Puke Pile: WIfe Swap Call

A friend received this from ABC TV: [my comments in brackets]

Hello,

My name is D*** G***. I'm a Casting Producer for ABC's Primetime show, "Wife Swap." [Danger Will Robinson!] I hope you don't mind me contacting you, but we're gearing up for a fourth season at the moment and we're currently looking for unique families with LOTS of personality and strong family philosophies! Specifically, I'm looking for strong, feminist mothers who are proud to be wearing the pants and ruling their roost. [I wore a skirt yesterday and I don't quite rule our roost. Most feminists I know have a fairly egalitarian household. It's not quite 50/50, but we're not whipping our men around the place. See, bias already in the call.]Feel free to forward this on to anyone you think would be interested in this unique opportunity! [No thanks.]

In case you are unfamiliar with the show, the premise of Wife Swap is to take two different families and have the moms switch places to experience how another family lives. Half of the week, mom lives the life of the family she is staying with. Then she introduces a "rule change" where she implements rules and activities that her family has. It's a positive experience for people to not only learn but teach about other families and other ways of life. Wife Swap airs on Disney owned ABC television on Mondays at 8 pm- the family hour! [So very positive to see families used as entertainment! I love how she touts this as a Disney project. Why don't they try this with Disney characters? Oh, wait...most of the mothers are dead! Maybe with 101 Dalmatians and the Artisocats. They both had mothers in there. Oh, wait, the mom in Artisocats was single, right?]

Requirements: Each family must consist of two parents and at least one child between 7 and 17 and should reside in the continental U.S. (There may be other children living in the home who are older or younger than the required ageas long as one child is in the required age range.) [Yes, you have to have at least one child that can remember all the drama for therapy.]

Participating in the show is a very unique experience that can be life changing for everyone. In addition, each family that tapes an episode of Wife Swap receives $20,000 as compensation for their time. Anyone who refers a family that appears on our program receives $1000 as a 'thank you from us. [Very life changing to allow some radical right winger into your home bullying your husband around and you going into her home and seeing how the other side lives. Oh...could I swap with the woman who just had her 17th baby? But I'd sooo have to get at least $100K for that.]

I appreciate you taking the time to read this email and I hope to hear from you soon. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me!

[Where to start? Will you put my child into a situation where she will cry and you'll love it? Will you just go away and stop filling our airwaves with this crap?]

feminism,Reality TV

Health Organizations and Journals Show More Interest in Blogs

My colleagues and I presented posters/abstracts on different aspects of blog use in medicine at the 2006 American Society of Nephrology (ASN) Meeting, the 2007 American College of Cardiology (ACC) Meeting, the 2006 Annual Perioperative Summit at the Cleveland Clinic, and the 2007 Annual Research ShowCASE at Case Western Reserve University. The interest by the attendees has always been great.

A dentist blogger was recently asked to present on "Blogs and Their Use in Dentistry" at the American Acdemy of Pediatric Dentistry's Annual Session.

The Annals of Emergency Medicine recently featured a summary of popular blogs authored by EM physicians (link via GruntDoc). What is next? The Annals of Internal Medicine with an article about popular IM blogs? The Annals of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology with the summary of popular allergy blogs? The blogs are gradually hitting main stream in the minds of medical publishers about a year after they became commonplace in the general media. Most major newspapers and TV stations now have blogs. Medical journals and hospitals cannot be far behind.

Blogs offer a unique way to connect with readers/customers. They are instant and look spontaneous. Subscription via web feeds creates a relationship. This is just one aspect of why blogs are influential. The other is their popularity. Google changed our world. When I teach case-based management of DKA to residents at the Cleveland Clinic, I do not give them the web address anymore. I just tell them "search Google for "DKA case" and you will find the case we discussed today at number 1 or 2 in the search results."

References:
Web 2.0 in Medicine Presentations at Research ShowCASE in Cleveland
Cleveland Clinic Perioperative Medicine Summit
American Society of Nephrology (ASN) Renal Week 2006
Wow, I made Annals of Emergency Medicine! GruntDoc, 04/2007.
Emergency Medicine in the Blogosphere: The Irreverent Wit of the Specialty’s Unofficial Voice. Annals of EM, Vol. 49, Issue 5, Pages 612-614 (May 2007).

Flickr: Swallow Brothers

Swallow Brothers

Source: Kuribo, a Creative Commons license.

Foxit Reader is Better than Adobe Reader for PDF

Adobe Reader is a big program and takes 10-15 seconds to start. You cannot edit or add text to a PDF unless a form is embedded specifically for that purpose.

Foxit Reader deals with those limitations in a heartbeat. This small 1.7-MB program starts in just one second and the Typewrite features allows you to add text to any PDF despite the fact that the form entry may not have been embedded originally. The Foxit Reader is free and its counterparts of Adobe Acrobat (Editor, Creator) are reasonably priced at $ 50-100 compared to more than $ 500 for Adobe Acrobat Professional.

I have heard about Foxit before but never got around to try it. Last week I read that Larry Page insisted for months that Google included Foxit instead of Adobe Reader in Google Pack and decided to give it a try. The current version of Foxit Reader is a significant improvement over Adobe Reader, adds useful features, has a small foot print and is easy to use.

References:
Foxit Reader from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
PDF Hammer -- edit your PDF files online for free.
Image source: Foxit

Related:
16 Free Online Tools for Working with PDFs. DavidRothman.net, 03/2008.

