LJWorld Reader blogs

Multidisciplinary (Anonymous) says…

Bravo for your audacity Ronda! You should put your maniacal comment on this thread, to explain. I know a lot of people at the health dept. I wouldn't have been able to pull it off without us all cracking up. They know me too well!
If I had said I have kids at home that depend on me, it would have brought a whole different scenario to their minds.

I wonder, did they ask anyone if they had a peanut allergy, before handing out those plain M&M's? Were they prepared to take care of a person with anaphalactic shock after eating those? (& if they were anitbiotics, did they warn about interference with birth control? Nothing like a post anthrax baby boom!)

I once went to LMH with respiratory symptoms my doctor wanted seen immediately. The doctor was nice, she even noted the moment she put the scope to my back, “Wow, You were a Premie, weren't You?” I was impressed.

After the exam, she went & got me this inhaler, took it out of the box, asked if I had had it before. No. She gave it to me and told me to take two puffs. I did. She left a moment.
Bored, I read the box.
“Do Not Use if Allergic To Peanuts!” was displayed there.
Of course, with the family history, I was stunned.
When she came back in I said, “Do you realize that you just told a patient to take this, and didn't ask it I was allergic to peanuts?
She suddenly realized the consequences of her mistake as I told her, “You realize, this would have killed my daughter, right?”

They have changed the wording on plain M&M's a couple of times. They used to say nothing, then they listed peanuts as an ingredient, then the note about being processed on machinery etc.
I know about this, because my daughter once became very ill after eating plain M&M's.
(Note, when you eat peanuts when allergic, you don't get used to them, you get more allergic. Thus, people say, Oh I've eaten them before, and it wasn't bad. A few more accidental exposures happen, no biggie. But then, one day, they get exposed and they die. No one can save them, it's that bad.)

As my feeble brain recalls, we went without electricity for 3 days after the 2003 tornado. In town. Cell phone signal was intermittent.
We only opened the frig a few times to use things in the next so many hours, then abandoned it.
One son used Pediasure, and the others just made do with the rest of the stuff in the house.
No TV is a real trip,radio a novelty. We just camped, with flashlights, everyone in bed earlier.
My son's electric feeding pump held an emergency charge. I don't remember if this was used up or not. He used that during the night, and we could do hand/syringe feeds during the day.

It got pretty warm, but we lived. The neighborhood being destroyed/current police state/day to day news counteracts a lot of mental stress that might be felt during such a long time without regularity.

I'm really glad I didn't have a regular job that expected me during that time. My home responsibilities were all a person could deal with.

prospector (Anonymous) says…

Did you get to use the line “Don't taze me man!”? :o)

Man-made disasters? Mommy, can I sleep with the light on?

Anthrax, I always thought that the guy or guys that want to go about whipping up huge batches usually die before they are able to distribute nation wide. So I see no reason to lose sleep over that one.

The dirty bomb or a small nuke will happen, though I really hope not, someday. This will be locally devastating but manageable. See Chernobyl. All bets are off if the Russians or US start emptying the arsenal. Kiss it all goodbye, you don't want to be around to clean up that mess.

Natural disasters are also localized and we have been getting a lot of practice around the state between the tornadoes and ice storms.

More practices can't hurt and these folks do a good service for the people. If we have a big mess, it will be each other that we will have to depend on, not the government. See Katrina.

Ronda, don't forget the manual can opener.