among boys as among girls?  There are a dozen theories to explain dyslexia, but final verdict is not yet in.

Ever since the turn of the century, one guess has been that defective vision must be to blame.  This idea was based in part on the fact that poor readers employ inefficient eye movements.  But experts now regard faulty eye movements as the result, not the eye that learns to read.  So the question remains: what goes wrong in the brain?

Some early experts thought brain damage was responsible, since it was known that some victims of head injuries lost their reading and writing skills.  But autopsies and brainwave studies tend to rule out injury as a common cause of dyslexia.

If detectable brain damage is not the cause, shat about more subtle insults to the prenatal of infant brain?  Some studies seem to show that lead in the air, physical trauma or oxygen deprivation during birth can sometimes affect language-learning capability.  However, careful tracings of family trees suggest that the problem may more often be a matter of heredity.

A sizable body of opinion clings to the “late-bloomer” theory, which holds that for no particular reason some children simply do not mature the reading-readiness stage as early as others.

The theory that still probably comes closest to explaining dyslexia was developed many years ago by Dr. Samuel Torrey Orton, then director of the lowa State Psychopathic Hospital.  While screening mental-health problems, Orton became interested in children who not only repeatedly reversed letters of words, but also had a talent for “mirror-writing.”  Some of them could actually write better from right to leave, with letters oriented backward and in reverse order, so that a mirror held alongside would show the words as they are normally written.

Orton knew that mirror writing came more naturally than regular writing for many left-handers or partial left-handers.  Leonardo da Vinci, who was ambidextrous, often sket5ched with his right hand, while setting down notes mirror-fashion with his left hand.  Orton, an expert neurologist, reasoned that while each half of the brain controls various natural activities, only one side becomes dominant in the use of language.  If, in learning the artificial skill of recognizing symbols and translating them into words, both hemispheres persisted in taking part, they might somehow compete and interfere with each other, leading to reversed or jumbled perception.  Orton concluded that it was not being left-handed that caused the problem, since many dyslexics are right-handed; rather, it was confused or mixed dominance of the brain’s hemispheres.

But recent examination of the brain a dyslexic revealed an abnormality in the left hemisphere, which is now believed to have predominant control over the language function.  This examination is part of a long-term, systematic study, now underway, of the anatomical differences between the dyslexic’s brain and that of the non0dyslexic.  Dr. Albert M. Calaburda and Dr. Thomas L Kemper, who are conducting this study, hope to determine the causes of dyslexia so that proper therapy can be prescribed.

Fortunately, even the victim of severe, classic dyslexia can now learn, with the proper help, how to read at a decent speed and to write legibly.  But parents should be wary.  Still-unproven methods, as well as thoroughly discredited techniques, are also being offered, including everything from bouncing on trampolines and avoidance of food additives to psychotherapy and elaborate eye exercises.

The experts’ consensus is that the best solution is educational: careful, systematic, on-to-one tutoring on a regular basis to teach the dyslexic child the principles of phonics—the letter sounds that make up words.  What the dyslexic child needs is to be shown how to decode the sounds for which single letters and combinations of letters stand, and how to fit them together into words.  Since every dyslexic child’s problems are different, individual tutoring techniques must also vary.  Often, modern phonics specialists reinforce the child’s familiarity with the shape of a letter or the sound of a word fragment by putting to work more than one of his senses.  They might have a child look at a letter, say it aloud, trace its shape in the air and on the blackboard, and feel a 3-D cutout of the letter.  Once the skill of decoding (and the reverse process, encoding) is mastered, a child can read and write any word.

The encouraging prognosis for properly tutored dyslexics was firmly documented in study by language consultant Margaret Byrd Rawson.  She carefully followed a group of 20 boys with moderate to severe dyslexia, all of whom had been given structured, multi, and sensory language training, to see exactly what happened after they grew up.  All but one went to college; 18 earned degrees, then went on to obtain a total 32 postgraduate professors, on a school principal, three teachers, two research scientists, three owners of businesses, three junior business executives, one an actor, one a skilled laborer and one a factory foreman.

Not all properly tutored dyslexics no longer need fail simply because of language problem.

Does Your Child have Dyslexia?

Your child may need specialized help in overcoming the handicap of dyslexia if he or she shows some of these signs: Reading difficulty; persistent spelling errors (especially misspelling the same familiar word different ways; reversed or upside-down letters, or reversed sequence of letters within words; uncertain preference for right-or left- handedness after age five or six; badly cramped, scrawled of illegible handwriting; confusion about left and right, up and down, tomorrow and yesterday; delayed mastery of spoken language, trouble finding the “right” word when talking; inadequate in written composition; personal disorganization 9losing or leaving possessions, inability to stick to simple schedules, repeatedly forgetting).

