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http://www.dailystar.com/star/today/30412snakebitekidsrm2fjmd.html

Venomous memories tug at snake victims
By Carla McClain, ARIZONA DAILY STAR


Tucson, Arizona 12 April 2003-
Little Emma Murphy made her mother stop at a cemetery.
Then she pointed to a grave and said, "Mommy, aren't you glad that's not me in there?"
This from a child who just months before had survived one of the worst rattlesnake bites in Tucson history.
But that did not stop her from demanding - and getting - a pi�ata in the shape of a rattler, fangs and all, for her fifth birthday party last week.
Across town, tiny Tucker Kinder, also severely bitten last year, still wakes up screaming with nightmares, and is terrified now at the sight of blood.
But he loves to go to the Desert Museum, mainly to see the snakes, and wants to pet the baby rattlers, because "they're nice, they won't hurt me," his mother said.
Next week marks the anniversary of Emma Murphy's heroic, painful battle for life and limb after a rattlesnake emptied a huge load of venom into her as she sat on a rock on a beautiful spring day in Sabino Canyon.
It took a record-breaking 44 vials of antivenin and seven days at University Medical Center to save her, after the snake venom unexpectedly exploded in her small body, racing through her bloodstream. She finally went home severely blistered and in a wheelchair.
Five months later, Tucker Kinder, now almost 3, was nailed when he tumbled off his bike onto a rattlesnake in front of his Foothills home. He needed 24 vials of antivenin, emergency surgery on his severely swollen leg, and a week at Tucson Medical Center to save his life.
Neither of these children has emerged unscathed - physically or emotionally - from their brush with death.
"Oh yes, I always think about it, every day," said Emma, as she romped and hopscotched in her front yard this week, at times hugging that pi�ata rattler's head to her.
"I never go into the bushes or near the rocks. I'm always scared. But I'm glad I lived."
Like Tucker, Emma too was plagued by nightmares for months after her ordeal. And like him, she also had to endure months of physical therapy to restore full mobility and muscle function.
"Yes, she still has some fear - some fear of dying," said her mother, Sarah Murphy. "But I think she's come to terms that there are life-and-death situations, and that she was in one of them."
In addition to the telling trip to the cemetery, Emma also makes her mother take her to the pediatric intensive care unit at UMC, to visit very sick children she doesn't even know.
"She's so much more in tune with children who are sick or hurt now. She has developed a great empathy for them," said Murphy.
As a result, Emma has now decided she wants to be a "baby doctor" when she grows up, because, "I want to take care of them when they're sick," she said simply.
And possibly also because she and her family are so grateful to the team of doctors who pulled her through her life-and-death struggle a year ago.
Last month, Emma drew a big picture of herself and the head of that team, UMC emergency physician Dr. John Sullivan, holding hands, surrounded by five smiling rattlesnakes. She and her family took the drawing to him, to thank him.
"In her picture, all of us were smiling - even the snakes," said Sullivan, delighted by the encounter. "Everybody was happy.
"It was a really nice thing for her to do, and she's making a great recovery."
As she will proudly show to anyone who asks, a small chunk of missing flesh on her left heel is all that remains, physically, of her snakebite. Her months of physical therapy have paid off, leaving her fully mobile, and active in tennis, ballet, soccer and hopscotch.
"You can't keep her down," said her father, Jim Murphy.
But it is Emma's strange attraction to and affinity for all things rattlesnake that is perhaps the most intriguing part of her healing process.
With no prompting from her parents, she has asked for, and gotten, a stuffed rattlesnake, complete with rattle, for her bed, a little rattlesnake paperweight for her desk, and then the rattlesnake pi�ata for her party.
She also regularly watches snake programs on TV, especially a medical show about venomous bites.
"She still fears them to some extent - you can see that in how she worries about rocks and places they might be. And she's not ready yet to go back to Sabino Canyon," said Sarah Murphy.
"But from a distance, she definitely has some sort of thing for them. It's the way she says 'I survived' - I think her snake is a badge of honor for her. She survived it, and she's proud of that."
Emma's embrace of rattlesnake icons is not as odd as it might seem, said Tucson child psychiatrist Dr. Kevin Leehey.
Stressing that he does not know Emma or the details of her case, Leehey said that what she is doing appears to be "quite healthy and adaptive."
"In general, in dealing with a traumatic event, one of the natural coping mechanisms is to take the thing that scares you and master it," he said.
"You often see it when someone, especially a child, has been severely injured like she was. It's one of the ways to become less frightened - by getting a sense of mastery, or control, over it."
The child's brave effort to conquer her fears is testimony to how well her parents have handled her through this ordeal, said Tucson child psychologist Lynne Harrison.
"Many parents in such a situation would react with such horror and panic, it would infect the child and affect her healing," said Harrison. "It sounds like Emma's parents have done a wonderful job supporting her, instead of instilling more fear in her that she might not be able to overcome."
That is the challenge still facing the Kinder family, as Tucker battles his ongoing nightmares and physical problems.
Fully seven months after his devastating bite, Tucker is still going through physical therapy four times a week, to try to straighten out his Achilles tendon and foot - the area of the bite - to try to prevent it from clubbing.
And his parents, Mica and Albert Kinder, are now seriously considering psychotherapy for him, to ease his fears and nightmares.
"Not a day goes by that he doesn't talk about rattlesnakes," said Mica Kinder. "The other day, he said to me, 'Why did you let the rattlesnake bite me?'
"He's very active and lively, but this is still troubling him."
Linked by this trauma to their children, the Murphy and Kinder families recently got together, and Tucker immediately found a friend in Emma, bonding to her, his mother said.
"He really likes her," she said.
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http://www.newsnet5.com/news/2102004/detail.html- click for pictures

