If you just want the short version, you can skim/scroll down to the “Here is the TL:DR Bookmark”, and start there. You’re welcome.

As you all know, I had a panniculectomy in late December, from which I healed much faster than expected. The surgeon had predicted a much more dire situation, but in the end other than a little breathing issues on the table everything seemed to be going fine. By February, the surgeon was ready to start scheduling my follow-up appointments six weeks apart; we had agreed before the surgery that we would be following up for at least a year if not longer, because there was a really high chance of post-op complications. Six weeks was the maximum time between follow up appointments, so that’s how well I was doing only two months after the knife.

In the middle of March, I noticed that there was some very slight swelling around the right-of-center part of my abdomen, around part of the surgical scar. The doctor has warned me that there might be odd swelling up to a year afterward, so at first I dismissed it. Also, I had just spend two and a half months “healing from surgery”, so I wasn’t keen to go running back to the doctor right away; I wanted to spend that time and energy getting back into the swing of things post-separation, booking some gigs and finishing the book. Every week I’d say to myself or Rave, “I should call Dr Sacks about this swelling in my belly; it looks a little worse.” And then I’d get distracted doing other stuff and wouldn’t. I kept assuring myself I had the six-week checkup already planned and if nothing else, I’d be seeing him then.

Six weeks finally passed, and I went to see him for the appointment. As soon as he walked in the room, my guilt jumped out at him and said, “Don’t be mad at me; there’s been some swelling. I kept thinking I should call you, but I was busy with other stuff and was afraid I’d have to go on hiatus again to deal with it.” He laughed; he reminded me that this is my body, not his, and if I want to ignore something I had the right to do so. He’d eat those words a few weeks later.

This is an interesting thought, and something worth going on a bit of a tangent on, if you’ll indulge me. (Again, if you want to skip ahead to the part where I get to the point, feel free.) Between having friends who deeply care and sometimes feel invested in my well-being, and being a blogger who shares their medical journey with the general Internet public, it can sometimes be overlooked that we’re talking about my body, and that everyone has made decisions that did not put their body or their health at the top of the priority list. Whether it’s extreme sports or eating a triple bacon cheeseburger with hamburger patties for buns, we accept that sometimes the experience is worth the risk. But when one is both public and chronically ill, people tend to want to bundle us in soft cotton and keep us from any extra suffering. It’s actually something I’ve read quite a bit about when reading disability advocacy and activism papers; that part of fighting for body autonomy is fighting for the right to do unhealthy or risky things with one’s body regardless of one’s state of health/ability when they make that decision.

In writing this blog for over a year, I frequently get emails, comments, or find myself in conversations, in which people basically inform me that they know more about how to treat my body than I do. That’s not what they say, but it’s what they mean. When someone sees me eating something delicious, but not the most healthy (or these days, merely something I’ve previously stated is a food or drink I am avoiding) they feel they not only have automatic permission to point this out to me, but in some cases, they physically take the food away or publicly shame me for making that choice.

During this hospital stay, people have been bringing me slushies from Sonic, which is a total Del comfort food. They’re basically fruit, simple syrup, and frozen water (and I get the ones that Sonic claims are made from “real fruit”, rather than just a flavored syrup), but it doesn’t take a food scientist to know that they’re full of simple sugars. My blood sugar numbers have been pretty shitty lately, and most of that is due to stress/pain. However, I’ve noticed a behavior among the nurses here that I really wish the rest of the world would take a cue from: they don’t care. When I get “caught” – when a nurse comes in to take my blood sugar only to see a half-empty Sonic slushy on my table next to my laptop – the nurse doesn’t actually say or do anything at all. It’s me, responding to years of programmed fat-and-sugar-shaming, that immediately jumps and says, “You caught me. I was having a slushy.” And it is Pavlovian, this response, because my experience from the last few days has shown me that the nurses don’t give a damn. It’s the people visiting me who make the judgement statements or even just a joke about how terrible it is that I’m drinking this thing.

It’s as if disabled/chronically ill bodies no longer belong to the person using them. We are community property, open to scrutiny and judgement by anybody, but most often by people who think they know better. However, I will assert that when a person feels entitled to judge another based solely on what they see/hear/know in the moment, or solely on what that person shares on the Internet, frequently their judgements say more about them than they do about us. Someone may attempt to shame me for my choices, as some sort of dodge or deflection about their unhealthy choices.

There’s more I want to say about this, but this tangent is getting really long and you’re more interested in what’s going to happen next in my hospital story, so remind me to come back to this sometime.

