I found it so valuable to have students in the class critique your work, that helps you improve what you already have and definitely ask for coding help and feedback from your professor.  I also found it valuable to check out multimedia/project websites to see if you can get ideas for your stories.

Here are some programs we worked with if you want to get a head start learning:

• Adobe Illustrator & Photoshop
• Motion
• Firebug
• FileZilla
• Dreamweaver

(Yea, you will know what this all means by the end of the semester)

I would advise future students to do this alongside your final project because you’re dedicating a lot of your time to your story and learning the skills as you build your infographic or website for that story.  Spend some time thinking about the title of your project so that you can get the right domain name early on, I would recommend running the title through your professor or project adviser.  Nothing too long and complicated and make sure it’s spelled correctly.

If you have an idea for a story, it’ll be good to check out related websites on your topic to see how they presented it, but try to make yours stand out and own it.  Trust me, you will be proud of your work in the end and you’ll be surprised how much you end up knowing by the end of the semester.

As far as advice, start early, like in the summer early. If you are like me at the beginning of the semester, you will have your 490 topic pretty much locked down, but be completely lost on the path you want to take for your website. Start thinking about design, layout and components before anyone tells you you need to. If you don’t, you will realize much too late the direction you should’ve taken your site, and what you could’ve done differently. I am happy with my site, but there are a lot of things I would’ve done differently if I planned ahead more thoroughly.

As a final word, this class was extremely beneficial and while I am ecstatic that it’s over and I survived, I enjoyed the class very much, and I am really grateful for the skills I’ve gained by taking it.

Gavin Stern – Fighting Mold After Sandy from Gavin Stern on Vimeo.

Hammers pound on water-stained drywall. Mold-encased flooring is pried up. A toxic haze hangs over bedrooms now separated only by raw wooden beams. The dirty air swirls around young volunteers as they pant through respirator masks and tear apart what was once a home.

This is post-Sandy cleanup – volunteer crews, gutting out homes to save them from mold.

“It’s not glamorous work, but construction never is,” said Howard Singer, 46, who owns the home at 432 beach 47th St. in Far Rockaway. “Hopefully, this is going to allow the house to air out.”

Sandy’s floodwaters reached halfway up the front door.

“Everything below that has to be ripped out,” said Alexey Abramov, a medical student who organized a volunteer group consisting of students from New York Medical College and members of the Eastchester Volunteer Ambulance Corps.

Abramov’s team received their assignment and equipment from Respond and Rebuild, which coordinates a volunteer effort out of Pilgrim Church of Arverne, itself hollowed out by the storm. The pews are pushed aside to make room for shovels, boots, and boxes filled with gloves, hard hats, goggles and respirators – all donated from the Occupy Sandy movement.

“Mold levels are very high,” said Charlie Paget-Seekins, 28, from Booneville, Calif., a crew coordinator for Respond and Rebuild. “We are exposed and worse than that there are a lot of homeowners that are living in homes that have serious mold problems.”

Paget-Seekins said exposure is a sacrifice that volunteers such as him are aware of, but with proper use of personal protective equipment – such as respirators – he said health issues can be kept to a minimum.

Yet, the equipment that Abramov’s team was issued, a standard N95 respirator, is only suitable to clean up a, “small mold area, less than roughly three feet by three feet,” according to an instruction pamphlet by 3M that is included with its respirator masks.

With the levels of mold seen in Sandy-struck homes – the floors are caked with it – a paper mask may not be enough, said Evonne Kaplan-Liss, a physician and professor of preventive medicine at Stony Brook University.

“Volunteers are using N95 respirators, the most basic. They should be used only when there’s minimal mold,” Kaplan-Liss said.

While exposure to large amount of mold should not be life-threatening, Kaplan-Liss said, it is possible to pick up a mold lung infection, which would require treatment by a specialist.

Matt Engel, a coordinator for Respond and Rebuild, said volunteers are issued the best equipment available based on donations, and that the paper masks are sufficient for the short-term crews.

