Epidemiologists, Disease Detecting, and Media Literacy
From time to time a small outbreak of an uncommon disease occurs — often in an unexpected location. Sometimes it’s publicized and we hear about it, but at other times the outbreak is small enough that most people only hear after the fact. Either way, many of our elderly parents, and many of us, find out about these outbreaks while watching television, and the news reports are often hyped and scary. All of us need to develop the skill to seek more information and figure out what is left out of a news report.
Click here to learn about a career in epidemiology.
Rarely do such short television news stories explain the extraordinary successes of disease detection and disease detectives — how they collect facts, put them together, and puzzle out possible answers. The people in charge of this process are epidemiologists, scientists, sometimes but not always physicians, who explore the way a disease moves from place to place and how it might be controlled.
Legionella bacteria from the National Library of Medicine image gallery.
In January, many of us heard, mostly on TV and radio but also via print and Internet sources, how a small outbreak (eight cases) of Legionnaires’ disease occurred at a hospital in Wisconsin within a short period of time. We heard about this outbreak, which occurred in 2010, because of a journal article, An Outbreak of Legionnaires Disease Associated with a Decorative Water Wall Fountain in a Hospital published in the February 2012 issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology. Read more »
iPad for Dad, #21: An Easy-to-Use Speaker
My dad loves to listen to music, mostly classical, but other musical genres as well. Mostly he fires up his stereo, a boom-box, or the local classical music radio station.
Now, he has a third option — listening with his iPad.
For Christmas we gave Dad the iHome rechargeable portable speaker for iPad. The iPad itself simply sits in the doc, the same way it sits on Dad’s keyboard dock. While the iHome sound isn’t quite at the quality of his stereo speakers, it’s good.
We downloaded the TuneIn RadioPro app which streams all types of music and programming from hundreds of radio stations. I preset seven or eight classical and jazz music stations as well as a baseball channel and a few talk shows. All dad has to do it touch the preset buttons.
If he wants to do more with TuneInRadio, and I expect he will, we can do more instruction later.
If you like this post, check out the others in the iPad for Dad series. iPad for Dad, #1, iPad for Dad, #2, iPad for Dad, #3, iPad for Dad, #4, iPad for Dad, #5, iPad for Dad, #6, iPad for Dad, #7, iPad for Dad, #8, iPad for Dad, #9, iPad for Dad, #10, iPad for Dad, #11, iPad for Dad, #12, iPad for Dad, #13, iPad for Dad, #14, iPad for Dad, #15, iPad for Dad, #16, iPad for Dad, #17 , iPad for Dad, #18, iPad for Dad, #19, and iPad for Dad, #20.
More Cuts to Aging And Caregiving Services
In Slow Starvation of Senior Services columnist Howard Gleckman writes that Congress, shortly before going on Christmas recess, cut funding for a number of services for seniors and elderly Americans. He describes how some program budgets for seniors and the elderly were cut outright, but that other programs are starved into reducing services when funds are not raised year after year.
For example, the Administration on Aging budget is one agency that provides senior services throughout the country, and its budget was cut by about 23 million dollars.
Gleckman points out that nothing much will be resolved until after the 2012 election.
Read the entire blog post at Gleckman’s Caring for Our Parents blog, where he also includes a link to a table summarizing the appropriations.
I meant to share this Forbes blog post about decreasing senior services just before the holidays in December.
Jane Gross on NPR’s Tell Me More
If you missed the Michel Martin’s Tell Me More on Monday, January 23, 2012, head over to the program’s website to hear Jane Gross talk about her book, A Bittersweet Season: Caring For Our Aging Parents and Ourselves. Her conversation covered a broad range of aging parent-adult child topics including Medicare, financial problems, end-of life issues, unexpected aging parent needs, and the need for caregivers to take better care of themselves.
Most Interesting Quote:
… I thought as a reporter I was capable of finding out everything I needed to know. I didn’t realize that the systems were so complicated, that they were coupled with the sort of emotional baggage of it being your mother and your brother, that you couldn’t just pick up the phone the way you did when you were a reporter and get an answer.
