GLOBE THE MARYSVILLE
Sports: Be sure to save our winter sports calendars for Marysville schools. Pages 13-16.
WEEKEND EDITION WWW.MARYSVILLEGLOBE.COM 75¢ WEEKEND EDITIONDECEMBER JUNE 8TH, 20146,2015 WWW.MARYSVILLEGLOBE.COM 75¢
Herald THE SUNDAY
An Edition of
Lots of Luvs for Layla BY STEVE POWELL spowell@marysvilleglobe.com
Education:
Getting up to code.org in Marysville grade schools. Page 8.
Business:
Pampering Pets used to have Mariners as clients. Page 19.
INDEX BUSINESS
19
CLASSIFIED ADS 22-24 LEGALS
2
OPINION
4-5
SPORTS WORSHIP
MARYSVILLE – The first time Jessica Beckstrand saw her husband Mike cry was when they found out their 1 1/2-year-old daughter Layla had Stage 4 cancer and a 50-50 chance of survival. The second time she saw him in tears was a few weeks later when they saw a gofundme.com account set up by her sister had collected $6,000 from dozens of donors, many of them strangers, in just three days. “We just started bawling,” Jessica said. “I have no idea who half these people are.” She said she knew a lot of relatives out of state would want to help but not the amount of friends of friends of friends. “It’s overwhelming,” she said. “We expected it from family but not anyone else.” Jessica said the medical community has been brutally honest about the situation. “We still have to pay for everything no matter what
the outcome,” she said. Finding out Mike first noticed there was a problem when he was changing Layla’s diaper and noticed one side of her body was lower than the other. A doctor felt around and something was not right; the area was too big near her liver. A mass was found using an ultrasound, and she was rushed to the emergency room at Seattle Children’s Hospital. A tumor was found in her
Courtesy Photo
Far left, Jessica Beckstrand with Cameron and Layla, who is also shown above and while being treated, center. Each round every three weeks for four months she will be in the hospital for five days. She will have two half-hour treatments most of those days. She was set to finish her second round of treatments this week.
Layla suffered through itching and vomiting the first week. In-between treatments Jessica had a hard time getting Layla to take her medications, even when SEE LUV, PAGE 2
Arlington man helps those who need prosthetics BY KIRK BOXLEITNER kboxleitner@marysvilleglobe.com
10-11 7
Vol. 122, No. 21
Kirk Boxleitner/Staff Photo
Torrae models the Raptor Hand.
1472416
belly, and they were told Layla had Stage 4 neuroblastoma cancer in her adrenal glands. Because there are two such glands, the Beckstrands hope Layla can eventually have surgery removing one, and “the other one can make up for the loss,” Jessica said. To reach that point, little Layla has to go through five rounds of chemotherapy.
ARLINGTON — What became a worldwide community devoted to supplying people with prosthetic limbs started out as an Arlington dad’s nerdy hobby. Ivan Owen posted a video on YouTube about the giant puppet hand he’d created for a monster suit that was worn at science fiction and fantasy convention Norwescon in 2011. A carpenter in South Africa, who’d lost four fingers due to his
work, emailed Owen in December that year, to ask if he could make a replacement finger for him. “He just wanted a trigger finger to pull on his drill,” Owen said. Soon after “a coworker suggested 3-D printing, and I realized it was exactly the technology that I needed,” said Owen, who would become the co-creator of the world’s first 3-D printed prosthetic hand. “Rather than redesigning new hands as a child gets bigger, all you need to do is just scale up the same design.”
Owen later uploaded the prototype onto the internet through Thingiverse, allowing others to improve on the idea. This grew into the e-NABLE online community to provide downloadable plans for affordable 3-D printed mechanical prosthetics that many people can build their own. Owen estimated that his prototype cost the average person $150 in materials and 12 hours in labor to assemble, but with improvements the latest “Raptor Hand” runs around $35.