H1N1, flu, cold viruses, & my advice

Dear friends,

The H1N1 flu is here, as well as run-of-the-mill cold and flu viruses. Please accept my unsolicited advice:

Wash your hands with appropriate frequency. Use soap and water. Get hands wet, add soap, work the suds for a full 20 seconds (outside of the water stream), then rinse. You'd be surprised how many people put a little water on their fingertips and call that washing -- or start rinsing the soap off as soon as they touch it.

Use sanitizing hand gel, especially after touching people or using public equipment of any kind (public computers, phones, etc). Work the gel into your hands (back and front & between fingers) until the gel disappears. It doesn't work if you rinse or wipe off the gel right away because you think it's slimy. It's supposed to be that way.

Spray or wipe phones, keyboards, computer mice, and your TV remote controls with something like Lysol or those sanitizing wipes. If someone is sick at home, go through the house once per day and wipe/spray things like the refrigerator door handle, light switches, doorknobs, cabinet handles, and other things that everyone touches. This will decrease the spread of cold & flu viruses within the household. For businesses, also pay attention to things like copy machines, fax machines, and printers. No need to get paranoid, but do this when someone is sick or in public/work environments.

It is not necessary to buy soap & sanitizers labeled "antibacterial." Cold and flu viruses are viruses, not bacteria. All soaps are sanitizing, anyway. The word "antibacterial" usually indicates that the product contains Triclosan, which is harmful to the bio-environment. Use it if you already have it, but you don't have to seek out those labels.

If your doctor has recommended that you get the flu shot, please take that advice. This is a decision between you and your doctor based on your personal risk factors. If you have been advised to get either the regular flu shot or the H1N1 shot, please do so.

Thanks for putting up with my advice!

Good luck and stay healthy!

"The Good Dr. Laura"

Feel free to forward.

The Dog Whisperer

What I've learned from Cesar Millan:
1. Exercise, discipline, and affection, in that order.
2. You must be the alpha dog, the leader of the pack. If you give up leadership, it's very difficult to get it back.
3. Maintain a calm and assertive demeanor at all times.
4. Correction must be done immediately -- instantaneously, in fact. Cesar uses a curt noise of some kind and a deeper/serious vocal tone. Once you've made your correction, give immediate reward with affection and a gentle tone of voice.

The Physics of Vampire Sex

(dare I post this?) A new blog's first entry was sent to me by a friend via Twitter. Here is my comment/response:

http://physicsofvampiresex.blogspot.com/2009/08/to-start-this-blog-off-on-right-foot.html

love the vampires, hate the maenad

True Blood:
I can't wait for that maenad bitch to get devoured or whatever so I can have my normal vampires back.
I had to turn on all the lights in the living room tonight during the show cuz I was askared.
Eric and Bill are hot in different ways. Eric is &#%$in' hot to look at but I'd rather have Bill feed from my vasculature.
Queen Sophie looks the part but her voice is too anachronistic. She has that gravelly deep vocal thing that is just too late 20th century San Fernando Valley. Nobody thousands of years old would talk like that. Too bad. She could have passed for a Botticelli model, or a model for one of those Greek statues. It all stops working when she opens her mouth. Then I remember I'm watching a TV show.
Poor Lafayette. If it weren't fer bad luck he'd have no luck at all.
WTF is that egg?

I actually did give blood at a Red Cross event last week. It was the first time I wasn't disqualified. No recent travel. My life is boring. Almost got dinged on old Ghana stuff or that trip to Nigeria a few years ago, but they gave me a pass. Anyway, I did fine that day -- no fainting or diaphoresis or anything -- but I was flippin' WEAK AND TIRED for 3 or 4 days. By my calculations, I probably gave away about 13% of my blood volume. Dude, Sookie must be tired all the time! How can she run around and fight bad guys like that if she's chronically anemic?

Class of 2012

So far, so good, with the new class of 2nd year students. We've had orientation all week. The clinics, docs, and staff are much more welcoming to this class than the inaugural class last year. Last year everything was new and the clinics were under stress from several other major, simultaneous changes at the health center, so there were reasons for their apprehension. Now, after a year of this program, the culture of the health center is starting to include the medical students as part of the family. I think we still have a long way to go, but we're moving in the right direction.

Senator Edward Kennedy

I just found out, through Twitter, of course, that Senator Ted Kennedy has passed away. I had the opportunity to meet him in 2004 when he was stumping for John Kerry. It was early in the primary season, so it was a fairly small crowd and I was able to be just a couple of metres away from him. He was amazing. First of all, really handsome! More handsome than I expected given his age and more handsome than he looked on TV. His body looked just really worn and tired. I guess he had terrible back problems. But his spirit and mind were vibrant! He had quite a powerful voice to carry his eloquence. I got to shake his hand. It was a humbling experience to be in the presence of greatness.


Now our task is to carry on his legacy by passing a good health care reform bill, one with at least a few teeth! He lived his life doing great work, but also the often tedious work in Congress to get lines in bills and getting bills passed that serve the American people, ALL of the American people. At the VERY LEAST, we need to make illegal any discrimination by health insurance providers against people with pre-existing conditions. End of life counseling is a compassionate way to touch the lives of our patients and we should not shy away from it because stupid people have made ridiculous and outrageous misinterpretations of this. There should be the availability of a publicly funded segment of health insurance if not delivery. We already have this in the forms of Medicare, Medicaid, KidsCare, and the V.A. These kinds of options should be available to every American who chooses to utilize them. Health insurance should never have been linked to employment, certainly not as the primary method of coverage for the country. Most importantly, for-profit health insurance companies and health care institutions should absolutely not exist. Why? Because in a for-profit system, illness will always pay better than wellness.

Healthcare reform was the Senator's last crusade. Let us carry on that mission and help him achieve one of his last goals.

Minnie Ripperton

@yayayarndiva said she was listening to "Loving You" by Minnie Ripperton. I tweeted a short version of a story about that song and she wanted to learn more, so here's a longer version.

I was in Chile in a town in the mountains in what I thought was supposed to be their summer, or at least their spring. It was too fkncold for me and I got sick and I needed a break to a warmer climate, so I took a 25 hour bus ride from Santiago de Chile to Arica, the northernmost town in the country (and on the beach and, therefore, warmer). Somewhere in the middle of that amazing journey through, among other things, the most desolate landscape I've ever seen (the Atacama desert), we stopped at a little cafe/diner. There was nothing else around, at least in my memory, but this little restaurant. We had a half hour to eat and use the facilities. It was close to the time to get back on the bus, I was sitting on a bench outside the restaurant. A beautiful little girl was sitting next to me. Minnie Ripperton was singing "Loving You" on the radio. It was a peaceful and lovely few minutes.

So, Mimi, that song reminds me of that day.