“For demolition crews, with people going out once or twice, we’re told the N95 is safe. People on a long-term basis, they’re using a more advanced P100 half-face respirator with Tyvek suits,” said Engel, 30, from Westfield, Mass. “As we get more of those in, we’re going to transition to those.”

Engel said Respond and Rebuild would benefit from donations of the protective equipment. The more-extensive P100 respirators cost about $35 each, while that same amount can buy boxes upon boxes of N95 masks.

Paget-Seekins said he sometimes feels congested after working in Far Rockaway. Engel, a smoker, said he experiences some “chest stuff.”

“Volunteers who are sensitive to molds may experience itchy eyes, skin irritation and sneezing,” Kaplan-Liss said, with people who smoke, have asthma or other lung conditions being especially susceptible.

Though the volunteer effort is not without sacrifice, the work is worth thousands of dollars to the victims. Many of those affected were uninsured or underinsured for floods. Singer’s insurance, which he paid into for years, wouldn’t cover damage from rising water.

“They’ve been waiting their whole lives to say there’s no insurance,” Singer said.

Though gutting homes of flooring and drywall is an extensive, painful process, it is necessary to save the home.

“If people just rebuild without removing the mold first, it’s going to become a public health epidemic,” Paget-Seekins said. “Homes are going to become structurally unsound.”

Back at Pilgrim Church of Arverne, a new group of volunteers arrive, load up on gear and head out for the day, despite the health risk.

“We’ve seen the poor response from government agencies and it seemed like the only people who were actually here and knew what was happening was Occupy Sandy,” said Dioclis Hernandez, 37, from Brooklyn. “They went door to door to find out what people actually needed instead of just dropping off crap and walking away.”

Pastor Dennis Loncke, who has been working with Respond and Rebuild out of the Sandy-devastated Pilgrim Church of Arverne building, has not lost his optimism.

“What Sandy has done is brought us a place not to focus so much on the past, but to focus on going forward – what do we do from here,” Loncke said. “In the midst of all that is going on, we’re looking for the good that God is doing.  It is a challenging time.”

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle from Alexa Gorman on Vimeo.

Green activists are springing up on college campuses across Long Island. The sustainability movement is taking new forms at Adelphi University, Long Island University Post and Stony Brook University. Each campus is working with students and faculty to promote sustainable living in a variety of ways.

Adelphi University

Sarah Cinquemani, a sophomore at Adelphi University, is focused on the future—not her own, but the future of the environment. She is the President of the Green Council, bringing residents together to create a more sustainable campus.

“Being a resident and going to the dining halls, I see a lot of waste,” she said. “I don’t like it. I don’t want to see it.”

Cinquemani works with her Residence Hall Director and the Assistant to the Dean of Student Affairs on the university’s sustainability plans in a continuing collaboration between students and faculty to create programs and initiatives to educate their campus community.

Green Council works with the seven residence halls on Adelphi’s campus to promote “green living,” according to Cinquemani. Their main location is in the Chapman Hall, home of the eco-friendly living-learning center.

The community houses students who are committed to living an environmentally sustainable lifestyle—which means adjusting their use of lighting and power, and recycling all appropriate items. It was established in 2009 and encompasses the first and second floors of the building.

“This year we’re really focusing on getting the name out there,” Cinquemani said. One of her goals is to expand the council and get the message of green living out through campus-wide programming. Previously, the campus has hosted an “Adelphi Unplugged” program in which the power to Chapman was cut to conserve energy.

Educational and interactive programs are the primary method the Green Council uses to spreads its message. Recently, the council hosted a green cooking program in which students learned to cook with little to no electricity. Along with its new advisor, Residence Hall Director Camille Pajor, the Green Council is developing goals and core values—some of which include working with other environmental groups on campus.

Pajor said that waste is being reduced already through the water filtration systems that were installed in a few places on campus last year. Each station looks like a water fountain, but it is used to refill bottles.

