Our Great City

It took just seconds for 3-year-old DerekScott "Bubba" Kirby to get thrown off the sheep he was riding during a mutton-busting event at a Central Texas rodeo.

And even less time for the preschooler, who was no newcomer to the rodeo tradition that introduces kids to rough riding, to dust himself off and strut out of the ring like a tough bronc rider.

"There was no injury, just a mouthful of dirt," said his mother, Deven Denman. "He was laughing."

But a week later, on June 26, Bubba woke up crying at 5 a.m. at his home in Goldthwaite, about 135 miles southwest of Fort Worth.

"His diaper was filled with nothing but blood," said Denman, who grew up in Bedford and moved away several months ago.

Since then it's been a rough ride for Bubba and his family as he battled a life-threatening condition called hemolytic uremic syndrome, which left him unable to eat, speak or walk.

All the while, an army of friends has held everything from prayer vigils to carwashes in a show of support for the family. Calling themselves Bubba's Angels, they set up a Facebook page that has drawn more than 7,400 followers, said Kendra Goode, a friend. Two events are planned for this weekend.

"People are buying T-shirts, donating money and sending tons of gifts," she said. "I think Bubba's story has hit people in their hearts and they just want to do whatever they can to help."

Denman, a divorced mother of two and self-employed hairdresser, has rarely left her son's side throughout the medical ordeal. But last week, Bubba's health improved enough that he was transferred from Dell Children's Medical Center in Austin to Our Children's House at Baylor in Dallas, where he will undergo rehabilitation.

He has been weaned off his pain medication, is more alert and is straightening his arm, which had curled up after he suffered a stroke, Denman said.

This week, he said his first word since he became ill.

"He finally said no, clear as day," Denman said. "It's his favorite word."

Bubba contracted an E. coli infection when he swallowed dirt at the rodeo. Around the country other children have fallen ill after contact with animals at fairs, rodeos and petting zoos. He then developed hemolytic uremic syndrome. The condition usually affects children under age 5 and occurs when an infection in the digestive system produces toxic substances that destroy red blood cells.

It most often causes kidney failure but can also lead to stroke, seizures and a perforated intestine, said Dr. Robert Gillespie, a nephrologist with Cook Children's Medical Center in Fort Worth. The condition is rare, with three to four cases treated at Cook Children's a year.

"Children get very sick, but most recover," he said.

It is the most common cause of acute kidney failure in children.

In Bubba's case, it attacked his kidneys and didn't stop there.

"He was bloated and so big he was unrecognizable," Denman said. "His eyes were swollen shut and he had this huge body with little arms and legs," she said.

While he was on kidney dialysis, Denman noticed that something didn't seem quite right.

"He was sleeping with his eyes open," she said.

Tests revealed that he'd had a stroke. Then, while he was about to undergo an MRI, Bubba's heart stopped.

It was 3 a.m. when Bubba's physician told the family that he wanted to put him on a treatment for children with cardiorespiratory failure. Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation allows the heart and lungs to rest while the machine does all the work. But it would be three hours before the treatment could begin on the equipment.

Getting Bubba to 6 a.m. was the longest three hours of Denman's life.

"It was a minute-by-minute thing," she said. "His blood pressure kept going down and alarms were going off every five minutes."

In the end, Bubba was placed on the ECMO and it did exactly what it was intended to do. It gave Bubba's heart the rest it needed, and after three days he was taken off the machine.

His condition has gradually improved, and Denman is optimistic that he'll be back in his beloved cowboy boots in no time.

"Until now nothing hurt him," Denman said. "He's definitely a scrapper."

Jan Jarvis, 817-390-7664

FORT WORTH -- John Peter Smith Hospital officials will review the medical response to a man who collapsed and died Tuesday in the hospital pharmacy after witnesses complained that help was slow to arrive and that emergency equipment did not appear to work properly.

Jeff Dickerson, who was picking up a prescription at the pharmacy, said it took medical workers nearly 10 minutes to get there. Once there, he said that two defibrillators the workers tried to use did not appear to work.

"I thought this was all so ridiculous because you're in a hospital and the equipment doesn't work right," Dickerson said, adding that he was in a group of witnesses who agreed after the incident that they should contact the media about their concerns.

CEO Robert Earley said hospital staffers did all they could to resuscitate the man and suggested that witnessing someone in trauma can cause emotions to run high.

"JPS is in the business of saving lives; we do it every day," Earley said. "It's sad and unfortunate when that doesn't happen."

Earley said the man, whose identity was not available, was at JPS to pick up a prescription. At some point Tuesday, the man's name was called in the pharmacy, but he did not come to the window. An employee went into the lobby and asked him whether he was OK.

The man answered that he was OK and did not need assistance, Earley said.

Esterlean Benjamin, who was also picking up a prescription, said she heard the exchange between the employee and the man.

But later, she said she noticed that the man was slumped in his chair.

"His face was dark blue, and he had stuff running out of his nose," she said.

Dickerson said that after other people waiting for prescriptions called for help, he went to the urgent-care facility around the corner and asked for a doctor or nurse to be summoned.

Then he went back to the waiting room and helped lower the man to the floor.

He said it took nearly 10 minutes for someone from the hospital to arrive.

Help was summoned from the emergency room, but when responders tried to use a defibrillator it did not seem to work, he said.

"I heard one person say to another that it wasn't charged," he said. "So they got another one, and the second one they got didn't work. So then they were trying to look for a plug to plug it in but they didn't have an extension cord."