Few dyslexics show all these symptoms; and children who are not dyslexic may show some.  But a pattern of these signs—especially a reading or spelling problem—means you would be wise to get a professional opinion.  Talk with your child’s teacher, school psychologist, learning-disabilities specialists or pediatrician as soon as possible, and request a full battery of diagnostic tests.  If your child is definitely dyslexic, he or she will probably heed careful, long-range one-to-one tutoring on a regular basis.  But avoid signing up for remedial help—particularly any non-tutoring scheme—without first getting trustworthy expert advice.

For further information on dyslexia, write:

The Orton Society, inc.,

8415 Bellona Lane, Towson, Md. 21204;

Or

The Association for Children With Learning Disabilities,

4156 Library Rd., Pittsburgh, Pa. 15234,

Please enclose a stamped self-addressed envelope and a check for $1.00 to cover handling and mailing costs

“You May Marry My Daughter, the Day You Can Walk Up the Aisle”: by ELISE PIQUET

Courtesy: Medical Miracles, from Readers Digest 1981. November.

From the frontiers of science and the far horizons of personal courage, these stories of medical triumphs and miracles will reaffirm your faith in the awesome powers of the human spirit. Dramatic victories and human triumphs.

Selected and edited by the editors of Readers Digest

On July 9, 1976, in the Chicago suburb of Bellwood, the car 21-year-old Peter Saraceno was driving suddenly skidded.  It hit a utility pole, then smashed into a large advertising-sign pole and was demolished.  Peter was critically injured when he was thrown 66 feet into the pavement.

Peter’s widowed mother, Louise, rushed to nearby West lake community Hospital to find the emergency-room staff working feverishly to save her son.  It was a near-impossible task; Peter was in a deep coma, and there was severe damage to the area of the brain that controls muscle coordination and tone, speech and memory.  The doctor’ prognosis was “guarded.”

  Even if he lived, they said, peter would probably remain paralyzed, speechless and totally dependent on others for care.

Peter had excellent doctors, devoted nursing care, the most modern equipment and medical attention possible.  But for Louise Saraceno it was not enough.  A lawn chaise was moved into Peter’s room, and for the next four months Louise never left her son.  It was as if she had a sick and helpless baby—a-six-foot-one-inch, 208-pound baby.

Louise’s job had been to make a home for her five children, helped by Social Security and a large Italian-American family.  Now, her oldest daughter, 20-year-old Ammamarie, quit her job to care for her three younger sisters.

Louise also counted as part of her family 21-year-old Linda Frachalla, who had become engaged to peter three years earlier.  Linda had a full-time job with Presbyterian-St. Luke’s hospital in Chicago, where peter had been a security guard at the time of his accident.  He had recently finished a hitch in the Marine Reserves and was waiting to be accepted into the police academy.  Peter idolized Linda and, in turn, he was her whole world.

Linda drove to Westlake Hospital each day after work to help Louise with the unconscious, immobile peter.  Many times during the night, they would struggle on the high bed to bathe and powder him and to rub on lotions.  Linda manicured Peter’s nails, and when the bandages from his head were removed, she had a stylist cut his hair.  “I wanted to dress him up so that when he regained consciousness, he’d feel good,” Linda explained.

Louise and Linda brought in Peter’s favorite Italian dishes, knowing how important food had always been to him, and they would hold them under his nose hoping the smells would penetrate his subconscious memory.  And all along, the two women talked to peter, as he lay deep in his coma.  Over and over, for hours on end.  “Peter,” they would say, “you’ve been in a terrible accident, and you can’t talk or move, but it’s not going to be like this forever.  We’re right here.  Don’t be afraid.”

Then one night in September, Louise put on the television and switched to one of Peter’s favorite programs. “Kojak.”  As she adjusted the colors of the set, she saw Peter’s eyes blink and move.  She flicked the set again.  He blinked again.  Louise ran down the corridor calling the nurse.  After 2 ½ months, Peter was coming to!

By October, as he gradually became fully conscious, his eyes would follow Linda or his mother around the room and he could be fed baby food.  He had to speech.  His body, arms and legs were paralyzed, but he could move his right hand ever so slightly, and extend the index finger on command.  And he used that finger to push letters on a magnetic blackboard that Louise had brought him.  With Peter tied and propped in his wheelchair, she would ask, “Who am I, Peter?” “Mom,” she would answer, pinching his lips to form the shape of the sound as Peter grunted a response.  “Spell it, Peter,” Haltingly, Peter would move his hand to the board in his lap and with one finger crookedly spell M-O-M.

This was all Peter could do in January 1977 when he entered the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (RIC) for intensive therapy.  He was put in the charge of Dr. Bhupendra K Agarwal, a physiatrist—a doctor especially trained in rehabilitation.  Working with home were nurses, psychologists, vocational counselors and RIC’s bioengineering center.

