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Medical writer Marjorie Centofanti knows she's on to a good story
when, in the course of an interview, the hairs on the back of her
neck stand up. That's what happened when she was doing the
reporting for "Fighting Back Against Brain
Attack". Deep in the labyrinth of a Hopkins magnetic resonance imaging facility (MRI), Centofanti came upon radiologist Norman Beauchamp Jr. and colleagues, who are tweaking conventional MRI to allow them to "see" strokes in the brain more quickly and accurately. Time is of the essence in treating stroke, particularly in light of the new clot-busting drug, tPA, that can only be used if administered within three hours of the onset of stroke. Centofanti says she was immediately impressed by the researchers' excitement--and the strength of their experimental results. "They are just so enthusiastic because they can see things that they could never see before," she says. "It's like a puzzle. What makes it nice is that you can see that the solution is going to come fairly soon." Before turning to science and medical writing, Centofanti spent years teaching college-level biology. She earned her MA at Hopkins in 1995, in The Writing Seminars' science writing program, and has been published in Science News, The Washington Post, and the Hopkins Medical News. While Centofanti may be done with her stroke article, she's not done with Hopkins radiology: she recently began volunteering one afternoon a week as a "gurney pusher" for stroke patients about to undergo MRI. --SD
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