ANNISTON, Ala. (AP) — Before he could say "mama" or "daddy," both of his were gone.

His father went to prison for murder. His mother just left.

A decade later, bullies hit him and took his money at school.

He'd miss the bus on purpose, trying in vain to escape.

At 12, Tre'Juan Figures hanged himself in his bedroom.

Fingers are pointing all over Anniston three weeks later, as people try to figure out this tragedy, try to figure out who failed Tre'Juan.

Clearly, they say, somebody did.

Tre'Juan, who went by Trey, couldn't always build forts or ride bikes or play basketball in his west Anniston neighborhood on Saturdays.

At least one weekend a month until he was 11, Trey and his grandmother, Essie Figures, went to prison.

"I made sure Trey knew his daddy," said Trey's grandmother, who raised him. "Trey could go in and see Johnny, and he'd hold him and play with him. He loved it."

Trey's father, Johnny Figures, spent 10 years behind bars in different Alabama prisons. He pleaded guilty in 1997 to fatally shooting a Gadsden man in 1995.

He doesn't like talking about the killing, but Johnny says he was at the wrong place at the wrong time, and that he pleaded guilty only to receive a lesser sentence. Prosecutors were trying to put him away for life, he said.

"I may have gotten locked up, but I saw Trey grow up," Johnny said. "I was always in his life."

Photos of Trey and Johnny over the years show the father in prison garb, a number stamped on the chest of his uniform. The grinning son grows from an infant to a young man in photos snapped between thick walls and razor wire.

Trey knew why his father couldn't go back home with him after the visits. He knew his dad sat in prison for killing a man, Johnny said. But he doesn't think those facts hurt Trey. His son understood, Johnny said.

"It don't matter where I lived," he said. "Trey knew I loved him."

Trey mailed his father all kinds of things while he was behind bars cards with childish writing, colorful drawings of himself and letters. One reads, "I got a new suit for Easter. I will ask my mommy to take some pictures for you."

But by "mommy," Trey meant his grandmother, not his biological mother, Veronica McGee.

"I'm the only mama he knew," said Essie Figures, who earns a living caring for an elderly woman. "When Johnny got in trouble, Veronica left Trey with me. She said she'd come back, but she never did."

So Essie raised Trey, relying sometimes on friends and her church family to help out with diapers, Christmas presents or back-to-school shoes.

McGee said she left Trey with her mother-in-law because she had four other children to care for. Their fathers weren't around, either, she said.

"His grandmamma did keep Trey, but he was still my baby," McGee said. "I saw him whenever I wanted to."

Only that wasn't very often, Essie said. She said McGee didn't acknowledge Trey's birthdays; she didn't celebrate Christmas with him; she didn't pay child support.

And she was dealing with her own legal problems. Records show that McGee has been in and out of court for writing bad checks, mostly to restaurants and grocery stores.

She's also taken two men before a judge for paternity testing and child support.

Trey's suicide has driven a wedge between McGee and the Figures family. McGee blames Trey's father for the death and says Trey's grandmother didn't raise him right.

"I told my son at his funeral that I will get revenge," McGee said. "I will get justice for my son."

Essie believes Trey had everything he needed, from food to love. All the negativity is weighing on her, as she tries to deal with the suicide of a little boy she raised, who loved nothing more than a hug and a snack.

"People going around and saying a lot of lies just makes you feel bad," she said. "I'm just trying to get over this."

The Anniston school system has so far taken the brunt of the blame for Trey's death.

Immediately following the sixth-grader's suicide, his family spoke out, saying that bullies and gang members at Anniston Middle School drove Trey to take his own life.

Superintendent Joan Frazier is investigating the bullying claims and what school officials did about complaints family members say they made.

Frazier said Friday she's received hundreds of pages of documentation from school teachers and administrators. She's going through them, and has finished with August, September and October of 2008. That's the first year Trey attended Anniston Middle School.

"In that timeframe, I have not been able to find anything that documents any form of bullying or teasing," she said.

Frazier said she'll continue looking through the remaining year of papers and hopes to finish her investigation in the next week or so.