Although he knew where he was, Peter tended to fade in and out of consciousness.  But as his damaged brain began to heal itself, he was given daily physical, occupational and speech therapy.  He perked up most when Louise came for visits three or four times a week of when Linda arrived each night from work.  Eight times Lind took him in his wheelchair to see his favorite movie, ‘Rocky’.

The first vocal sound he made came in February.  It was “Ah.”  Peter’s speech disorder was sysarthria, a type of oral muscle weakness or paralysis.  It takes over a hundred muscles to form the words we say aloud, and Peter had to relearn the motor movements.  By March, he could say three words: no, any, Ma.  The sounds were flat, toneless and very hard to understand.  But they were words.

Peter was also learning to hold up his head, by wearing a fitted radio hat with a biofeedback control.  The radio played music as long as his head remained upright.  The music stopped when his head tilted, a constant reminder to keep it steady.  His comprehension was growing, and he was becoming impatient to go home for a visit.

On March 8, 1977, Peter saw his home for the first time in eight months.  The house was filled with 142 relatives, friends and neighbors.  Even a blind aunt who hadn’t been out of her house in five years came.  “When she bent down to touch Peter’s face as he lay on his cot, we all cried,” says Louise.  Even Peter, for the first time since the accident, cried out loud.  Later a cousin started singing “My Way,” and the others jointed in.  Peter, who couldn’t sing a word, kept time with his hand.  Then everybody broke down and embraced all over again.

After that celebration Peter’s spirits soared.  He began to work in phrases and was able to feed himself with a spoon in a special holder strapped like a splint to his hand.  During physical therapy, he would roll over on a floor mat to push himself into a sitting position.  He exercised his arms by lifting weights strapped to his wrists and, to strengthen his hands, he worked with a material similar to Silly Putty.  By May, Peter was allowed to work at home.

Linda withdrew her savings and brought a 28-foot pool for her mother’s back yard.  Then she quit her hob, and with one of her last paychecks she brought Peter five bathing suits and two floating mattresses.  “I wanted to be with him, to help him do the exercises and everything.  But I wanted it to be fun.”

Fun it wasn’t, but at least Peter was home.  Linda stayed in Louise’s house, working with her to help with Peter’ feeding, hygiene, exercise and emotional support.  Relatives were in and out of the house, and Peter’s friends were always on hand to lift him from bed to wheelchair to couch, and to drive home to the pool at Linda’s house.  After sex weeks he returned to RIC for more intensive therapy.

Back at RIC in December, Peter was beginning to be his old self again, laughing and teasing as he whizzed around in his wheelchair—feeling impulsive, affectionate, competitive, and male.  He also felt that he was in the home stretch as an inpatient.

He was right.  There were just two more hard months at RIC, months in which his speech improved ad he began to walk again.  This was what Peter was most eager for, and he nagged everyone for an aluminum walker.  He earned it after weeks of walking for ten feet between parallel bars.  And once the walker was his, the only way to stop him from practicing was to remove it forcibly.  He was determined to walk again because Linda’s father had told him, “The day you can walk up the aisle with her, you may marry my daughter,” peter knew the church; it had a long aisle.

On February 21, 1978, Peter left RIC in his walker.  He would return for checkups every three months.  Day after day, his speech improved.  His appetite for work was enormous.  So was his appetite for food.  By summer he weighed over 200 pounds, up from 140 only a year before.  He was strong and healthy—and readily to walk up that aisle.

On July 16. 250 joyful relatives and friends watched as Peter entered the side door of Our Lady of Pompeii Church on his walker.  Tears streaming down her face, Louise stood in a front pew and watched bridesmaids walk past her.  ‘Smile, honey, smile,” she kept saying, wanting them to show on their faces all that she felt beneath her tears.  In her bridal finery, supported on her father’s arm, Linda smiled through her tears as she passed Louise.  She walked under an arch of flowers to Peter.  Then together, with his best man supporting him, they climbed three steps to the altar.

When the ceremony ended, with Linda next to him, Peter slowly began the long walk up the aisle in his walker.  Almost everyone was crying now.  From a side aisle of the church floated a young soprano voice: “I took the good times, I’ll take the bad times.  I’ll take you just the way you are.”

Peter and Linda are now living an apartment in Melrose Park, with their baby daughter, Nicole Annette Saraceno, born September 14, 1980.  As Peter continues to improve, his doctors are amazed at his progress.  He can now get around without the aid of his walker of cane, event though his walking will never be completely normal.  In addition, his speech has improved considerably.  As Dr. A. Afshar, Peter’s doctor at Westlake Community Hospital once said, “The case of Peter Saraceno is more than a miracle of modern medicine.  It is an awesome triumph of the human spirit.”