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Hepatitis C & Celebrities
“Hepatitis, is an equal opportunity employer, anyone can get it, but no one has to keep it.” Johnny Delirious
Naomi Judd
Celebrity Cs: Country music star Naomi Judd, who believes she contracted hepatitis C through an accidental needle stick while working as a nurse, has recovered through interferon treatments and become the honorary spokesperson for the American Liver Foundation.
Biography
She was born 'Diana Ellen Judd to Charles Glen Judd and his wife Pauline (Oliver) Judd on, January 11, 1946 in Ashland, Kentucky. Her father owned a gas station; her mother started out as a homemaker but later became a riverboat cook. Her first child, Christina Ciminella (later Wynnona Judd) was born when she was only 18. After the birth of her daughter Ashley and the end of her marriage, Judd brought up two daughters as a single parent, first going to nursing school but later beginning a successful singing career with her daughter Wynonna. Her second daughter, Ashley Judd, is a film and stage actress.
The Judds
With her daughter, Wynonna Judd formed the highly successful singing duo known as The Judds. As country music's most famous mother/daughter team, The Judds scored twenty top-10 hits (including fifteen #1s) and went undefeated for eight consecutive years at all three major country music awards shows. In addition, the duo won five Grammy Awards and a vast array of other awards and honors. As a songwriter, Naomi also won a Grammy for Country Song of the Year with the Judds' smash hit "Love Can Build A Bridge."
Pamela Anderson
HEALTH WATCH Pamela Anderson must really wish she'd never tattooed ex-husband Tommy Lee's first name onto her skin. Not only did she change the ''T'' to an ''M'' after the couple split, but she now says that she's infected with hepatitis C as the result of sharing a tattoo needle with Lee. ''Tommy has the disease and never disclosed it to me during our marriage,''
Pamela Anderson
Pamela Denise Anderson (born July 1, 1967) is a Canadian born actress, sex symbol, glamour model, producer, author, celebrity is best known for her roles on the television series Home Improvement, Baywatch and V.I.P. was chosen as a Play Mate of the Month by Playboy in February 1990. For a time, she was known as Pamela Anderson Lee after marrying Motley Crue drummer, Tommy Lee. She holds both American and Canadian Citizenship
After her move to Los Angeles, Anderson bleached her brunette hair blonde and underwent breast augmentation. In 1991, she landed a minor role as the original “Tool Time Girl,” on the hit television sitcom, Home Improvement. She left the show after two seasons and landed the role of C.J. Parker on Baywatch. Anderson was still modeling for Outdoor Life and appearing on the cover of the magazine each year. Her role as C.J. Parker gave her more popularity and gained her attention from international viewers.
In 1996, she appeared in a feature film, Barb Wire, a character known as Barbara Rose Kopetski, which was mistakenly thought by some to have been her real name. The movie, a thinly-veiled futuristic remake of the film Casablanca.
Natalie Cole
Soul singer NATALIE COLE has been diagnosed with hepatitis C.
The star - daughter of the late Nat King Cole - was forced to pull out of a performance in California last week (09Jul08), citing illness. And now Cole's representative has confirmed that she has been struck down by the chronic liver disease.
Biography
Natalie Cole is the daughter of noted crooner, Nat King Cole, former singer in Duke Ellington’s Orchestra and singer Maria Hawkins Ellington Cole. Cole was raised in the affluent Hancock Park district of, Los Angeles, a few doors down from the California governor.
Cole may be best remembered for her 1991 album, Unforgetable with Love, featuring her own arrangements of her father's greatest hits. Though when she was younger, Cole was reluctant to capitalize on her father's name and wanted to forge her own identity by going after the soul market in earnest, on this album she admitted to being Nat King Cole's daughter and pledged her complete devotion to her father and his music. The most fascinating song on the album was "Unforgettable." With a little help from technology, Cole performed the song as a duet with her father using her father's original recording.
Her decision to record the songs was a chart success; the album sold over 7 million copies in the United States alone, and won Cole several Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance. The album featured a duet, the title track, with her father, created by splicing a recording of his vocals into the track. As a single, it reached #14 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, and went gold.