According to Kathleen Watchorn, Assistant to the Dean of Student Affairs, over 150,000 water bottles have been saved since the filtration systems were installed.

Cinquemani said that small changes like biodegradable containers in the dining halls would make a huge impact as well.

“It would be great to see people who are more aware of the water that they use and the electricity that they use,” she said. “I don’t think people realize that.”

Long Island University Post

At Long Island University Post, the Environmental Sustainability Graduate Program is in its early stages. Billy Achnitz, Graduate Assistant for the Sustainability Studies Program, has been working with the program for four years.

The program falls under the Facilities Department on campus, marking a key distinction from the independent initiatives in other universities.

LIU Post’s sustainability efforts are growing in part from inspiration from other campuses. One of Achnitz’s projects is researching the programs of rival universities.

“This year has been kind of a testing period,” he said. His focus this semester is the campus’s waste stream. Currently, the university is looking into recycling options for tires, mattresses, scrap metal and e-waste.

Achnitz applied for the Coca-Cola “Keep America Beautiful” Grant last year in order to increase the school’s recycling efforts, from which LIU Post received over 30 Dasani bottle collection bins at the end of last semester.

“They stand out more,” he said. “It kind of hits people and reminds them [when] they see this giant water bottle…to recycle.”

The school installed 10-kilowatt solar panels about three years ago as well. The power generated from the panels has created over 20,065.4 kilowatt-hours of solar power as of Nov. 27, saving 16,694 pounds of carbon dioxide and 1,180.3 gallons of oil. LIU Post has saved $4,213.74 since the installation of the solar panels.

Students on the Sustainability Committee developed a vision report at the end of last year with recommendations for a more sustainable LIU Post. The group is also developing a “green office certification program,” in order to teach and reward faculty and staff members who keep a sustainable workspace.

The profits from recyclables go to a scholarship fund for a student who demonstrates passion for sustainability. It began at $250 and will break the $1,000 mark this year.

“It’s a good measure to show people that we are increasing recycling,” said Achnitz. “Being that [deposits] are five cents, that’s a lot of bottles.”

Stony Brook University

The Sustainability Services at Stony Brook University is developing an EcoLeaders program, which will incorporate peer-to-peer education and cooperation with the administration, faculty and staff on campus.

The group itself will have about 30 members, with representatives from the Undergraduate Student Government, Graduate Student Organization the Residence Hall Association and sustainability students, according to Richard Shelton, one of the founding members of the EcoLeaders.

Shelton works in the Sustainability Office, and said that there is one major flaw in the university’s program.

“A lot of the trouble that I’ve been finding…is quantifying the effects of what we’re doing on campus because all of these things are going towards a certain goal,” he said. “And we can’t say how the projects we’re doing are really bringing us closer to that goal, then the value is kind of lost even if they are good projects.”

As a whole, Stony Brook hosts over 200 sustainability initiatives each year including awareness programs, recycling projects, student projects and national contests, according to James O’Connor, Director of Sustainability Services.

O’Connor’s office oversees all green efforts on campus, from pick up schedules to campus-wide programs. Two of the largest annual programs are Earthstock and Recyclemania.

Recyclemania kicks off during the first week of February and for eight weeks. The program tracks quantities in tons of recyclables. This year, O’Connor wants to post weekly updates for the campus and community.

“Recyclemania has always been a challenge because it’s right when the students return for the spring semester,” he said. “Usually the second week of class is Recyclemania, so we have to get the message out earlier.”

Earthstock is an original program at Stony Brook, in which the week leading up to Earth Day is filled with educational programs and competitions.

“There is certainly an opportunity for students as well as the community members to get involved,” said O’Connor. “And we definitely want to increase the message that we have. To say hey, you do have the ability to make a difference.”

—

In years past, recycling was a fad that a small part of the population participated in. Now, not only is it seen as a necessity, but students actually look into the “Quality of Life” of campuses when choosing a college, according to the Princeton Review. Sustainability is no longer vague jargon used by companies, but a living, breathing part of everyday life.

