How well do you know your meds?

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My parents, both in their 60s are very active. A few summers ago they hiked true John Muir Trail from Yosemite to Mt Whitney and I joined them the last week. They eat very well, mostly home cooked meals with vegetables from the garden. They have been going to their general practitioner for 20+ years. In 2009 my father was diagnosed with prostate cancer, luckily caught very early. He opted for surgery and is very lucky to be in remission without side effects or complications after surgery. I also remember once he came home from the doctor with reported cholesterol on the high side. He stopped eating ice cream every night and started going to a spinning class with my mom.
I asked him about his medications that he and mom take and he went to the medicine cabinet and listed off the medications.

Spilled pill bottle, close-up for stephen moss surgeries piece
>Levothyroxine (25 mgs)-for subclinical hypothyroidism, no apparent side effects experienced.

> oxybutynin chloride (5 mg)-for over-active bladder, experienced swelling (hand/fingers, throat).

> oxaprozin (600 mg, day pro)-NSAID pain killer, experienced hives d/c due to side effects

> acetazolamide (125 mg), altitude sickness, no apparent side effects experienced.

> doxycycline (100 mg), tick bite, no apparent side effect experienced.

> ciprofloxacin (500), diarrhea, no side effects experienced.

> erthromycin (cream, eye infection), no side effects experienced.

> rizatriptan (10 mg), migraines, sleepiness.

> cyclobenzprine (10 mg), muscle relaxant, no side effects experienced.

All of these medications I either knew why he was taking them or why he had them in his cabinet. It was also very encouraging that he knew what he was taking and why and what side effects. If I was his nurse I would feel comfortable with the education he had received about his medication.

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I know this isn’t always the case.
My grandma was recently diagnosed with rectal cancer and depression and she made it through chemo and radiation but getting her to take antidepressants is a struggle. She doesn’t think they work but she won’t go to the doctor to try difference kinds of adjust the dose. It’s almost the time when you wish there were long term dose options that didn’t have terrible side effects but were easier to monitor use.

Medication Survey

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This week I took an informal survey of the family members and roommates regarding medications.

I surveyed a total of six people, two roommates and four family members. From these individuals’ responses it is safe to conclude that they are health literate.

Of the individuals who take medications, they are aware of the names and why they take them. They know what resources to turn to — pharmacists, drug guides, package inserts — to determine important information about the drug (dosages, side effects, emergency signs/symptoms to notify MD).

All of the individuals had taken an OTC at least once in their life. The majority could identify the difference between generic and trade names as being the same drug, just less expensive.

Only two of the individuals stated they used homeopathic remedies and herbal medications. This could be due to a misunderstanding of what defines homeopathic remedy and/or herbal medication. The remedies include the use of essential oils, teas, massage, yoga, prayer, and meditation.

Reagan Library

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When I visited Ronald Reagan Presidency Library this past Friday, it gave me a great understanding of who President Reagan was. I know President Reagan was a president but I never actually took time to learn about him. The whole aspect of the museum is to give a good expression of who Reagan was. In my opinion he was a good president but as usual when someone passes away only the good deeds they did are remembered. The museum portrays him as a great leader and a great president. Maybe it’ just to show respect or because he has passed and they want the audience to remember him as a great person.

There were quite a few objects that caught my attention at the library. One of them was the video of when they attempted to murder him. He had just finished addressing the Building and Construction workers. It was really scary just by watching the explicit footage. I tried to it myself in his shoes and I couldn’t even bare to imagine myself in that situation. I thought about what his wife was thinking at the moment and how she reacted.

Another objects that also caught my attention was the Air Force One and the Marina One aircraft. It was amazing getting inside the same aircraft that President Reagan once was in. I liked how we were able to get inside and get the experience of having a closer look of his personal life. When I stepped in the aircraft it made me feel like I was one of the people who were in the aircraft while he was there. I felt Important.

In the Air Force One aircraft one of the people who worked there told us a story of President Reagan. She told us that every time President Reagan got in Air Force One he always ordered for the worker in the kitchen to have a chocolate cake. The reason for that was that just in case there might be someone’s birthday while on board. He would personally walk up to the birthday person and sing them happy birthday. I thought that was really nice and humble about him.

