Category: Mon Valley Miscellany || By

Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of news from Our Fair City and the entire Mon-Yough metroplex ... this is Tube City Almanac:

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Running For His Life: ESPN's "NCAA On Campus" recently profiled McKeesport Area High School alumnus Aaron Slafka, now a senior at Pitt-Greensburg, who fought his way back from a brain tumor to continue running on the school's track team.

Slafka transferred to UPG from Penn State McKeesport Campus and was about to start classes in the fall of 2004 when he was involved in a car accident. Feeling dizzy a day after the crash, he was sent for an MRI. The scan revealed a non-cancerous brain tumor.

Doctors told Slafka that he'd never be able to run again and banned him from track practice.

But his UPG teammates saw him riding his bike in an effort to stay in shape. Soon Slafka was sneaking in runs at night, in the dark. Though an operation successfully removed the tumor, Slafka developed blood and brain infections and began suffering seizures. It would take three more operations for Slafka to recover.

In the fall of 2005, he re-enrolled at UPG and rejoined the track team. Last year, he was named the captain. "I know he wasn't my No. 1 guy, but it wasn't about being the No. 1 guy," his coach, Joyce Brobeck, told Jennifer Reeger of the Tribune-Review. "It was about his determination, the leadership."

You can view Slafka's interview at the NCAA website (click on "video" and scroll down to "On Campus") or on Google Video.

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Doctor, Doctor: A McKeesport-based physician will be allowed to continue offering his controversial cancer treatments pending review by a panel of physicians at Mon Valley Hospital in Carroll Township.

Using tools he developed, Dr. Jerome Canady has been resectioning --- cutting apart and sewing back together --- the livers and pancreases of patients suffering from cancerous tumors.

But the treatment is not sanctioned by U.S. medical authorities, and on Nov. 8, Mon Valley Hospital revoked Canady's operating-room privileges. The dispute landed in court this week.

A graduate of Villanova University and the Temple University School of Medicine, Canady is the inventor of the Canady Catheter, a device that uses radio waves and inert gas to stop blood flow during certain operations with pinpoint accuracy. His company, Canady Technology, is based at McKeesport's RIDC industrial park.

With his most recent innovation, Canady is using similar technology to cut away cancerous portions of the liver and pancreas, according to the Valley Independent.

One of Canady's patients, Cindy Russell, was given less than six months to live by doctors at the Mayo Clinic and elsewhere; now, she claims, she is cancer free. She's set up websites at cindysmiracle.com and curedoflivercancer.com.

Patients on a message board maintained by Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore rave about Canady's supposedly miraculous results.

But several anonymous detractors on the same message board, some of whom claim to be physicians themselves, have also attacked Canady's methods, claiming that patients often suffer great pain for short-term, illusory gains. One, identifying himself only as "Nick," alleges that Canady's successes are mostly those of "self promotion."

This week, according to Linda Metz of the Observer-Reporter, a Washington County judge ruled that Canady can perform two previously scheduled operations, but is not allowed to use the MVH operating room again pending the peer review.

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Jeannette Hospital Sold: Mercy Jeannette Hospital will become part of the parent company of Westmoreland Regional Hospital and Latrobe Hospital, report the Pittsburgh Business Times and other outlets.

Included in the sale is the Mercy "SmartHealth" outpatient surgery center in Norwin Hills Shopping Center on Route 30 near Irwin.

The former Jeannette District Memorial Hospital is being sold for $16 million by Catholic Mercy Health East, which previously sold Jeannette's parent hospital, Mercy Hospital of Pittsburgh, to UPMC Health System.

A Mercy news release says the sale is expected to take six months and must be reviewed by state and Westmoreland County officials.

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Nobody Here But Us Chickens: The North Huntingdon Township zoning board will decide whether a Country Hills family can continue to keep nine chickens as pets, report Patti Dobranski in the Tribune-Review and Norm Vargo in the Post-Gazette.

Though much of North Huntingdon was once farmland and a few farms still exist, a township ordinance prohibits keeping livestock on a residential parcel smaller than 20 acres. The Hensler family is asking for a zoning variance to keep their chickens, but neighbors have complained about the noise and the smell.

While the Henslers claim the chickens are no more livestock than parakeets or other pet birds, one member of the zoning board notes that the family is eating the eggs, which would lend weight to the argument that the chickens are livestock. "I would never eat my cat," Zoning Board Member Jacqueline Willis said.

(Write your own Chinese food joke here.)

The zoning hearing board is expected to rule on the variance request at its Dec. 4 meeting at the Town House.

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Keep a Civil Tongue: And finally, students from McKeesport Area and West Mifflin high schools head to Harrisburg next week to deliver speeches on "what it means to be part of a civil society." They're among more than 100 students selected from about a dozen school districts statewide.

Their remarks will be videotaped for a presentation to the state General Assembly and later broadcast on public TV. Details are in the Post-Gazette.