CORTEZ JOURNAL SATURdAy, MARCh 31, 2012 3B

“MonzTars” meet

COURTESy PhOTO

FiFteen teenagers attended the first meeting of the Montezuma Teenage Republicans (“The MonzTars”) on Saturday, Feb. 24. Pictured from left to right are, kneeling, Cassidy King and Emily Graf; sitting, first row, Nate Todd, Michael Boyd and Sadie Graf; second row, Kaleb Todd, Nolan King, Aram Fitzgerald and Kae Lynn Graf; third row, Suzanna Fitzgerald and Leiajoy Fitzgerald. Not pictured are Garrett Morris, Bailey Morris, Landon Meier and Cody Reim.

Last Monday came in with the wind and dust! It was impossible to see Sleep-ing Ute as we approached Cortez, and the dust left its telltale mark on the snow up here. Highway 145 is dry, of course, but up on the pass the shady spots are still treacherous, I am sure. We mentioned flying kites last week, and let’s get them as-sembled and head for the park. It is a safe fly zone down there at the school.

Lydia Hagan, daughter of Mary and Mike Hagen, cel-ebrated her 11th birthday last week with her entou-rage of friends. Happy times are so good for us.

We haven’t seen our crip-pled crow since we arrived back from vacation. He is an old-timer and super smart in survival tactics.

Spring break is next week for our students. The south-east corner of Utah is usu-ally the warmest area in our little world for a week’s camping vacation. There are canyons and lots of his-tory to explore over in that area.

The community gathered together at the fire house to remember our friend Terry Turner, who passed away the 16th of this month. Lana, Terry’s lovely wife and best friend, always spent the entire evening with us. She knows this community will support her in every way we

can. We thank the Rico Vol-unteer Fire Department for setting up everything at the fire house for this occasion. It takes all the members to do this job the day before. Also, we appreciate Donna Martinez for planning this fine evening for Lana.

As we have mentioned before, Dr. Mick McClain (Kim) of Prescott, Ariz., and of Rico, suffered a crisis, an aneurysm, 11 months or so ago while at home in Prescott. A few days ago he spoke to Kim for the first time. Does that give you a happy smile? The fam-ily plans to bring Mick up to rehab at home here on some good old San Juan Mountains fresh air when it warms up early summer.

Kaitlin Nunley and Mike Davis recently spent several days visiting her father in Payson, Ariz.

Marlene Hazen has lived in Rico for two decades. An active member of the com-munity, she participates in organizations such as the Rico Women’s Club and Rico Historical Society.

Rico mourns Turner’s death

RicoReport

MARLENE HAZEN

By MICHAEL BOOTHThe Denver Post

DENVER — Zach Nielson at age 11 couldn’t quite put his finger on the two words his doctors were avoid-ing using around him. But his mother certainly could. Deb Nielson knew people in wheelchairs, knew what it meant that Zach was waking up numb, knew how scary it was when he staggered stiffly down the hallway like a young drunk.

But just over two years later, a new generation of powerful drugs has drained the power of the words “multiple scle-rosis” for Zach and thousands of patients like him. The drugs have erased symptoms and reversed nerve scarring in the largest subgroup of MS suffer-ers, transforming for the first time victims’ experience with the disease.

Far from a life sentenced to relentless disability, Zach Nielson is among a growing group who feel as if their MS never happened.

“When they first told me, I was worried it would get worse and worse, and I wouldn’t be able to have my dream job,” said Zach, who just turned 14. “Now I know I can be a pilot.”

The new class of drugs “gave me my active son back,” Deb Nielson said. “I’m con-vinced of that now.”

Eight hundred MS patients are on Zach’s miracle drug, Tysabri, through the Rocky Mountain MS Center and the University of Colorado Denver’s Anschutz Medical Campus. Hundreds more are on Gilenya, the first approved oral treatment for MS, and other new drugs introduced in recent years.