The last object that interested me was that everywhere in the museum there were jellybeans. At first I thought they were just used as decoration. But as I continue to see them I grew curious to ask why they were everywhere in the museum. I asked the tourist in Air Force one why were jellybeans everywhere in the museum. She told me that it was because President Reagan wanted to stop smoking so he used the jellybeans as a distraction from smoking

Med Knowledge

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I spoke with a number of friends and family about regarding their knowledge of OTC and prescription medication. Most people I know don’t take a regular prescription medication but do use OTC meds occasionally. Of the five I spoke with, most had a reasonable estimate of what each dose and max dose per day should be for ibuprofen and acetaminophen. One concern arose when my friend said she takes two acetaminophen when she has a headache, but when she showed me the bottle I saw that is was extra strength, 500 mg/pill. She did not know that these pills were a higher concentration of medication and did not report treating them with the consequent caution. Related to this, I just bought a bottle of acetaminophen and I couldn’t find any that wasn’t extra strength despite looking in two stores. I hope consumers know what their getting and how to use it. Another friend told me that he has been on one prescription for many year (he didn’t share what), but said that he didn’t know the dosage until he had been taking it for about 5 years. I think that this is pretty common, people have their medication and maybe know how to use it but don’t necessarily pay attention to the details of what it is. This could be a problem if one day the doctor changed the dosage and they got a new dosage of pill but didn’t know to take more or less of the medicine. A couple of my roommates pretty much never use western medications and only use herbal remedies. They are both pretty healthy fellows, but occasionally I find some of their practices concerning, even more so because the products they use are unregulated. For example, I once watched my roomate put pieces of dried herbs under his eyelids to “open his tear ducts”. I don’t remember what the herb was, but I do think the potential for mechanical harm from dry scratchy plant material directly on the cornea poses a risk. Another friend likes to take colloidal silver as a regular dietary supplement, a practice which no scientific evidence supporting it and poses the risk of silver accumulation in body tissues (Bauer, 2014).

 

Bauer, B. (Aug 5, 2014). Mayo Clinic Consumer Health: Expert Answers. Retrieved from:

http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/consumer-health/expert-answers/colloidal-silver

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Lurking

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This week I am to be “lurking” on social media on the subject of the LGBT community. I am doing this to explore the environment and community of these sites, which are Facebook- LGBT News and Instagram- LGBTTEXTPOSTS. 

I “lurk,” view site or page without contributing by comment, about as often as I can. That means I will visit these sights at least twice a day and stay on them for as long as I can learn something new or am simply enjoying myself. These sights can be funny. They have memes, funny pictures with captions, that have to do with the LGBT community. Anyway, I feel hesitant almost to be lurking on the Instagram account because if I go too late in the posting and accidentally like something then the user will see it and that’s kind of weird. Those of you out there will know what I’m talking about. The Facebook site, however, I have no problem lurking because there is a specific button I have to push in order to like it. On Instagram it’s a double tap and sometimes if you leave your finger on there too long  the post can be liked.

The Instagram account posts averaging on day to day while the Facebook account averages about every hour. What I found interesting is on both sites I found individuals preaching. All the preaching was found on the commenting. I’m not entirely sure what those people are getting at, but I do feel that they are trying to provoke an individual to “choose” not to be gay and be “normal”. I don’t particularly like this. Also on the Instagram account I found a lot more hate speech being used which was just awful. Literally people would tell others to go “kill yourself”. That still strikes me. People can be so bold when they hide behind a key board. People comment back sometimes aggressively,  sometimes advocating for peace. The Facebook sight has much less of this, to my relief. 

Those who are not trolls and extremely supportive and courteous. Often times they can be funny and ask questions about the post or things like that. On the Instagram account I noticed something that not everyone does. The user of the account has the left column on their account to be full of LGBT couples while the middle and right column are of text. I found this interesting because not only is this rare but it is meticulously done, and well done at that.  