He didn’t think the swelling was anything particularly surprising or negative, but he sent me to get a CT scan right away to see if it was a new fluid collection or abscess. It turned out I had a much smaller (9mm) fluid collection, but that it was not infected. I got another drain installed via Interventional Radiology (IR), but there was (oddly) very little fluid coming out. What did come out was serrous fluid, or basically white blood cells. I only had the drain in for a week and a bit, as it mysteriously fell out of it’s own accord on that Sunday when I was at Charm City Fetish Fair.

The day before that happened, Saturday April 6th, was a very bad day. Even though I knew I needed to be up very early (for Dels) in order to go to Charm City and register, I could not for the life of me get any sleep the night before, mostly because I felt pain and nausea. It was bad, really bad. Probably the worst chronic illness day I’ve had in the last two years. We got to the hotel and I went right to sleep, woke up, did my class/panel, went right back to sleep, woke up for my volunteer shift, and then sleep. I couldn’t really eat or even drink fluids because I was so sick to my stomach. I emailed my surgeon and his PA to tell them how bad I was feeling and asking for their advice. Dr Sacks felt it was no big deal and to be expected, whereas his assistant thought going to the ER there and then was the better choice. As I was not feeling inclined to go to the hospital, and Dr. Sacks was assuring me it didn’t have anything to do with my abdomen, I decided to stay at the event.

As part of my earlier tangent, I wanted to add another point here. Again, feel free to skip this part.

Another way in which people outside of my immediate circle judge me and my choices is when they criticize me for leaving the house. I have lost count of how many times someone has suggested that if I only stayed home more often, or rested more, or did less work, or some other way confined my life to my bedroom, I would miraculously feel better and/or have taken better care of my body. They also feel entitled to make those comments because I openly write about financial struggles and have received donations from people in the past to help cover medical costs; and yet, I also write about going to parties or events or in some other way spending money on a social life that, in their opinion, would be better spent on medical costs.

I can’t stress enough how backwards this is. If I never go out and never do fun things, then my entire life becomes restricted to “being sick”. The only people I know – and I do know them – who want their lives to completely revolve around being ill/having medical emergencies, are mentally unstable. They thrive off of the attention people who suffer are given, and they are immediately jealous if someone else gets one iota of attention because that other person is also suffering. It’s as if there is nothing redeeming about them, nothing worth paying attention to or engaging with them over, except their illness.

I, and I like to think saner people, fight that perception with every bone in our body. I begged Baphomet to allow me a second blog specifically because my online presence had become completely focused on me being sick, and it’s not the only, or even most important part of my identity. But in order to do that, writing about my adventures is not enough; I actually have to go have them. Now, this doesn’t mean that I spend the grocery money (or the prescription money) on sex toys and roller coasters, but it does mean that – gasp – I choose to cut back on one thing in order to have fun, and also that – gasp – I frequently go out and do fun things when I “should” be home resting. Anyone who tries to shame me for leaving my house twice this month, putting off seeing the doc by a week or two, doesn’t understand or support the concept of people living full, complete, joyous lives. And that’s just sad, because it means that their life is so boring, so empty, that their idea of fun is to criticize and ridicule some random person on the Internet for doing something fun.

Sunday morning came, and our plan was to get dressed, eat some breakfast, take a look at the vendor mart, and go home. A friend of mine was in charge of vendors and was telling me that no one was buying stuff and the vendors were feeling kinda desperate. As I was getting dressed, I turned at one point and realized my drain was on the bed, and it was too far away from me to still be attached. Sure enough, upon closer inspection, I could clearly see the end of the tube that goes inside of the abscess lying on the bed like it was just another piece of my outfit. I emailed Dr Sacks and his PA again, and this time they both stressed that I should only go to the ER if I felt I had to, because there was really nothing the ER could do to assist me. I bandaged up the wound and left the hotel for home, spending most of the next two days asleep.

I was looking something up online about Isoniazid, my TB drug, when I remembered about liver-toxicity, which is a well known and documented side effect that hits those who get ill a lot. I brought up a page on the med and lo and behold, there’s a list of all of my current symptoms under the heading, “Seek out medical attention immediately if you experience…”

I had been waffling about calling a new PCP or going to see the old one. My PCP is no spring chicken, but at least I’ve been with him for long enough that I feel like he knows what’s going on and how to look at the bigger picture. However, I couldn’t get in to see him specifically, but another doctor in his practice. My ride shows up to take me to the appointment, and even she suggests we skip it and go directly to the ER instead. At this point, however, I’ve created this narrative in my head that says “If you go to the ER, it will be an emergency. If you go to the doctor, it will be no big deal.” I even reaffirm my decision when we reach the point in the journey where we could still peel off and go straight to the ER.

Well, we know how that played out. The PCP listened to what I had to say, and immediately knew she was out of her depth and I should go to, not just the ER in general, but the ER at Johns Hopkins, since I’ve been working with them and my files are all integrated. So my patient driver and I hop back in the car and reverse our trip to JHER.