Steven Tyler
Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler has been secretly battling hepatitis C — a serious viral infection of the blood, often associated with used needles, the New York Daily News reports.
Steven Tyler is the lead vocalist for Aerosmith, the bestselling American hard rock band of all time, having sold 150 million albums worldwide, including 66.5 million albums in the United States alone. They also hold the record for the most gold and platinum albums by an American group. The band has scored 21 Top 40 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, nine #1 Mainstream Rock hits, four Grammy Awards and ten MTV Video Music Awards. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001, and in 2005 they were ranked #57 in Rolling Stone magazine's 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.
May is Hepatitis C Awareness Month Across Canada
Activist Says Awareness Stops Hepatitis C, Saves Lives.
May 1st, 2004 will mark the 5th Annual Hepatitis C Candlelight Memorial Ceremony, and the first day of Hepatitis C Awareness Month in Canada, (and in other parts of the world). May 1st will also mark the second year that the majority of Canada's provincial governments through proclamation, declaration, or some other form of official recognition will acknowledge the month of May to honour Canadians living with Hepatitis C.
Bill Buckels, head of HepACT (The Hepatitis Activist Group), has lived with hepatitis C for over 30 years. He has been coordinating provincial declarations, proclamations and events across Canada for several months, working with local groups to bring the awareness of this deadly virus to their communities through a series of awareness activities. "Between 210,000 and 275,000 Canadians are infected with hepatitis C, a bloodborne disease, and an estimated 70% are unaware of its presence," says Buckels. "Up to 8,000 new infections occur in Canada each year. Most people newly infected with hepatitis C have no symptoms and are unaware of their infection, but they are still infectious."
Other Celebrities with Hepatitis C
The Kansas City Star
Sun, Nov. 09, 2003
Several public figures suffer from hepatitis C and some have died. Celebrities with hepatitis C, according to news reports:
• Dusty Hill: The band ZZ Top stopped touring in 2000 because the bassist had hepatitis C. The band began touring again in 2002.
• Evel Knievel: The motorcycle daredevil had a liver transplant more than two years ago and later said doctors could find no trace of the virus in his blood.
• Chuck Negron: He's the former lead singer on such Three Dog Night classics as "Joy to the World."
• Larry Hagman: The television actor required a liver transplant in 1995.
• Phil Lesh: One of the founding members of the Grateful Dead, the bass player received a liver transplant several years ago.
• "Superstar" Billy Graham: The former WWF wrestling champion got a liver transplant last year. He thought he contracted the virus by being bled on during wrestling matches years ago.
• David Crosby: The rock star with a fabled history of drug abuse is touring again after receiving a liver transplant in 1995.
• Freddy Fender: The singer of such '70s hits as "Wasted Days and Wasted Nights" suffers from several health problems, including hepatitis C.
• Jack Kevorkian: The retired pathologist, now serving a prison term for killing a man who had Lou Gehrig's disease, has hepatitis C, his lawyer says.
• Laurie Bembenek: The former Playboy bunny, whose conviction in a Milwaukee murder and later escape are chronicled in the book Run, Bambi, Run, is free now but suffers from hepatitis C.
• Rolf Benirschke: The former star kicker for the San Diego Chargers got the virus from a transfusion two decades ago. He has used his sports status to raise awareness about the disease.
• Linda Lovelace: The star of the 1972 porn film "Deep Throat" contracted the virus from a transfusion and had a liver transplant in 1987. She died in 2002 at age 53 after a car crash.
• Willie Dixon: The legendary bluesman was diagnosed with hepatitis C shortly before his death in 1992. He contracted the virus from transfusions in 1987.
• Mickey Mantle: The baseball great is thought to have contracted hepatitis C during a transfusion for a knee operation. He died of liver cancer in 1995.
• Stormie Jones: The 13-year-old died in 1990 six years after becoming the first person in the world to receive heart and liver transplants in a single operation. Hepatitis C damaged that liver, though, and before she died she received a second liver and treatment for the virus.
• Ken Kesey: The author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, who died of liver cancer in 2001, suffered from hepatitis C.
