Post Holiday Relief Syndrome (PHReS)

If you celebrate a holiday around this time of year, any holiday, it’s likely you have been crazed since the end of November. Between creating, addressing and mailing holiday cards; planning gifts for teachers, friends, family; Yankee Swaps, making food for parties; hosting parties (whew!), there seems to be so much to do, you think you’re never going to live to tell about it.

I was in the supermarket today and felt a bit of a relief. Many of shelves were empty, and there were very few people shopping. I felt a sigh of relief. A phrase popped into my head - Post Holiday Relief Syndrome (PHReS). You know you have this if you experience one or more of the following:

1. You realize you don’t have to address, buy, cook or wrap anything.
2. You are relieved to know you don’t have to go to a mall (except maybe for the after-Christmas sales or to return something, but that can wait).
3. Work is a little more relaxed for the week, or you might even have the week off, and you can sleep a tad later than usual.
4. If you go into the supermarket or another store, you don’t have to wait 30 minutes to check out.

We do have one more holiday to celebrate, and that is New Year’s Eve. To be honest, Brad and I lay low on that night. If we make it to midnight, great. Most times, we go to sleep, I wake up around midnight, nudge him, kiss him Happy New Year, roll over and fall asleep. We wake up to a new year.

Enjoy your PHRes and may 2011 bring health, happiness, peace and love.

Can social media save lives?

Here is a story in ZDNet that intersects healthcare, security, patient privacy and rights, and social media. How I Tweeted My Way out of Spinal Surgery.

Long story short, Twitter and the iPhone very well might have saved Sarah Cortes’s life by “helped her escape from the clutches of hospital staff whom, she claims, tried to intimidate and coerce her into accepting unnecessary spinal surgery.”

It started with “Trapped in hospital in rural Pennsylvania, fractured spine. Need a neurosurgeon in Boston.”

What ensued was very fast, almost unbelievable action by Paul Levy, who also straddles the healthcare and social media world, and other physicians.

There are many holes in the story as it is told. And Cortes admits to deleting the Tweets, but it appears the hospital acted selfishly and wasn’t necessarily thinking about the patient’s best interests as evidenced by the result. It raises a scary question about the intent of some of the physicians and hospitals.

This situation is most unusual. Cortes is a technology consultant and blogger, associated with ISACA. For anyone to get such quick action without a usual referral and waiting period is unheard of. It seems that this situation ended up being a test on social media as much as an exercise in proper healthcare.

One can dice and slice this in many directions, but one conclusion I would like to make is: question authority. A patient must be her own best advocate. Ok, maybe that was two conclusions.

CVS MinuteClinic - Worth the Trip

I haven’t been sick in a decade. Not like this anyway. It started as a little cold. I can handle that. Then it blossomed into a 101 fever and a bronchial thing that really threw me for a loop. Of course, it was on a weekend. I didn’t want to go to the ER, so I tried the CVS MinuteClinic on Route 135 in Ashland. Very impressive. There is a room near the pharmacy that looks similar to any doctor’s office exam room. I signed in via kiosk and walked right in. There’s something new in the medical profession. A very nice nurse practitioner named Heather greeted me and asked me some questions. She jotted all of the information on her computer, which I learned is a proprietary system.

I was covered under my Tufts health insurance, so I only had to pay my usual co-pay. An ER would have been double the price, and I would have still been waiting.

After she got the basics, she began some tests. First, she swabbed my nose to test for the flu. She then checked for strep, ear infection and other basics. Good news. No flu, no strep and no ear infection, although lots of fluid. That also left her with a decision to make about what I did have. She checked my lungs. Yes, I have junk in there, but when I cough, it breaks up. Another good sign. I was feeling better already.

After some thought, and consulting with another colleague, she decided I had a virus and to take Mucinex plus an inhaler. Mucinex is OTC, but the inhaler with albuterol, would be a prescription. She assured me none of this would break the bank either.

The bill for everything, including my usual co-pay, was $67. Price to not have to wait in the ER or a doctor’s office... priceless.

I got my meds and went home.

It has been four days, and I am feeling much better. I even went to the gym yesterday, which helped my psyche more than anything.

And the other day, I received a card from the CVS MinuteClinic and Heather saying, “I hope you’re feeling better.” Wow.

My point: Good for CVS for doing this. It fills a need and will hopefully relieve some of the stress in the ER. Maybe my case wasn’t extremely complex, but this is the kind of case this place can and should be able to handle. I give it an A. Now, if I could just recover my taste buds….