Updated: 03/12/2008

WIMN in Chicago

Last night Women & Children First was the site for a house party/discussion for Women In Media & News (WIMN) that I organized. I'm on the board of this fabulous organization for many reasons, some I gave last night:

1. I'm tired of the media telling me that I'm wrong. Wrong size, wrong color, wrong hair, on and on.

2. I'm frustrated that my local TV news is 30 minutes long, minus commercials, down to 25 mins (max), 8 minutes for weather and sports, now we're down to 17 minutes...AND then we waste precious time not on debating Iraq, health care, or global warming, but on the daily hijinks of Hollywood stars. Isn't that why we invented "Entertainment Tonight?"

3. Women reporting the news does make a difference.

On that last point, this morning on American Morning on CNN when Kiran Chetry reported on how American moms are breastfeeding more, but not as long as we should. She asked the medical expert this: "I know that when I breastfeed, it was time confusing and the hardest thing I've ever done. Is that a factor?" BRILLIANT! Do you think that Anderson Cooper would have asked that question?

Last night's event was a good discussion that covered essentially why we need to change the landscape media plays on. It's not ok for the media to focus on Hillary's boobs, Katherine Harris' mascara, or Geraldine Ferraro's dress size. It's pathetic to think that Hillary can't win the White House because "Commander in Chief" was a bad show no one watched or because no one takes Katie Curic seriously as a news anchor. How can we as a people get the media to focus on policy issues rather than personality? Ann Elizabeth Moore said it best, "I'm angry that I have to spend time on this instead of on the issues!"

Of course, there was no golden solution that percolated up. Rather 25 people came away a bit more informed on media justice issues, where WIMN fits into the movement, and some insight into what we can do to help. What is important is to follow legislation.

A lot of the headaches we have today are the result of the 1996 TeleCommunications Act that Clinton signed that allowed fewer people & companies to own more of the media. Which is why we can have people like Mudoch own so much of what we consume. Did you know he owns MySpace too? The recent purchase of our beloved indy Chicago Reader has been played up as one indy buying another. In reality, a large media group helped finance the deal, putting the Reader in the "another one bites the dust" pile.

Get involved with WIMN or other media reform & justice groups.

I did learn one big distinction last night: Media reform orgs want to change what we have. Indy media orgs want to create something new.

Low power FM may be the next thing. We need to wait it out a bit more, but if anyone has info on it, please send it in!

So get on WIMN's action alert list, read our blog, and if you can spare some change, donate. We're a staff of one, our Executive Director, with an army of volunteers. Imagine what we can do if we had more staff?!

BTW - You can also support us all this month by clipping this coupon and shopping at WCF. We get 10% of your purchase!


WIMN, feminism, media

Clinical case: Should we stop raloxifene (Evista) prior to surgery?

A 69-year-old Caucasian female with a past medical history of hypertension, hyperlipidemia, osteoarthritis and severe osteoporosis takes the oral selective estrogen receptor modulator raloxifene. Her other medications include hydrochlorothiazide and atorvastatin. The patient takes ibuprofen and the combination of oxycodone and acetaminophen prn for knee pain.

She is seen by an internal medicine physician for preoperative evaluation three weeks prior to surgery for total knee replacement for osteoarthritis of the right knee. Physical examination reveals decreased range of motion of the right knee but is otherwise normal. The electrocardiogram recorder in her primary care physician's office shows normal sinus rhythm.

The patients and her primary care physician want to know whether she should stop taking raloxifene prior to surgery.

Should we stop Evista prior to surgery?

Yes.

Indications for use of selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERMs) such as tamoxifen and raloxifene (Evista) have expanded beyond breast cancer treatment to prevention and treatment of osteoporosis. Both tamoxifen and raloxifene increase the risk of VTE (DVT and PE).

A review in UpToDate recommends tamoxifen and raloxifene be discontinued for 4 weeks before surgeries associated with a moderate or high risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE).

If the patient takes those drugs for breast cancer treatment, a consultation with an oncologist is recommended.

This is one of the series of perioperative questions I will answer on this web site. They will be submitted as clinical vignettes to the Cleveland Clinic Annual Perioperative Summit next year. This year's summit is in September and several of the perioperative cases in nephrology will be presented as posters and published as abstracts in the Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine.

References:
Should selective estrogen receptor modulators be discontinued prior to noncardiac surgery? UpToDate (paid subscription required).
Hormone therapy and thromboembolic disease. Hemostasis and thrombosis. Current Opinion in Hematology. 14(5):488-493, September 2007.
The World Health Organization has an online Fracture Risk Assessment Tool.
Image source: Flickr, a Creative Commons license.

Updated: 12/14/2009

What is the difference between an internist and a family physician?

DB’s Medical Rants explores the differences between internists and family physicians in 4 postulates.

It seems like with time, as the U.S. health system evolves, internists will morph into hospitalists and family physicians into outpatient doctors. A similar arrangement, with outpatient GPs who almost never go to the hospitals and inpatient doctors, works relatively well for many European countries.

References:
Internists have different skills than family physicians. DB’s Medical Rants.

Further reading:
Retired doc's thoughts and Musings of a Distractible Mind comment on the implications of switching to hospitalist care for inpatients.
Practicing cost-effective medicine. One clinician's top 10 tips. Robert M. ACP Hospitalist, 2007.
Image source: OpenClipArt.org, public domain

Updated 09/20/2007