It is quickly realized that I do not have a liver problem, but whatever is ailing me is fucking serious. I get admitted fairly quickly, even though it takes hours upon hours to get a bed. I start to feel much more ill as they park me in a tiny waiting room (which they now swear is a “staging area”) for two hours with no supervision, no one checking in to see how I’m doing, and a gaggle of very angry sick people who have also be relegated to this purgatory. Finally, Rave and I make enough of a stink combined that they move me back into the ER proper but we have to continue waiting for a “real bed”.

We learn that the new fluid collection has grown larger. It now has a “skin”, a membrane that holds it all together, which makes it really difficult to kill with antibiotics alone. They take cultures and try to determine exactly what is in there and what way is best to treat it. I end up losing the fight over getting a PICC line or central line when they start running Vancomyacin through my veins, and I blow three or four veins that first night alone.

The next few days are kinda blurry for me. See, at the same time, I started suffering from very short bouts of amnesia. I would forget where I was, or what I was doing at Johns Hopkins (I kept thinking I was back in High School). I got a neuro consult and although they’re testing just to make sure I didn’t have a mini stroke or temporal lobe seizures or anything like that, they think it might be a side effect of long term use of narcotic pain meds. I don’t know if I agree, but I do admire them for at least making an effort to make sure it’s not something more serious. They chided me a bit for not chasing the neuro stuff more aggressively (like going to get all the test my neuro ordered or going to see him more often) and I explained that I have been putting out fires since August and am doing my best.

Anyway, now you know enough of the backstory to get to the point.

Here is the TL:DR Bookmark

The Infectious Disease Doctors, The Plastic Surgeons, and The General Surgeons all agree.
The reason I am getting these infected abscesses in my abdomen is because of the mesh that was used during my ventral hernia repair back in 2009. Yes, that was Dr. WLS’s doing.
They used mesh to hold up and strengthen my abdominal wall, and in the process the mesh grew a “biofilm”, basically, a wonderful fertilized area for bacterial infections to grow and flourish.

Option One: “The Big Deal”

I will continue to have these infections while I still have the mesh inside of me. Removing the mesh, however, would be a big deal surgery wise. The mesh is covered in adhesions, and may very well be attached to my intestines, and it was put there for a reason. So this surgery, which I’ve nicknamed The Big Deal, would be a team of surgeons going in, finding said mesh (it doesn’t image well on CT or Xray), carefully removing all the adhesions, removing it from my bowels (which could get complicated very quickly, and include such favorites as “Bowl Resection”).

The surgeons are giving me all the exact same doom and gloom songs that they did about the surgery in December; that I will definitely be in the hospital for close to a month if not longer, that there is a really good chance I won’t make it through the surgery (especially now that I had a hiccup in the Dec one), and it will be a very long and difficult recovery with lots of creative agony and embarrassment. But this time, none of the surgeons want to do this surgery. They all feel this is something we should wait, and plan, and know the area super well beforehand, for the reasons we all know and have discussed.

The only way The Big Deal would happen during this hospitalization is if I spiked an abnormally high fever (like 104), or in some other way showed signs of advanced infection.

Option Two: “History Repeating”

My second option, which is still very much on the table for this hospitalization, is to address this specific abscess. That would entail having much the same surgery that I did in December; it would be much more superficial than The Big Deal, in that it would not entail cutting into the muscle wall or anything like that. It is still as dangerous as it was last time, but we also know that I did very well with the surgery itself and healed fairly well.

Option Three: “No Cuts, Just Infinite Pills”

This is the option most of the doctors (but not all) are currently advocating for, depending on how the next few days go while I’m here. This course would be to put me on really strong “nuclear bomb” home antibiotics, either via a PICC line or oral meds, for six to twelve weeks. After that, I would be given a permanent prescription for whatever antibiotic they feel will fend off more infections in the abdomen. I would still have the mesh, and that would still be fertile soil for growing infections, but the antibiotic would hopefully keep the infections from becoming anything to write home about.

Before you get all excited that there’s a non-surgical option, there are some big drawbacks to both being on a nuclear bomb level antibiotic for six to twelve weeks, and there are some bigger drawbacks to being on a permanent antibiotic prescription. Now, I’m saying “permanent”, but that makes the assumption that we never decide to try to correct the problem surgically.

Now, this makes it sound like I have a decision to make, right? Not really. I need to be informed about each of the options, and have a general understanding of how I feel about them and how seriously I want to pursue them. But how things like this usually play out is that the doctors will look at all the test results and data and make the best decision based on their knowledge and experience, and then recommend that choice heavily to me. It doesn’t mean I couldn’t chose to advocate the fuck out of a different choice if I really wanted it (like in Dec, when Dr Sacks kept suggesting reasons why we’d postpone the surgery another six weeks), but I’m the type of guy who trusts but verifies.