Dr. Tim Vollmer, an An-schutz MS expert, calls it a “rich tool set of many drugs” and said it’s “not unusual for those patients to come in and say, ̀ I don’t feel like I have MS anymore.’ “

“People with MS have a reason to be optimistic,” said Dr. Timothy Coetzee, chief re-searcher at the National Mul-tiple Sclerosis Society in New York.

Elissa Berlinger, 25, now feels the kind of hope as she leaves Colorado for graduate school that she only recently thought might be impossible.

The MS education for Ber-linger began five years ago, when she was 20 and ener-getic and about to leave on a dream student-travel trip to Europe. She got strep throat and mono just before she left, then felt weakness in her hips. While traveling, she collapsed on the way to a hotel bath-room.

Her descent into the mys-tery of the disease followed classic lines: flare-ups every few months, numbness from hip to toe, amateur diagnosis of a slipped disc or linger-ing mono. X-rays for a tumor were negative, and the next

step was an MRI.“I always said the unknown

is scarier than anything else,” Berlinger said.

Before she got the MRI re-sults, a colleague with MS tried to prepare her for bad news with supportive advice. Berlinger turned 24, got an MS diagnosis the next day and promptly returned to Eu-rope and the land of denial.

Eventually, her stateside doctors gave her a book on “the big four drugs” at the time and told her to go home and decide which one to try. They all sounded terrible — painful shots with uncertain results.

“The choices were which is the lesser of the evils,” said Berlinger, who works in stu-dent affairs at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

The older set of MS-fighting drugs was interferon-based, with many possible side ef-fects. They stopped relapses only about a third of the time for patients in the most com-mon category, relapsing-re-mitting MS.

Berlinger, aided by par-ents more aggressive than her in researching the illness, chose to go on a clinical trial of a newer treatment. CU An-schutz, a national leader in MS research, has 30 clinical trials at a given time on mea-sures to attack the disease.

But Berlinger’s trial didn’t work out; she had three re-lapses in 12 months, and her lesions were still growing.

In the meantime, the Food and Drug Administration had begun approving the new generation of measures that

targeted MS at the molecular level, rather than the cruder blocking of immune-system problems. Gilenya, the first oral drug, was effective more than half the time.

Tysabri was a bigger break-through, using IV treatment and stopping relapses 70 percent of the time while re-moving lingering traces of symptoms. The new agents are powerful and dangerous, though, and the FDA briefly yanked Tysabri from the mar-ket when some patients with a common background virus developed brain infections.

In a rare move, the FDA al-lowed Tysabri back on the market with strict protocols. Patients are tested for the vi-rus, must come in for the IV treatment every four weeks and must check in with their neurologist every three months.

Berlinger went on Tysabri in January 2011. She has had no flare-ups of symptoms since then. An MRI in De-cember showed there had been no new progression of the lesions.

Like the other 800 Tysabri patients at Anschutz, Ber-linger just has to while away two in-chair hours a month. She brings her iPad and noo-dles around on it while she’s hooked up to the drip.

“Tysabri is a paradigm-changer,” Vollmer said. “We’re no longer just trying to slow the disease. Now we’re re-versing it.”

“I no longer worry about waking up numb,” Berlinger said. She’s leaving soon for grad school at Smith College

in Massachusetts.Success with the new drugs

has dimmed the power of long-held assumptions about MS.

Deb Nielson said that be-tween Zach’s MS diagnosis and learning of the new class of highly effective drugs, “I spent many nights crying without the kids knowing.”

At his worst, Zach had been in the hospital four times in six months with crippling flare-ups. Now, what the Niel-sons see is Zach spending winter weekends camping and snowmobiling with his Boy Scout troop, and ready to launch on his final Eagle Scout project.

MS patients find promise

ASSOCiATEd PRESS/RJ SANgOSTi, ThE dENvER POST

Deb NielsoN, left, helps her son, Zach Nielson, 14, with home-work at their home in Arvada. Zach, a young MS patient, with the help of a new drug is living a very normal life.

Find them in the

Hometown HAPPENINGS

EL BURROMexican Restaurant1430 Main, Cortez • 565-4633 EL BURRO

All Day 7am to

8pm