Amazing Alzheimer’s Videos Via a Small Hyperlink
When you read a good quality digital article or blog and think you know just about everything that it contains, check the hyperlinks — they may bring you some surprises. In fact, a small discrete hyperlink may open the door to resources that you don’t want to miss. In my case I discovered a set of terrific educational videos at the website of Johns Hopkins physician, Peter Rabins, produced for adult children and seniors who are helping to care for a family member with Alzheimer’s or dementia.
The defining characteristic of a blog – what makes it different from non-digital reading – is the use of hyperlinks that connect to related material. In theory, every good blog post presents information and ideas along with a few hyperlinks that connect to pertinent knowledge in other locations. I know that I’ve read a truly excellent post when a link leads me to new and exciting resources.
A January 20, 2012 post in the New Old Age blog illustrated just how beautifully the blogging process works.
In her post The Caregiver’s Bookshelf: An Alzheimer’s Classic, Paula Spann writes about the 30th anniversary of The 36 Hour Day, an Alzheimer’s disease resource book by Dr. Peter Rabins and Nancy Mace. I already knew about The 36 Hour Day, and I read the entire post quickly because I wanted to learn a bit more about what might be new in the updated edition. So quickly that I almost ignored a hyperlink near the end.
At the bottom of Spann’s post I discovered the link that leads to Dr. Rabins’ Johns Hopkins website. Read more »
My Mom Gets an iPhone, #1
Like lots of other people this fall, I bought a new iPhone, the 4s model. My old 3G iPhone, which works just fine, went to my mother.
My mom likes to look things up, something that smartphones do easily. She has envied family members with iPhones and Androids, starting a year or two ago right after Thanksgiving dinner, when many of us had such fun grabbing our phones to discover answers to obscure facts that no one could remember. It was lots of fun, and my mom wanted to play, too. That was when she first dreamed of owning a smartphone.
Before signing her up for an access plan, the two of us decided to try an experiment.
Since Christmas Mom has used the iPhone as a wireless device around the house and at other places where the wireless can connect, such as Panera. It can’t make telephone calls, but otherwise it works just fine. She uses it to search the web, keep her calendar, check email, play solitaire, and enter names and addresses into contacts.
For the time being she uses her old mobile phone to make calls, but now my mom is ready to use the iPhone for real.
Another Post on Dementia and The Iron Lady
Karin Kasdin writes on dementia and the Margaret Thatcher movie, The Iron Lady, reflecting and reinforcing some of my thoughts in Dementia, Margaret Thatcher, and What It’s Really Like (January 15, 2012). Moreover, she writes more about privacy issues, includes an insightful quote from Meryl Streep, and deftly identifies the fear that many adult children experience — and I include myself here – when we think about dementia and Alzheimer’s.
Kasdin writes:
I fear death less than I fear Alzheimer’s. Each time I forget where I put my phone, or blank on a person’s name, or am unable to retrieve a word from the archives of my brain, that fear rears its ugly head. If the scourge that devours whole families in a single bite were ever to strike me, I would use my last remaining faculties to demand privacy.
In the long run, Streep’s portrayal may become a classic, offering people a window to view the increasing confusion and decreasing control that people with these brain diseases experience. We expect nothing less from Meryl Streep.
In the short run, privacy issues continue to make me queasy.
Read Kasdin’s entire piece in the Huffington Post.
Take Action on SOPA – If you Write or Read Blogs
Take time today to call (that’s right telephone) Congressional Offices
and tell them that this iteration of SOPA will encourage
all sorts of censorship — and it’s wrong!
Read more »
Becoming A Grown-up Child
One day in April 2007 my husband and I were the adult kids in our families — we are the only adult children
— and the next day we became what we laughingly call “real grown-ups,” helping first one, then two, and increasingly all three of our parents. It’s time to give back, and we do so willingly and happily. However the process is not easy, and it is not free from anxiety and tension. Check out the As Our Parents Age About page to learn more about the mission of this blog.
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As Our Parents Age by Marti Weston is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on work at AsOurParentsAge.wordpress.com and AsOurParentsAge.net
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available by emailing As Our Parents Age. To learn more about this blog go to the AsYourParentsAge About page.
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