• James Earl Ray: The confessed assassin of Martin Luther King Jr. died in 1998 of liver disease after being infected with hepatitis C, probably in a 1981 blood transfusion he received after a prison stabbing.
• Allen Ginsberg: The poet laureate of the Beat Generation died in 1997 after battling hepatitis C for many years. He had terminal liver cancer.
• Lance Loud: The free-spirited son on public television's "An American Family" in 1971, he died in 2001 of liver failure caused by hepatitis C and HIV.
• Frank Reynolds: Experts speculated at the time that the newsman's death in 1983 was hastened by the virus later known as hepatitis C, which he may have contracted through a transfusion.
• Benito Mussolini: Did Il Duce, the World War II Italian dictator, have the disease? A new biography speculates that his chronic health problems -- stomach pain, fatigue and depression -- stemmed from an ulcer and a mild case of hepatitis C.
In Memory of Johnny's Father
This picture was taken in 1997, when I went to my father's 50 Year Medical Reunion and assisted him in all of his activities. A little background on my father...he was born on 9 July 1912 in Muncie, Indiana. He attended local schools and after graduating from Muncie Central High he attended Kenyon College in Ohio, Rollins College in South Florida, and the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and became an engineer. Later in his career, he graduated from Tulane Medical School during World War II and as a Naval Reserve officer he taught anatomy at Tulane for the war effort to train more doctors. He was a specialist in Tropical diseases and worked with the Hanson's disease clinic near New Orleans. Due to this interest he was part of the consortium who was working to develop antibiotics such as sulfa and penicillin which would change the treatment of many infections as well as Hanson's disease. It was paramount to the treatment of the war wounded as well.
Going to his reunion and meeting his class mates, I was associating with such medical legends as Drs. Alton Oscher, Leon Meier, Flora Finch, Bob Brown, Michael DeBakey, Dr. Herbert, Dr. F. Marascalco and many others. Dr. Michael de Bakey you may remember is the famous Houston Heart Surgeon who operated on Boris Yelson's heart; which was a very successful operation. Bob Brown is not only an excellent Doctor, but he also was one of the New York Yankee's better baseball players during 1948 and 1949. All are Tulane graduates in my Dad's class or they had Interned with him.
After graduation he worked with Dr. Oscher in the Touro Infirmary and was recognized as intern of the year and later was offered a position in the clinic that Dr. Oscher was starting in New Orleans after the war. Instead my father chose to go to Fort Walton Beach in Northwest Florida and open a general practice as that area had no medical care at the time. This was front-line medicine dealing with all manner of treatment outside his office including house calls. Working with the local Congressman Bob Sikes they established a small hospital and attracted more doctors to the area. He was the doctor of record and call when US presidents came to visit the many armed forces bases in the area. He sat on the Florida medical exam board as well as being the head of the State Board of Health for some time. In the early 1970s he retired from medical practice.
In Memory of Johnny's Mother
This picture was taken in 1955 when my Mom (Eugenia) and I were at our Family Reunion. Eugenia Annie Mae Rudulph Maxon 1917- 1973 was born on the 9th of June 1917 in Selma, Alabama to Burwell Blount Rudulph and his 2nd wife, Caroline Caffey Rudulph. This was his 7th daughter and the first child of Caroline. Three of his daughters and his 1st wife died of scarlet fever during the epidemic that spread across the country.
Eugenia grew up at Cloverdale, the family place in Lowdnes county, near Hayneville Alabama that had been in the family since 1834. She was sent to De Funiak Springs to Palmer High school, a part of the Chataqua Movement at the time. She graduated from Wheaton College in Chicago in June of 1938 with a degree in British Literature. Her classmate and good friend was to become the famous Billy Graham. She married Robert von Purucker Maxon at the First Baptist Church In Montgomery Alabama on 25 June 1938.
For several years in the early 1970's she had been battling different cancers. We were together in London in 1973 and while going through the subway turn-style she hit her right side that released toxins in her liver that took her life very shortly within days. I loved my mother very much, but I must say over and over again I am reminded throughout my whole life of the importance of good liver health.