Trey's grandmother said she knows children at school were mean to the boy.

"They'd punch him and push him around," she said. "Call him mean names."

Trey stayed in trouble at school, too, she said. He took medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, she said, but he still was suspended fairly often and ended up failing the sixth grade because he was out of the classroom so much.

He spent time in the alternative school, too, she said.

"He liked it there," she said. "There was more supervision. They keep the kids in line and nobody messed with him."

Trey liked some things about school, she said, especially reading. Piled up on a table in his small bedroom are several ragged, well-read Harry Potter books.

"He'd read them over and over," Johnny Figures said. "I asked him why he did that, and he told me that he found out something new, got something new from it, every time he read them."

Trey was usually a happy boy, his grandmother said. He loved playing basketball in the yard, riding his bike around their Walnut Avenue neighborhood, playing with his best friend a tiny black dog named Diego. That's why she can't understand why he'd kill himself.

So, she thinks, it had to be the school.

Experts say children and adolescents rarely have just one reason for committing suicide.

Trey had several suicide risk factors in his life, said Dr. Virginia Scott, director of the University of Alabama's psychology clinic.

Bullying, lack of family involvement and hopelessness are all major red flags for suicide risk, Scott said.

"Those things make a child feel abandoned and like there's something wrong with them," she said. "There's a lot of self-blame that goes along with it."

University of Alabama psychology professor Dr. John Lochman said familiarity with violence also is a suicide risk factor. He pointed to being around other children who are violent, or having violent family members as examples.

More Calhoun County children are arrested for violent crimes than in most parts of the state. The county ranks 58th of 67 counties, according to data collected by VOICES for Alabama's Children. That group documents the conditions of children throughout the state.

Some of those arrests could have happened at Anniston Middle School. The school reported 15 assaults, nine drug-related offenses and four weapons-related problems in 2007-2008, the year before Trey began attending classes there and the latest year for which statistics are available from the Alabama Department of Education.

"When a child is used to seeing or hearing about violence, it makes it much easier for him to be violent as well, toward himself or toward others," Lochman said.

Superintendent Frazier said she sees the effects of children's overexposure to violence and other societal ills. She said in-school behavior is influenced when children see and hear things they don't have the experience or wisdom to handle.

The effect can be overt, she said, and result in fighting. Or it can be introverted and cause a child to be depressed, withdrawn and sad.

Trey's grandmother isn't sure what she'll do with his things.

His basketball sits alone. His bike is where he left it.

Diego's in the yard, barking at passersby.

The evidence of a boy's youth is scattered throughout the house trophies, small Nike sneakers, Spiderman curtains.

"I keep forgetting he isn't coming back," Essie said.

She wishes for one more day with Trey, to ask why he felt so hopeless, to fix it if she could.

She knew him better than anybody. She kissed his bruises and made him brush his teeth. She taught him to say his prayers.

Not even she has the answer.

©2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (AP) — Tuscaloosa city officials have asked a Tuscaloosa County Circuit Court for a preliminary injunction to stop the state from dismantling or moving Bryce Hospital until the city's lawsuit is heard.

The city is seeking a permanent injunction against relocating or privatizing Bryce and wants the court to declare that only the Legislature has the power to close or relocate it.

The suit came after Gov. Bob Riley discussed relocating the state psychiatric hospital to the empty Carraway Medical Center building in Birmingham.

City officials complained that the state dismantled the Alice M. Kidd Nursing Home Facility earlier this year before the city could move to halt the action. They expressed concerns when the city filed suit in October that the state might do the same with other Bryce programs.

©2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — The Rev. Jesse Jackson is no longer being critical of Rep. Artur Davis of Birmingham for voting against a health care overhaul bill in the House.

The civil rights leader earlier had questioned how a black man could vote against the health care overhaul measure. He didn't name Davis, but Davis was the only member of the Congressional Black Caucus to vote against the bill.

Jackson released a statement Thursday saying he has talked to Davis and admires him. Davis is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor of Alabama in 2010.

Jackson said he does not challenge Davis' integrity as a leader.