LONG BEACH, N.Y. – When Sandy hit the East Coast on Oct. 29, Long Beach homeowner Chris Maksymowicz had his basement flooded, but he was not worried about the thousands of dollars’ worth of damage to the furnace, heaters and walls.

Maksymowicz said the worst losses were his family photos, some of which dated back to the 1920s, an electrical train set from 1942, his wife’s dissertation work, several documents and other mementos.

“It was all in mud and sand,” he said. “I found some stuff from when I was a kid … my essays, my writings, my awards, my certificates. It’s all gone.”

Maksymowicz, who owns a house right across from the ocean on Broadway in Long Beach, was not alone in his loss. While the hurricane coverage focused on the number of damaged cars, flooded basements and contaminated house appliances, many residents feel like they lost some of their memories along with sentimental objects like photo albums and collectibles.

The hurricane, also known as a superstorm, caused about $200 million in structural losses in Long Beach, according to preliminary estimates.

Mike Skivington, who rents a house on Broadway, said Sandy caused him about $75,000 in damage to personal property, including two totaled two vehicles. But when the Navy veteran was cleaning up his basement two weeks after the hurricane, his biggest surprise was to find out that the boxes where he kept his books, notebooks, and other memories had “floated and opened and spewed everywhere. “

“They were scattered everywhere,” he said. “Lots of memories, navy memorabilia, my college graduation pictures. I got a toolbox in there with about 10 grand in tools that I haven’t even opened ‘cause I don’t want to start crying.”

Tara Rider, a history professor at Stony Brook University, said that not being able to replace mementos like those make it much harder for people to recover from a natural disaster.

“For many people it’s about those smaller items: the picture albums, the ring that they can’t find … because you can rebuild a house, you can buy a new car, but you can’t necessarily recreate that memory, that image that was captured,” Rider said.

Amy Pecker, another Long Beach homeowner who lives on Michigan St., had moved all of her albums and collectibles over four feet above the floor in her basement, but the water reached about 7-foot high and she lost most of it.

Pecker said the water, which included sand and sewage water, washed away her parents’ memories, a lifetime of pictures, baseball cards and her children’s classwork.

“Stuff like that, that you can never replace, just drowned,” she said.

For Maksymowicz, one of the hardest things is feeling guilty for not taking better care of his mementos.

“It’s those things that you don’t know what they are until they’re gone,” he said. “In terms of monetary value – family albums and pictures of 100 years ago – that didn’t cost me any money. But a part of you is gone.”

Rider said that rebuilding the physical things, however, is the first step toward full recovery.

“Rebuilding the physical house [and] buying the car remind you that this is more than a house. It is a home,” she said. “And homes are memories.”

A Beacon of Hope from Jess Stallone on Vimeo.

In a once affluent middle-class neighborhood, modest, two-story homes line the winding one-way streets of Belle Harbor that have been flooded and gutted in the wake of Superstorm Sandy.  Residents have been living within the confining and mold infested walls of their homes for more than a month without heat and are now entering the brisk month of December.

By day, residents seek refuge at the warming tent that appropriated the Father Grogan Memorial Playground at St Francis De Sales Parish–it has become a community safe haven for hundreds.

“It’s a place where other people going through the same things you’re going through, sit here and have a cup of coffee,” said Sal Amodeo, a Belle Harbor resident. “You commiserate together.”

The warming tent was setup across the street from St Francis De Sales Parish on the corner of Beach 129th Street and Rockaway Beach Boulevard within a week after Sandy had hit. The tent has become a community ground for many residents, hired workers and volunteers.

“If you have any questions, what do you do? You just go down to the tent,” said Sal Amodeo, a Belle Harbor resident. “And you’ll find someone who’ll be able to answer most of your questions.”

