haunting me

The sound of a child with whooping cough will haunt me until the day I die. Please vaccinate yourself and help protect children too young to be given the immunization

One of my least favorite phrases

"That's just the way I was raised"
Really?
I'm sorry, no respect there. 

You don't have any support for the argument except the fact that "momma said it was that way". Give me an argument. Your mother, while she may be perfectly respectable and wise, is not a valid REASON, for you to believe something. Surely you have thought about the issue for yourself and come to some conclusion. Surely you have enough presence of mind to analyze the presented data and make and informed decision.

Here are some valid reasons...
I researched it and _________________
History shows us that ________________
In my experience ______________

Money Money Money

I'm really sick of money. Specifically I'm sick of budgets. The school has a budget for you, the hospital has another budget for you. The school budget doesn't include extraneous medical bills, and the hospital budget doesn't include school bills. On top of that, my husband lives on one side of Texas and I live on the other, so he can be close to his doctors and I can go to school. Basically they both think we have tons of money we do not have. In fact, the whole world seems to think we have loads of cash just sitting around to pay for things they didn't actually do. I'm not complaining about my lifestyle. I have lived in homeless shelters and I know what it is like to be truly without the necessities of life. But, I now work on top of my grad school work in order to live a comfortable life. I live in a nice apartment complex, but I chose it because it is safe. The nice kitchen was just a bonus. I enjoy being able to go to Starbucks a few times a week, but I also eat microwave meals almost every day. I'm by no means poor, but I don't exactly have money sitting around in savings either. So all of you people who get to decide how much "disposable income" we really have, should take a peek at the fact that we pay hundreds of dollars a month for medication that keeps my husband alive and me functional. Or the fact that the old computer is in nosedive and I really needed a new one for school. Anyhow, I'm done ranting. The point is this, the limited window into my finances is just that, limited.

Battling Bad Science

"Real science is all about critically appraising the evidence for somebody elses position. That's what happens in academic journals. That's what happens at academic conferences. the Q&A session after a post-doc presents data is often a blood bath and nobody minds that. We actively welcome it. It's like a kind of consenting intellectual S&M activity" ~Ben Goldacre. I LOVE this guy!

Just a reminder, you are stronger than you know

How to know what to believe when reading about new health treatments

People with very real medical conditions changing their treatment to something they read someplace. Some of this is legitimate research that could improve health and quality of life, but some of it is downright bullshit. Most importantly any change in treatment or start of treatment should be talked about with your medical practitioner (doctor, PA or nurse practitioner). They have the knowledge to help you decided what is the best treatment for you. They also know when a new treatment (or vitamin) will interact with other medications or treatments you are taking, so talk with them. Without further preface here are a few ways you can know that the literature out there is good.
1) Peer Reviewed
Peer review is when someone of equal education and experience as the author says that this literature is good. If a journal has "American Association of ________________" in the name, it's probably peer reviewed. A good place to find peer reviewed journals for free is here PubMed. Peer reviewing helps improve quality, credibility and relevance.
2) Date
How old is this literature? If it's medical or scientific literature, and it was published more than 10 years ago, you have one of two situations. A)It's been tested a lot, and proven to be true or B)It's not been tested and is questionable at best. Bear in mind that the scientific community once thought the world was flat. Conversely if the literature is new you always run the risk of the unknown.
3) Repeatability
We shouldn't be jumping to change our world because one experiment gave one result. What if that scientist had dirty beakers and the scum on them gave him false data? Watch and wait until there is more than one paper to back up the research. Multiple experiments or repeating the same experiment multiple times and getting the same result removes the variables so that we can know that the experiment gave an accurate result.
4) Government
If you actually think that the man is trying to keep you down by keeping you unhealthy, take your aluminum hat with you when you skip this section. As a rule, the government (the CDC, the NIH or the WHO) is very tight lipped with making announcements about advances in health, because they are looking into the above reasons to make sure they don't tell you the wrong thing. They generally won't tell you something unless they have done the footwork to make sure it is true (at the moment, to the best of our knowledge)

Happy Blog-day to Me!

I am REALLY bad at remembering to do things like blog. In fact I am really bad at remembering to do just about everything. Buuuuut, my blog is a whole year old!

Oh captain, my captain... May your seas be at peace

One of my favorite actors died yesterday from apparent suicide. I wanted to address something I've been doing very wrong. Working in emergency care, it is very easy to become callous. We make jokes about things that would horrify most people, and I know that is a coping mechanism. EM workers see horror on a daily basis, so naturally we poke fun at it. What I wanted to point out is the samage it does to the people dealing with psych problems. Our line of psych rooms (affectionately dubbed psych row) are not filled with jokes, no matter how ridiculous their behavior is. When you think about it we should be really concerned for them, that crazy outburst is reality for them. They honestly might think that someone is trying to harm their loved ones or that some otherworldly being is stalking them, or be completely unable to feel any semblance of true happiness. How terrifying that has to be. The worst possible thing we can do is laugh at their very real anguish. When you think about it, it's truly heartbreaking.

I'll end with this

"What I might do is watch Mrs Doubtfire. Or Dead Poets Society or Good Will Hunting and I might be nice to people, mindful today how fragile we all are, how delicate we are, even when fizzing with divine madness that seems like it will never expire." -Russle Brand

Things aren't always going to be alright, and that's alright

I love running. There is nothing like turning up the music while your feet hit the pavement to its cadence. There's a little bounce as you propel forward. The wind on your face, wind that you created, is incomparable. For about 30 seconds, then the tightness begins. Your chest feels like it's collapsing in on itself. You can't catch your breath. The thudding feeling starts, it's way too fast. You slow down, hoping that your heart will get the message and do the same. The earth monitor must be wrong, my pulse can't be 170 only 1 minute into a little exercise. It's not a sprint. Is it too much to ask to go for a run? To enjoy this gorgeous morning? Next the blackness starts closing in and you know that if you don't get flat on your own right now, your body will do it for you. So you sit, on the ground, next to the treadmill, on the curb, wherever you happen to be. You curse yourself for wanting something because wanting things is only detrimental to your spirit. When it starts to clear you drag yourself back to your hole and spend the rest of the day berating yourself for wanting to do what the normal people do. But despite the fact that you know you will just repeat this process again next time, you still look longingly at your running shoes every time you decided not to punish yourself today for loving something you obviously weren't meant to have.

My favorite quote is "I will find a way, or I will make one". I have yet to find a way to run, or really to live a normal life. I really really want to be active. My soul craves it, but my body can't handle it. I'm posting this because I am hoping that someone out there will find this in the middle of their own struggle and know that they aren't the only one. 

I want to challenge myself and anyone reading this to embrace those things that you love that seem as if they aren't meant for you. Look at those running shoes and know that even if you aren't meant to have them, there's no way in hell you aren't going to try.