This Saturday is the  8th annual Britanny Wilkinson United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation (UMDF) Fundraising Dinner. (KMPH FOX 26 Great Day's Kim Stephens is the night's MC.)

All are invited to this evening at Break the Barriers at 6pm. Tickets are $25 each. There is always an amazing raffle, beautiful silent auction, delicious dinner and special program learning about Brittany and the disease she lived with - a disease few still know about but 1 in every 200 people has a genetic mutation that may lead to mitochondrial disease. 

Mitochondria are in all our bodies, in our cells giving us energy. For those living with mitochondrial disease, which is genetic, that mitochondria doesn’t work right affecting the body in very painful ways.

Clovis East graduate, Brittany Wilkinson lived with this all her 18 years. Amidst her migraines and other debilitating pain, she gracefully raised awareness and funds for others living with this disease.

As a general rule, adults with a cold will be able to infect others one day before symptoms appear, and up to five days or so after becoming sick. 

Infants and children are able to transmit these viral infections for seven days or longer. The precise number of days for transmission can vary from person to person, and also depends on the length of the illness.

Those in poor health tend to get sick more easily. Children are also more likely to catch (and transmit) colds.

Cold viruses, abundant in nasal secretions, are mainly transmitted via hands.  When you blow  our nose, touch your face or wipe your eyes, the virus transfers to your hands, and then to whatever or whomever you touch.

LEMOORE/CLOVIS – More than a dozen community members wrote letters of encouragement to smokers for Adventist Health’s “Letter to A Smoker I Love” essay contest, which was a part of the network’s smoke- and tobacco-free campus campaign.

Lynn Grable of Lemoore, Calif., won an Xbox Kinect and Lori Gutierrez of Clovis, Calif., won two bicycles for writing letters to their loved ones who are, or have battled smoking additions.

Gutierrez wrote a letter to her mother encouraging her to quit for her granddaughters: “…You’re granddaughters love their grandma with all their heart and when you smoke you harm them…don’t you want to be here for as long as you can for them?