The tent provides staff, residents, workers, officials and volunteers with a variety of different particulars—food, supplies, government services, legal services, and such. At the warming tent, there are an estimated 750 to 2,000 people being served food daily, according to Jason Maas, an organizer at the tent and New York Cares worker.

“It’s just a place for the community to come and get warm and get their services,” said Maas.

Across from the warming tent, another white tent was constructed to store supplies for a community that doesn’t even have basic necessities. Even if the residents had survived the storm with little flooding, there isn’t anywhere to purchase basic household items, such as food, toothpaste, shampoo and toilet paper

“Superstorm Sandy, it destroyed many, many homes and wiped out a lot of people’s lives, so that’s the reason we’re here—to help and restore,” said Suellen Bird, a volunteer for Faith Exchange.

When the storm hit, Amodeo was at home with his wife and 16-year-old son. Water flooded their basement and began to reach their first floor. It wasn’t until their car was submerged in water that they realized how bad the storm was.

“Like most people, it was unexpected,” said Amodeo. “We dealt with it, just like this community has been doing.”

There has been a great deal of community and government involvement in the recovery of the Rockaway Peninsula from a variety of organizations, such as New York Cares, Team Rubicon, FEMA and Faith Exchange.

Volunteers have been coming from the local Rockaway community,  all over New York and even from out-of-state.

“It makes you have a good feeling when you know that you’ve done something—a smile on a child’s face when you hand them a coloring book when they have nothing,” said Bird, of Fort Worth, Texas.

Amodeo remembers the destruction caused by 9/11 and urges people to remember Superstorm Sandy as not only a devastating event, but also for the community support and immense amount of contributions that people have given.

“I hate when people forget. Sometimes people have short-term memory,” said Amodeo. “I never forget.”

“I think it took us a whole period to wake up,” Garofalo said. “I give them credit, they worked hard, but we should have dominated from the drop of the puck, and we didn’t.”

Freshman defenseman Joe Ditizio got Stony Brook on the board at the 17:41 mark of the second period, taking a pass from sophomore forward Vincent Lopes and beating Drexel goalie Zach Kantner over the glove with a wrist-shot.

At the 14:39 mark, junior defenseman Chris Joseph made it 2-0 while on the powerplay, slamming the puck in from the crease on a rebound after a shot from Lopes.

Senior forward Edwin Montgomery extended the Stony Brook lead to 3-0 at the 12:19 mark, after his shot from the right side snuck past Kantner.

In the third period, Drexel got on the scoreboard after Eric Brawley buried a carom off of the boards past freshman goalie Derek Willms at the 14:58 mark.

At the 11:44 mark, Stony Brook made it 4-1 after freshman defenseman Andrew Balzafiore received a pass in the high slot area from senior forward Sean Collins and wristed a shot into the top right corner of the net.

Drexel’s Nick Lombardi made it 4-2 at the 9:46 mark, burying the puck on a scramble in front of the Stony Brook net.

However, Stony Brook would get a late powerplay goal from sophomore forward Sam Brewster at the 1:44 mark to put the game out of reach for Drexel.

At the 14:49 mark of the third period, Stony Brook’s Lopes received a five-minute major and a game misconduct after a dangerous high-stick on Drexel’s Ross Denczi. He will be suspended for the team’s next game against Liberty next weekend.

“That was a selfish move, at the end of the day, you have to control yourself,” Garofalo said of Lopes’ game misconduct. “He’s a good hockey player and he usually doesn’t do these types of things, he put himself above the team today, and that boils my blood.”

In addition to being without Lopes for the first game of the two game series, Stony Brook will also be without senior forward and captain Mike Cacciotti and sophomore forward Nick Barbera, the team’s leading scorer. Both will be attending weddings.

“It’s going to be a really tough game Friday, we’re playing a top ten team in the country,” Garofalo said. “We’ll be down an entire top line.”

Garofalo said that he wouldn’t make any decisions on any line-up changes until practices later in the week, but mentioned freshman forward Giovanni LaManna and sophomore forward Mike Amodeo as candidates to get into the line-up.

