Inside
◆ P. 3 Reducing Re re-use sheds Burlesq q at North Arm ◆ P. 4 Burlesque
◆ P. 5 Festival of Trees ◆ P. 8 Holiday Happenings
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WEDNESDAY, December 3, 2014
NEWS BRIEFS
CNC tuition hike JESSE COLE Caledonia Courier
Students attending post secondary school at the College of New Caledonia (CNC) in 2015 will have to pay a bit more in tuition fees after the CNC’s Board of Governors voted to increase tuition and mandatory fees. The Board of Governors voted in favour of the two per cent increase last Friday. The increase will amount to around $5 more for students per course and is expected to generate around $115,000 for CNC. CNC president Henry Reiser said that despite the increase the college will still be one of the cheaper colleges. “Even with the increase, CNC will remain one of the most affordable post-secondary institutions in all of B.C.” The increase is standard to British Columbia’s public postsecondary institutes and is added annually to compensate for inflation. “Ensuring that CNC programming is affordable for students is very important to us,” said Reiser. “So the increase is limited only to adjust for inflation and rising operational costs.”
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JESSE COLE Caledonia Courier
Skyler Barfoot, the four year old with a mystery illness has received a diagnosis after more than two months in a Vancouver medical centre. Skyler has been diagnosed with what is known as Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (ALL). ALL is a type of blood cancer that is most commonly found in young children between the age of two and five. It affects the bone marrow of the patient and can spread to other areas of the body.
“The diagnosis took over a month because [the illness] didn’t follow any specific pattern.” Skyler has been receiving treatment at the B.C. Children’s Hospital where he has been staying with his mother Kristy Barfoot since October. Skyler’s mother said that Skyler’s illness took a long time to diagnose, “The diagnosis took over a month because [the illness] didn’t follow any specific pattern.” Because of the difficulty in diagnosing Skyler, samples of his blood, bone marrow and lymph nodes were
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TIS THE SEASON: Christmas time is here in Fort St. James as Santa made an appearance at the National Historic Site for the Festival of Trees and the Santa Claus parade. Photos on P. 5, 8 Photo by Jesse Cole.
Childs mystery illness gets diagnosis sent for testing by the B.C. Cancer Agency and when they couldn’t diagnose the illness, samples were sent to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States. Skyler has been receiving treatment since early November that includes four different types of chemotherapy, anti-leukaemia steroids and three bone marrow biopsies. Barfoot said that some of the treatments have caused Skyler to be in a lot of pain so much so that he has a difficult time turning over in bed. She also said that the steroids he’s on have caused mood swings. “He will go from sad to angry to happy and back to sad all within a minute.” Despite all of this, Skyler’s illness has a high cure rate amongst childhood cancers. ALL has a more than 80 per cent
cure rate among childhood patients compared to only a 20 to 40 per cent cure rate among adult patients. Barfoot hopes to eventually be able to move Skyler’s treatment to Prince George where it would be more affordable and closer to home but Skyler’s condition is such that this is not yet a possibility. “As it stands right now, Skyler isn’t stable enough to be sent to Prince George because they do not have the same resources they have here,” said Barfoot. “They have a whole team of doctors and nurses here that are specifically trained for childhood cancer so right now this is the safest place for Skyler to be.”
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