Davis has said he supports health care reform, but disagrees with the approach taken in the House bill.

©2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Uninsured Americans are more likely to die after a trauma-related hospital visit than those who are insured. According to a new study, lack of health insurance may cause an extra 18,000 deaths in America each year.

Experts say the risks and casualties of being uninsured are growing too high to overlook. Uninsured adults have a 25 percent increase of mortality than those insured, according to the study conducted by Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School. Researchers say reasons for the discrepancy may be due to treatment delay for the uninsured, difference in care, such as fewer diagnostic tests, or a lower rate of health literacy. Researchers also question if there is a difference in care during the hospital stay, being that treatment is often started prior to determining payment status.

"Even after admission to a hospital, trauma patients can have worse outcomes based on insurance status," the authors were quoted as saying. "This concerning finding warrants more rigorous investigation to determine why such variation in mortality would exist in a system where equivalent care is not only expected but mandated by law."

The study analyzed the records of 687, 091 trauma patients in the National Trauma Data Bank. Factors studied included demographic, medical history, injury severity, outcomes and charges. Patients studied were between 18 and 30 years old and were chosen because they were less likely to have additional illnesses.  

Authors of the study note that in 2007, 45.7 million Americans were uninsured.

SOURCE: Archives of Surgery, JAMA, November 2009

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Rib cartilage from human donors is well tolerated as a grafting material in nasal plastic surgery and yields positive functional, structural and cosmetic results, even in complex cases.

"The search for the ideal nasal implant remains an ongoing effort," the authors wrote. "We desire a substance that is readily available in large quantities, resists infection and absorption, is completely integrated into host tissues, causes little patient morbidity and can be molded, shaped or carved with ease."

The patient's own cartilage is the preferred choice, but sometimes it is too thin, there is an insufficient quantity or problems may occur at the site from which it is removed. An alternative is donor tissue from human ribs that has been treated with radiation to decrease the chances of an immune response once placed in a donor.

Russell W. H. Kridel, M.D., of the University of Texas Medical School at Houston and Facial Plastic Surgery Associates, Houston, and colleagues reviewed the medical charts of 357 patients who underwent nasal plastic surgery (rhinoplasty) using costal cartilage as the principal graft material between 1984 and 2008.

The 1,025 homologous costal cartilage grafts (using cartilage from a donor) and 373 other grafts used were evaluated for warping, infection, resorption (being absorbed back into surrounding tissues) with or without infection, mobility and extrusion (forcing out).

"Not only did very few complications occur following the use of 1,025 irradiated homologous costal cartilage grafts in 357 patients after 386 rhinoplasties over 24 years, but the rate of complications was no greater than rhinoplasty complication rates when autologous (the patient's own) cartilage grafts are used," according to the authors.

During follow-up, 94.2 percent of patients reported being satisfied with the results in their appearance, ability to breathe and general quality of life. The irradiated homologous costal cartilage was not associated with any allergic reactions or systemic diseases and also proved to be reliable in patients with autoimmune diseases and in those with complex cases involving repairs of perforated septal tissue.

The authors concluded, "The results indicate safety and reliability and justify the convenient use of irradiated homologous costal cartilage grafts for primary and revision rhinoplasty without creating donor site morbidity," or damage to the area from which an individual's own cartilage is harvested.

SOURCE: Archives of Facial Plastic Surgery, November/December, 2009

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- A year and a half after the first U.S. face transplant was performed, results appear successful.

As of July 2009, physicians report the victim of a gunshot wound who underwent a near-total face and upper jaw transplant at Cleveland Clinic in December of last year has experienced no surgical complications, has tolerated the immunosuppressive therapy required to prevent rejection and has made significant process in function.

Doctors say donor tissue appears to have successfully integrated with the patient's, and she has regained her senses of smell and taste.

Previous to the transplant, the patient had undergone 23 major reconstructive surgeries, but still lacked a structured nose and upper jaw. Surgeons transferred bone and ligaments to her face in such a way that the transplanted tissue could be supplied with blood only through facial arteries.