“It’s going to be an opportunity for other guys who don’t play to step up,” Garofalo said.

Brown Cross Lead Superstorm Sandy Relief Effort from Matthew Simeone on Vimeo.

Frank Reece is no stranger to leading people during times of urgency.

The 24-year-old Staten Islander enlisted in the army after high school to serve his country overseas in the Middle East. He received the Purple Heart after suffering shrapnel wounds while fighting in Iraq.

Now an army veteran, Reece has been living back home in Staten Island and has been working as a longshoreman.

But after Superstorm Sandy ravaged his community in late October, Reece immediately thrust himself back into the forefront. Recognizing that government assistance would take too much time to reach the area, he marched out into the flooded streets to organize a squad of helpers.

Reece assembled a crew of volunteers to help out at the hard-hit New Dorp Beach area the day the superstorm ceased, October 30, 2012. Reece’s crew collaborated with the Movement Church, a local church located on 1535 Victory Blvd., on the Thursday after the storm.

Staten Island was among the hardest-hit areas affected by the superstorm. With 19 Islander’s found dead, the borough comprised nearly half of New York City’s total of 41 deaths. Local residents have criticized federal agencies for their lackluster response to the storm, and have relied on the strength of themselves and their community.

“We named our group the Brown Cross because the Red Cross does not get dirty,” said Steven J. Martino, Pastor of the Movement Church. Equipped with tools, facemasks, walkie-talkies and a sense of neighborhood pride, volunteers break up into groups and walk from door to door around the neighborhoods of New Dorp Beach, Fox Beach and Oakwood Beach. They gut out houses, remove debris and pump up floods to ready the house to be remodeled.

The Movement Church supplies Brown Cross workers with tools, materials and food needed for their work in relief of the unprecedented storm. But it also cares for the people impacted by the tragedy. Church memnbers help gather donations for clothes, food, shelters and generators, all of which can be collected or asked for at 95 Hett Ave., the Brown Cross recovery site.

The Brown Cross began with Reece and eleven other workers and has since grown to attract over 2,250 volunteers from across the country, according to a database kept by Martino.

“We wore grey tape around our arms during the first few weeks of assistance to ensure locals that we were not looters,” Reece said. Crimes of looting, along with instances of siphoning other people’s gas spread around the borough in the storm’s wake.

Reece has been forced to take a break after injuring his right foot while helping out. Martino continues to recruit and organize volunteers at the crew’s base.

Vijay Swamidass flew in from the San Francisco Bay area, Cali., to help the recovery effort. Working with the Brown Cross, Swamidass said he couldn’t believe how strong the people in the neighborhood were.

“You hear about these things on TV but to actually get inside someone’s house that is ruined, I can only imagine what they are going through,” Swamidass said. “The people are really close and I am blessed to be helping out.”

Locals of the community have praised and appreciate the volunteers who have journeyed across the country to help.

Despite much of the community’s protests against them, some of the government’s responders from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Red Cross have been there since the first week of the storm’s aftermath.

Fay Conte, of FEMA, left for Albany, N.Y., where the FEMA workers congregated to prepare to go to the devastated sites, on the day of the Hurricane. FEMA is an agency of the Department of Homeland Security that organizes efforts in response to natural disasters such as Sandy. She said she’s here to help with relief funds and disagrees with the public’s perception of her agency’s efforts.

“We are the ones knocking on the door, asking are you registered and do you have questions?” said Conte, a Pittsburgh, Pa. FEMA community relation’s worker.

FEMA is not responsible for helping out with the physical efforts, but it has been criticized by victims for not supplying fair or sufficient funding and supplies.

Mary Roberts, 89, claims she was not given nearly enough money to rebuild her Staten Island home, which flooded with water above her head. Fortunately, Roberts stayed with her daughter the night of the storm, but the damage to her home of many years was catastrophic. Her house it still standing but had to be completely gutted by the volunteers after it was awash with water.