The Lurk and Recon

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So for this section of the challenge we are told to just lurk around and observe the situations of the topic we chose on 2 different social media sights. I spend a ludicrous amount of time online and since i have been a presence on the internet i have lurked on sites that interested me. For the assignment i was on Twitter and facebook, these are my major picks the response is quick and there a lot of people contributing even though they are not all experts. For the cost of textbooks and higher education the most vocal are the ones paying for the textbooks and classes, my issue is that i haven’t found too many advocates for custom books and or digital copies. I feel that i am not searching correctly and am looking in hot button sections that aren’t allowing both sides to speak.  Recently my phone my glasses and my car are all out of commission so mobile viewing and screen shooting are not possible till next week or later. I return to these topics every other night, the most volatile time for these talks are around election season beginning and end of the semester so the feeds get stale quickly. With twitter it a lot of big tweets getting attention while on facebook i noticed have been more comment oriented and people repeating and forwarding the same articles.

Being a “Lurker”

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Hello everyone and I hope that you are having a fantastic day. Today’s topic is Lurking and those that lurk. For those that might not know what that means, here are some definitions for you.

Google defines it as: (of a person or animal) be or remain hidden so as to wait in ambush for someone or something.

Urban Dictionary has it as, spying on people online, while you remain invisible

Wikipedia defines it as: In Internet culture, a lurker is typically a member of an online community or PLN who observes but does not actively participate.

Some people have used the terms: Stalk, creep, creeping, spy and watching or even scanner. All the same, it is one that surfs the web checking in on different pages or communities and does not interact with it. As I do not agree with labeling this as a type of stalking, as that has harmful intent. I find it better to lurk before you speak because sometimes what is on your mind does not fit the community.

The idea of this week’s topic is to become a lurker and scope out some web groups without revealing my identity nor interact within the groups. Well, I will tell you that was not a hard task for me as I am a lurker. I have been lurking for years(maybe forever). I do not stop nor start with the internet; I do it at work, school, heck wherever I can. It is not that I do not want to intervene, it is that I like just to be quiet and listen to what other have to say. For instance, I went to a cosplay workshop biweekly for six months and never spoke to one person other than the person that introduced me to the group, Which I might add only went two other times. I find it easy to be quiet when not called on.

My two favorite places to “Lurk” is a FaceBook Group called (sorry if offended) is “The Phreak Shall Inherit the Earth”, and “Giving F*cks for Therapy.” Both of these support groups were created for different reasons. One is to allow people to say what is on their mind and to give the problem the finger; the other is to show respect for a fallen friend of many and to share memories. At one time, I was active with The Phreak, but it had a different title and different purpose. Originally the group was named “Blayne Punches Cancer in the Face” and it was a support group as he went through his treatment, but in May he lost that battle and the page evolved with its purpose.

As I said before, “I am a Lurker,” no denying it. Sometimes while on Facebook or Twitter I will like, share, repost, tag and even comment from time to time. But most of the time I am in and out with no-one the wiser.

Well as I always was, keep smiling, make someone laugh out load and have a fantastic day.

CDR

Lurking – Talking Tuition

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This week in #Univ349DC we are examining another aspect of digital citizenship – lurking. The word and action of lurking have been associated negatively since they came into use, but lurking can be an effective way to find and filter knowledge without becoming caught up in the politics of it all. Participatory culture online encourages commenting and sharing as ideal activities for contributing to a community, but lurking has its place as well. If you leave a comment on an interesting article hoping to engage with the source and find yourself in a heated debate with other commentors, I feel that can take away from the original goal. In this way, lurking helps participants to absorb information and process it on their own for further participation at a later time.

As the picture above indicates, I am continuing my research into college tuition costs. Lurking has given me some insight and new information in ways that I found surprising and gratifying. The 2 sites that I used for this investigation were Facebook and Twitter.  I experienced some carry-over information from previous research in the forms of the Dr. Pepper Tuition Giveaway and news of Germany granting free tuition to Americans. I spent time in between classes and studying lurking on these sites and found that much of the talk was the same. With updates every second, it becomes easy to see what the big topic of the moment is. This week, for college tuition, those topics are the Affordable College Textbook Act and a new documentary, The Big Game: College Football Stealing Your Education, that proposes that college athletic programs are to blame for rising tuition costs.I did experience some frustration and most likely, missing critical information when I had trouble getting the “Top” posts feed to load on Facebook and hope to find a solution to this for next week’s post.