The patient is scheduled for an additional procedure to remove extra tissue after she regains function of the facial nerve.

Source: Archives of Facial Plastic Surgery, November/December 2009

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Researchers say medications provide the same amount of protection as angioplasty in treating type-2 diabetics, and new insight shows the choice could be a significant money saver.

In an NIH trial, more than 2,000 patient with type-2 diabetes took medications including statins, aspirin, beta-blockers and either ACE inhibitors or angiotensin-receptor blockers. Accumulated costs over four years show sticking with drug treatment rather than undergoing angioplasty saved an average of $11,000 per patient.

While a recent study funded by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs found angioplasty and drug treatment were equally effective at preventing heart attacks and death in patients with mild-to-moderate heart disease symptoms, the NIH study focused on patients with type-2 diabetes since they have a higher risk of cardiovascular disease, as well as a greater risk of heart attack and death resulting from the disease. Results show medication works as well as angioplasty in patients with type-2 diabetes.

"For patients with relatively mild symptoms of heart disease, angioplasty is clearly more expensive and it's clearly not more beneficial," Mark Hlatky, M.D., professor of health research and policy and cardiovascular medicine at Stanford University, was quoted as saying.

The average cost of treatment for all patients in the study was $70,000 over four years.

Source: Circulation, November 17, 2009

(Ivanhoe Newswire) – It's well established that cigarette smoking causes bladder cancer, but the influence of smoking history over time has been unclear.
 
Dalsu Baris, M.D., Ph.D., of the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, in Bethesda, Md., and colleagues examined bladder cancer risk in relation to smoking practices based on data from a population-based case–control study conducted in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont from 2001 to 2004.

The researchers found that since the mid-1990s, risk of bladder cancer for smokers in New Hampshire has increased to a level five times higher among current smokers than that among nonsmokers in 2001-2004. They also found that smoking fewer cigarettes per day for more years may be more harmful than smoking more cigarettes per day for fewer years.

Among New Hampshire residents, there was a statistically significant increase in bladder cancer risk among both former and current smokers compared with nonsmokers over each time period. According to the authors, this may be partly attributable to changes over time in the concentration of bladder carcinogens in cigarette smoke, as well as the introduction and increased popularity of low-tar/low-nicotine cigarettes. Smokers who switch to low-tar/low-nicotine cigarettes are thought to increase the depth and frequency of inhalation to satisfy the need for nicotine.

"The observed relationship between smoking and bladder cancer risk was stronger than reported in earlier studies, with statistically significant trends in risk with increasing duration, intensity, and pack-years for both men and women," the authors wrote. "Additional modeling of the rate of delivery of cigarette smoke supports previous observations, suggesting a greater risk of bladder cancer for total exposure delivered at a lower intensity for longer duration than for an equivalent exposure delivered at a higher intensity for shorter duration."

In an accompanying editorial, Anthony J. Alberg, Ph.D., MPH, of the Hollings Cancer Center and Division of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, and James R. Hebert, ScD, of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, note that the most important aspect of this finding was that the association between smoking and bladder cancer increased substantially from 1994 to 2004. Alberg and Hebert agree that the data suggest that an increase in the carcinogenic content of cigarettes over time may be partly responsible.

"The findings of Baris et al. are provocative and… offer a testable hypothesis that warrants thorough investigation," the editorialists wrote. "More precisely, pinpointing the specific role of cigarette additives will be an important element of this research. This study highlights the need for continued vigilance in monitoring the impact of the changing cigarette on disease risk."

 SOURCE: Journal of the National Cancer Institute, November 16, 2009

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama Gov. Bob Riley says health care reform legislation being pushed by Democrats in Congress would be devastating to states.

Riley was at the Republican Governors Association annual conference in Austin, Texas Thursday. He joined other Republican governors in opposing the Democratic health care reform plans.

Riley said the proposals before Congress would expand Medicaid and require states to pick up a larger share of the costs. He said the proposals could force states to raise taxes to pay the higher Medicaid costs.

Riley complained that Congress seems to be rushing to pass a bill without understanding what it will do.

©2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.