Near tears after being asked about FEMA, Roberts said she visits her house everyday to see her cat, which is still living upstairs in the house.

Dundy Aipoalani, a United Airlines employee, drove “six or seven hours” with his wife from there home in Warren, Pa. to assist as volunteers. He said the most touching part of his experience volunteering was what a victim, whose home was destroyed, said to him:

“They call this a tragedy, but I call it a blessing because people are coming from all around the United States to help us out,” the Staten Islander said to Aipolani.

“You like stuffed mushrooms?” he asked.

He never waited for a response, handing me a mushroom in silent confidence. He knew I’d like it.

“That’s when I really started believing he was getting better.” Roseann Tarantino, 64, Frank’s wife, later told me. “His cooking got good again. We had everybody over and they tasted the food… ‘Frank, you’re back!’ they all shouted.”

Two year’s ago the Tarantinos thought Frank had three months to live. He had been diagnosed with brain cancer, the third cancer diagnosis he has received in his 67 years. He is a survivor of prostate cancer in 2006, and finished his treatment for breast cancer about two years ago, at the start of 2011. Because breast cancer commonly extends to the brain, when Frank first started exhibiting headaches, confusion, and tumor-like liaisons in the brain, many Doctors quickly diagnosed him with what seemed obvious.

Grasping a Shred of Hope from Brian Stallard on Vimeo.

Frank reached up to take his hat off, clutching it as he remembered when he was first diagnosed.

“All I was thinking was ‘I’m not gonna make my son’s wedding,’” he said. “I felt like I had a good life… but I didn’t realize time went so fast.”

According to Roseann, the whole family was shaken by the sudden diagnosis. She said by the time Frank was fully committed to Stony Brook Cancer Center she would find herself thinking of the worst.

“There were sometimes where I couldn’t picture myself being alone,” she said. “So many little things run through your mind, like I would find myself wondering who is gonna get things for me from the attic… because that’s what he does.

As Frank’s condition continued to get worse, the window for treatment began to close. Doctors from several different professional centers suggested Tarantino undergo radiation therapy, but Frank refused, saying he still had hope that what he had was not actually brain cancer.

“Everybody told [my wife], ‘say goodbye!’ everybody but me,” Tarantino said. “You have to hope that you’re gonna get better, you have to show that faith, for them.”

Dr. Shenhong Wu, Ph.D. of the Stony Brook University Medical Center and associate professor of medicine, had doubts that what Tarantino had was brain cancer.

“[Dr. Wu] took one look at his monitor and said ‘this isn’t brain cancer,’” said Roseann Tarantino. She said that Dr. Wu had explained he doubted it was brain cancer because the disease initially didn’t “present itself like cancer.”

“Radiographically – image wise it looks like cancer, but other things should be considered,” said Wu. “I saw that his [condition] was going up and down, and his cancer was not at the point to normally develop this kind of terminal illness.”

This diagnosis, contrary to the five other opinions the Tarantino’s would hear in the months following Frank’s initial hospitalization, gave him the hope he needed to refuse radiation therapy.

“If it wasn’t for my friend Dr. Wu, I really wouldn’t have made the decision not to get treated,” Frank said. “Keep the faith, that’s what it’s all about.”

Four months later, ‘keeping the faith’ in Dr. Wu’s doubts proved a prudent decision.

When Tarantino’s illness escalated and he was rushed to North Shore Hospital, Dr. Wu contacted them from his office in Stony Brook to suggest they test Frank’s spinal fluid for a fungal infection.

What North Shore professionals found was Cryptococcus, a form of fungal meningitis that had infected Tarantino’s brain. Tarantino began immediate treatment at the Stony Brook Cancer Center under the supervision of Wu’s colleague and infectious disease specialist, Dr. Roy Steigbigel, MD.

