Word: neill
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...parents' absence, volunteers and hospital staff provided nurturing. "People brought her presents and visited with her Christmas Day," notes surgeon in chief Dr. James O'Neill, who separated the twins. Nurses bought her clothes, which they laundered themselves. They read books to her and stroked her cheeks, and Angela returned the affection. "She would blow kisses," says nurse Maryann Izzi, who has two new dresses at home intended as gifts for Angela's first birthday. "If you walked up and said her name or if you were someone she recognized, she would have a smile or a laugh...
Angela's death renewed the debate over whether her doctors had made the right choice in attempting such heroic surgery in the first place. Doctors at Chicago's Loyola University Medical Center, where the twins were born, had advised against any intervention. But Philadelphia's O'Neill insists that the child had a reasonable chance of recovery. "We never believed that it was a 1% chance. If we thought that it was not a reconstructible heart except for a snowball's chance in hell, we would have advised against it. We take long odds every day, but not crazy odds...
...agree with us." Muraskas, who served as the girls' godfather, says Kenny Lakeberg's drug problems and the nature of the family entered into his thinking: "You have to ask yourself if chain-smoking parents in a trailer park is the most conducive environment for a sick child." O'Neill feels strongly that such considerations have no bearing on the decision to offer treatment; he also disputes the notion that the cost of Angela's care was out of line. Dr. Alan Fleischman, professor of pediatrics at New York City's Albert Einstein College of Medicine, agrees. "Interventions of this...
SOME GUYS ARE JUST LUCKY. "Sometimes luck can be as important as talent in this game," says O'Neill, referring to a rule that also governs the game of life. "A hitter has to realize that. Last week I was hitting the ball hard, and it was falling in. Last night I hit the ball hard, and they caught it." Wee Willie Keeler's dictum, enunciated nearly a century ago, still applies: Hit 'em where they ain't. And how does a ballplayer do that? With a great deal of skill and a little luck...
...maybe hitting a baseball, even this season, is still a thing of beauty and a damn hard way to make a living. Soon the helium averages will drop, and good platesmen will stumble into month-long slumps. By October, O'Neill predicts, "the stats will be close to where they were last year." For now, though, we'll cheer the boys of spring. Will the sacred records fall? No one knows. But in June, everything is possible...