Local Children Honored For Heroic Acts

Akron, Cleveland, U.S.A., Apr 9,2003-Being calm under pressure turned some Akron kids into heroes, and NewsChannel5's Jonathan Costen reported that they were honored by police and fire 911 operators and dispatchers Wednesday.
Although they're only between the ages of 4 and 11, Shamia, Azel, Ariana, Vincent and Akasha were cool-headed and quick-thinking. When their families needed them most, they called 911.
Vincent Ottobre was just 10 years old when his father was having a seizure.
"My brother, Nicholas, says he's still breathing but we can't really tell," Nicholas told the dispatcher. "I think he's just inhaling deeply."
"I was like, half-scared, half-worried and half something else," he said later. "I know that equals 150 percent."
"I think very highly of him; he makes me very proud," said Barry Still, Vincent's father. "I mean, I'm happy he's around. I love him very much."
Shamia Clark safely got her 11-month-old cousin and 1-month-old sister out of a burning apartment while calling 911.
"The stove caught on fire because my aunt left the fire on," she had said during her 911 call.
She realizes now that she could have died saving her cousin and sibling.
"I could've died before I called them," she said. "I was thinking, 'Wow, that was me that did that. I actually saved someone.'"
"She's a hero, a saver," said Michelle Barclay, Shamia's mother. "I just thank God she saved the lives of two babies."
Wednesday's awards ceremony coincides with the National Safety Telecommunicators Week, which was established by Congress in 1991.
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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030409/ap_on_en_tv/ap_on_tv_kids_choice_awards_2


Kids' Choice Awards Reach Young Consumers
By LYNN ELBER, AP Television Writer

LOS ANGELES, CA, U.S.A. Apr 9 2003- When Brad Pitt and Michelle Pfeiffer appear at the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards on Saturday, the actors will be demonstrating more than a love of children.
Such A-list celebrities at a ceremony for the pint-sized set that's decidedly lower on the glamour scale than the Academy Awards (news - web sites) testify to the power of young consumers and Nickelodeon itself.
Kids spend big, they watch the child-oriented cable channel, and the entertainment industry knows it.
"The kid audience for movies and music is an important one, and the talent roster shows their respect for the kid audience as they do for the adult audience at the Oscars said Cyma Zarghami, Nickelodeon's executive vice president and general manager. Kids' Choice Awards Reach Young Consumers
Kids spend big, they watch the child-oriented cable channel, and the entertainment industry knows it.
"As far as I'm concerned, kids are born saying three things: `Feed me,' `No' and `Nick,' in that order. For me, Nick is the place to reach children," said Terry Press, marketing director for DreamWorks.
The studio is using the Kids' Choice Awards to begin the marketing campaign for its new animated film "Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas," which features the voices of Pitt and Pfeiffer.
"The kid audience for movies and music is an important one, and the talent roster shows their respect for the kid audience as they do for the adult audience at the Oscars," said Cyma Zarghami, Nickelodeon's executive vice president and general manager.
DreamWorks has found the awards show to provide a reliable kickoff for films whose target audiences include youngsters, Press said.
"We began here on `Shrek.' We began here on `Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron.' For `Chicken Run,' we had Mel Gibson (news) on the show," she said. "We have consistently begun our marketing with this event."
In 2002, the show scored its highest rating yet with a total audience of 12.5 million viewers, including 5.6 million children aged 2 to 11. More than 20 million ballots were cast by youngsters online for favorites in movies, television, music and sports.
That's a respectable slice of young America which, according to one study of 6- to 17-year-olds cited by Nickelodeon, has a combined $70 billion in spending power.
For the seventh straight year, actress-comedian Rosie O'Donnell is host. The mother of four children, O'Donnell says there's no flipping in her household: Nick is the only channel allowed.
"There's something very pure about Nickelodeon," she said. "It's just kids, it's just truth and they teach kids things on it that I want to be instilled in every child: social responsibility, that they have the power to make change in society. It's a wonderful message and a great moral in a time it's very needed."
And Nickelodeon is, without question, a very good place to do business with young customers.
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http://www.mid-day.com/entertainment/hindimoviesreview/2003/april/49695.htm

Review of Chota Jadugar
By: Mayank Shekhar

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Editorial Team
News for Kids [ http://www.newsforkidz.com/ ]