According to Dr. Steigbigel, Tarantino likely got infected with the fungal meningitis when recovering from treatment for his previous cancers.

“Fungal meningitis usually infects those with weakened immune systems for some reason such as a disease or some sort of therapy they are receiving for treatment,” said Steigbigel.

Often, cancer treatments direct all cells affect all cells of a patient’s body, both the good and the bad, severely weakening a patient’s immune system. According to Steigbigel, this makes recovering cancer patients prime candidates for infections like Tarantino’s, even if they are not commonly seen in the U.S.

“It can be deadly,” explained Steigbigel, “but if caught early enough we have quite good treatments for most [strains of fungal meningitis] if not all of them.”

Tarantino was lucky enough to have had his infection caught in early stages, given only enough time to cause minor hearing loss. Still, when he first was released from the hospital last year, his wife said she and her family still had doubts he was going to recover due to his grim state.

“I was afraid to let myself be happy,” explained Roseann. “Because he was so sick when he first came home, I still had doubts… and it took some time to realize he was getting better and to let myself be happy.”

Roseann said that the day she started seeing frank getting better was the day he started doing work around the house once again. After the super-storm Sandy hit the Tarantino’s neighborhood and surrounding regions this past October, Frank, a retired electrician, started helping out with repairs.

“When he works… he was better, he was actually better,” said Roseanne looking to her husband. “Because when you work, being able to do what you’ve done your whole life, it’s a great feeling.”

These days, Tarantino looks nothing like how you would expect a man who is over a year past his death-date to look. He softly smiles as he kisses his wife on the cheek after she comes home, and that smile alone is not the smile of a man expecting to die.

“I’m very happy to see [Frank] doing so well, he has recovered so much,” said Wu.

According to Wu, Tarantino is steadily becoming perfectly healthy, and his cancers, both breast and prostate, have not re-emerged.

Tarantino calls what happened to him the product of a miracle and the determination and insight of “one smart man.”

Wu calls the Tarantino case “a very challenging case that we can all learn from.” He hopes that this case sets examples for speedy, life-saving diagnoses to come.

*Click here to view the related Stony Brook University press release.*

More on Fungal Meningitis:

Tarantino’s infection, Cryptococcus, and other forms of fungal meningitis are rarely seen in the U.S.

According to Steigbigel, this is in-part due to the fact it is only tested for if it presents a reason to test. If masked by other illness, as is often the case with patients whose immune systems have been compromised, it is not seen.

Still, early October, a large number of infections began to be seen all across the U.S.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), on October 6, 2012, the New England Compounding Center (NECC) voluntarily recalled products distributed from its facility in Framingham, Massachusetts that were causing fungal infections across the U.S.  The products, primarily contaminated syringes, bottles, medications, and ointments, according to an official recall list released by the NECC, cause a range of infections, their severity dependent on the prior immune state of those infected.

Ameridose, a company partnered with NECC that commonly shared materials, also recalled all of its unexpired products in circulation soon after initial news of the fungal outbreak and initial recall.

CDC and state health departments have estimate that approximately 14,000 patients may have received injections from the three implicated lots and nearly 97% have now been contacted for further follow-up.

According to the CDC, as of Nov. 30, 2012, this outbreak is still under ongoing investigation, but those who have been discovered to be infected are now being treated, and remaining contaminated products are being located and disposed of with the help of the Food and Drug Administration.

After taking JRN 320, I can honestly say, for me at least, that this course serves as a wake up call. Coming in, I thought this was going to be a course that simply demonstrated how multimedia journalists do their work. But now I know how to use the tools that more and more young reporters out of college must employ. I also know that the course is challenging.

Therefore, my advice is to prepare yourself for the semester by taking note of special assignment dates listed on the syllabus. It takes some time learning how to use the equipment we need for these assignments, but it takes even longer to find story ideas or things to shoot, and schedule interviews. The advice sounds pretty simple, but from experience, if you fall behind one day, its gonna cost you big time. The semester goes bye very fast.