Medical workers tried CPR and put the man on a cart, and as they took him away, a hospital worker was still attempting to resuscitate him, Dickerson said.

Earley said that it was difficult to say exactly how long it took medical help to arrive but that he believed it was less than 10 minutes. According to hospital records, a medical team was summoned at 12:36 p.m. and that heart monitoring equipment was activated at 12:42 p.m.

However, Earley said, a doctor arrived first and immediately began life-saving efforts.

"The defibrillator was working, but we will go back and investigate everything we can to find every piece of equipment and make sure things were working the way they were supposed to," he said.

Alex Branch, 817-390-7689

WASHINGTON -- Seniors will see a modest increase in their Medicare prescription premiums next year, but benefits will also improve, federal health officials said Wednesday.

The average monthly premium charged by Medicare drug plans for standard coverage will rise to an estimated $30 in 2011, an increase of $1 over 2010, or about 3 percent, said Medicare administrator Don Berwick.

But since Medicare drug plans vary widely in coverage and costs, consumer advocates cautioned that seniors need to check their particular plan to avoid unpleasant surprises that may not be revealed in a such a broad estimate of average premiums.

Nonetheless, seniors with high drug costs can look for a noticeable improvement next year.

That's because the new healthcare law will begin to close the coverage gap known as the doughnut hole. Medicare recipients in the gap will get a 50 percent discount on brand-name drugs, and 7 percent off on generics. The discounts will gradually increase until the gap finally closes in 2020.

"These very modest increases in premiums, along with the new discounts ... are going to make medications more affordable to Medicare beneficiaries," said Berwick.

Details on coverage for 2011 will be available on Medicare's plan finder during open enrollment season this fall. Medicare covers 47 million elderly and disabled people.

CHICAGO -- A stunning 1 in 5 teens has lost a little bit of hearing, and the problem has increased substantially in recent years, a new national study has found.

Some experts are urging teenagers to turn down the volume on their digital music players, suggesting that loud music through ear buds may be to blame -- although hard evidence is lacking.

"Our hope is we can encourage people to be careful," said the study's senior author, Dr. Gary Curhan of Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

The researchers analyzed data on 12- to 19-year-olds from a nationwide health survey. They compared 3,000 kids tested from 1988 to 1994 with nearly 1,800 kids tested in 2005-06.

The prevalence of hearing loss increased from about 15 percent to 19.5 percent.

Most of the hearing loss was "slight," defined as inability to hear at 16 to 24 decibels -- or sounds such as a whisper or rustling leaves.

While the researchers didn't single out iPods or any other device for blame, they found a significant increase in high-frequency hearing loss, which they said may indicate that noise caused the problems.

And they cited a 2010 Australian study that linked the use of personal listening devices with a 70 percent increased risk of hearing loss in children.

The findings appear in today's Journal of the American Medical Association.

INDIANAPOLIS -- Eli Lilly and Co. has stopped developing a potential Alzheimer's disease treatment as the drugmaker searches far and wide for new drugs to fill a large revenue hole that will form starting next year.

The Indianapolis company said Tuesday that preliminary results from late-stage studies of semagacestat showed that it did not slow the progression of Alzheimer's, and that patients taking the drug fared worse than those on a placebo.

Despite the setback, Lilly Chairman and CEO John Lechleiter said the company remains committed to developing new drugs while competitors make large-scale acquisitions.

The industry is racing to compensate for patent expirations that will take place in the next few years and expose many key drugs to generic competition.

"In a risky business like ours, these things do happen," he said. "One failure of this sort does not undermine our strategy."

Lilly has eight drugs in late-stage testing, the last step before a company seeks regulatory approval. That includes potential cancer and diabetes treatments and another Alzheimer's drug. The company also touts a pipeline of nearly 70 drugs that are in some form of human testing.

It is also awaiting a Food and Drug Administration decision on its antidepressant Cymbalta as a possible chronic pain treatment and a longer-acting version of Byetta, a diabetes drug on which it partners with Amylin Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Lilly, which supplements its pipeline with several smaller-scale acquisitions, faces one of the worst "patent cliffs" in the industry. It loses protection for its top seller, the antipsychotic Zyprexa, next year and its second-best seller, Cymbalta, in 2013.

In addition, a U.S. District Court judge has ruled that a patent protecting the attention-deficit hyperactivity drug Strattera is invalid. Lilly expects generic competition to enter the market soon.

To counter all this, Lilly aims to launch two new drugs a year by 2013.

"We think we're plenty big enough to continue to innovate and to bring new medicines forward that will help Lilly resume a growth trajectory following the expiration of these various patents," Lechleiter said.

However, analysts covering the company have doubts. Bernstein analyst Dr. Tim Anderson said in a research note that Lilly's lineup of drugs in late-stage development "looks relatively thin."

"The company has disavowed doing bigger deals, which implies it is counting on its pipeline to deliver," Anderson wrote. "Today's setback would seem to make this more difficult to achieve."

Lilly said Tuesday that patients taking semagacestat saw their cognition, or memory and reasoning skills, and their ability to complete daily living activities like getting dressed worsen "to a statistically significantly greater degree" than patients taking a placebo.

The drug was also tied to an increased risk of skin cancer. Lilly said the decision to halt semagacestat's development will not affect its other potential Alzheimer's treatment, solanezumab.

There is no known cure for Alzheimer's disease, and scientists aren't sure what causes it. Drugs now on the market only temporarily alleviate symptoms.