I found that the active participants in this topic are constantly paying attention to new sources and educating commentors on their views in the hopes of creating shared knowledge. This is participation that happens on a daily basis and these participants are constantly keeping their collaborators and allies updated by sharing links and tagging. This is a stark contrast to the daily users like myself before this class that stumble across an article, possibly add their two cents, and never seek to reengage afterwards.

If I had not been lurking on this topic, who knows how long it would have taken for this information to cross my radar? Our social media networks are limited when we rely on our friends or those we follow to find the information and share it with us. Though lurking in itself is considered to be inactive participation, I find it to be an active pursuit of information. We lurk on exes, crushes, and colleagues, so why not lurk on the world as a whole in an effort to be more well-informed? I certainly will be doing so more often regarding my own personal interests and scholarly pursuits from now on.

The post Lurking – Talking Tuition appeared first on Professor In Training.

Challenge 4: Component 1: YouTube and Instagram Lurking

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This week we are lurking. Lurking basically means we are keeping tabs on social media sites in order to gain information. As previously stated, my topic is the current refugee crisis. The two social media sites that I decided to lurk on are YouTube and Instagram. The reason I chose these two sites is because they involve picture and video along with likes and comments. I believe that an image can make a huge impact on the way someone views a certain topic without words having to be said. Like they say, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”

Lurking involves me constantly looking up my topic of the refugee crisis on the social media sights and looking at anything new that is posted. I have been lurking first thing in the morning, at my lunch break, after work, and before bed. What is extremely interesting to me is that there is always something new that has come up and that I can look into. When I first began lurking, I honestly felt very weird. I felt like I was spying on people and I didn’t like it, but when I started to think about it deeper, I realized that these people are doing what we are working towards. They are using social media in order to get their thoughts and beliefs out into the world. Once I was able to grasp that concept, I didn’t feel like a creeper anymore.

YouTube has brought many videos to my attentions that are working towards getting people motivated to help the cause. Instagram on the other had is a lot more of people sharing their perspectives on what they feel about the refugee crisis. There is always people posting to help spread the word, or trying to make a difference but when others’ opinions are involved we can always expect some sort of head bumping to be involved. This was something I wasn’t expecting but I can see how some people would feel another way, I personally just feel as if we should be helping out. I saw more of the head bumping on Instagram, but either way, the majority of people that came across this situation feel for these people and want to help.

Challenge 4

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My recent interest in Syrian and Iranian refugees has been collectively uprising due to the participatory culture that has been instilled in me by this Transfer Seminar class. It’s such an interesting and controversial topic that you can only feel as if you need to do something about this matter.
Social media can be an extremely useful connection to these issues since these sites are used by people around the world, some who might have better understanding of the social issue.
Two of my favorite social media sites are Instagram and YouTube. Instagram connects interesting points of different Instagramers along with powerful pictures. You can like the post, repost or even comment what you feel in regards to the issue.
YouTube on the other hand can be used to make videos without any sort of time boundary to better explain your point, or simply share with people facts about your social issue.
Both of these places gives you a worldwide audience if you use the sites well. In both of these sites you can filter your thoughts and focus on a more intricate point.
I tend to lurk on this topic a lot due to genuine interest. At least once a day. I always place myself in their shoes and wonder how horrific it must be to be in that predicament. Torn and pushed away from a seemingly distant and terrifying place you once called home.
The contributions on Instagram surpass the ones by users on YouTube.
You can filter the subject by using a hashtag that can be common in relation to the issue.
What surprises me are the association of these refugees to past refugees. Times in history where this situation has happened. It’s funny, but history truly does repeat itself. However, when living in the present and this issue is a reality, it is harder to accept and treat it as an important issue like it should be.