If we lived in a world where I could make a free and conscious choice, I would probably choose History Repeating for the right now, and then spend the summer preparing for The Big Deal. I’ve already reached out to Dr. Awesome and asked her if she might be willing to look at my current records and give me a consult over what she thinks is the best choice; but I did this with the covert agenda of asking her to be my surgeon for the Big Deal. Dr. Sacks would handle History Repeating, but I know from past discussions that he would feel uncomfortable doing The Big Deal all by himself. He and Dr. Awesome have worked together in the OR before, so it’s possible to get them to team up for The Big Deal.

Right now, they’re still trying to get a very accurate understanding of what types of infection I have growing in my abdomen, and also digging up information about the mesh that was installed – when, what type, where, etc. If I had to take a wild guess as to how much longer I am going to be here, I’d say at the minimum three more days, at reasonable maximum (barring surgery) I’d say a week or a week plus a day or two. If History Repeats, I would bump that up to two to three weeks.

Make sure to drop by!

Hopkins comes into Byrd Stadium before 10,000 fans and knocks off Maryland 7-4.  Game played on April 13, 2013.

Someone asked Johns Hopkins men’s lacrosse coach Dave Pietramala in the post-game press conference if Saturday’s 7-4 win against rival Maryland was the turning point of the season. History, and how the 2013 season plays out will determine the exact answer of that question, but the Blue Jays certainly gave themselves new life after a hard-fought victory in the 110th renewal of lacrosse’s greatest rivalry.
In a game the Blue Jays (7-4) never trailed, they never quite put away either and it wasn’t until junior Brandon Benn buried his only goal of the game with 2:18 remaining did the win seem secure. For 58 minutes before that, the tension of a playoff game filled Byrd Stadium and it was the Blue Jay seniors and defense that provided the difference.
Senior goalie Pierce Bassett made the first of his 12 saves just over five minutes into the game and quickly sprung senior midfielder John Ranagan, who took his outlet pass 25 yards from the goal and sprinted into the attack zone, where no slide came and he buried an eight-yard shot to give the Blue Jays an early 1-0 lead. The assist was the first of Bassett’s career.
Ranagan pushed the lead to 2-0 four minutes later when he blew a left-handed laser just inside the far post on an ally dodge, only to have Maryland slice the two-goal deficit in half two minutes later when Mike Chanenchuk found Owen Blye alone on the wing and Blye beat Bassett from seven yards out to make it 2-1.
The momentum took quick turns in the final three minutes of the first quarter as Johns Hopkins senior attackman John Kaestner – filling in for an injured Zach Palmer – scored the first of his two goals just 44 seconds after Blye’s strike, but Chanenchuk scored from in tight on a nifty feed from Kevin Cooper with just 98 seconds left in the first quarter to account for a 3-2 Hopkins lead at the end of one quarter.
While the combined 20-goal pace may have been what the more than 10,000 fans in attendance wanted, Bassett and his counterpart, junior NIko Amato, had other ideas and spent the next 45 minutes going save-for-save.

I come into the ER thinking I had liver toxicity, and it turns out that I have another serious infected pocket of tissue, and yet I am supposed to somehow be relieved by this news.

Then I find out that this new pocket, although smaller than the one that was removed surgically in December, has a “skin membrane” and also has “air pockets”, both signs that it will likely have to be surgically removed rather than treated via antibiotics. Yet the fact that it’s smaller is somehow supposed to make me feel less worried.

The fact that this time, they put a drain in and practically nothing is coming out, whereas the last few times it was so productive they had to use two or three bags at the moment of insertion to contain all the output, is supposed to be reassuring. Even when the nurses keep saying, “This probably means it’s not in the right spot.”

I almost never manifest a fever or other stereotypical signs of infection until it’s at “going to kill you if you don’t get to an ER” level of infection. Yet, the fact that I don’t have these stereotypical signs is supposed to make me feel good. In addition, since nausea is not a typical sign of infection (and yet every time I get an infection my nausea gets markedly worse), I shouldn’t be worried about my inability to eat (yay weight loss, says the nurse) or that the nausea is so strong I scared my nurse into giving me a EKG because of my symptoms.

Even though I’ve already blown three veins, when I start to feel the signs that the antibiotic they won’t be sure I need until Monday is burning through my IV line, I should sit tight and suffer until the line actually blows, because it’s really important. If I ask the doctor to wait to give me the antibiotic that burns my veins out until they can use a PICC line to infuse it, I am going against medical advice. (Yes, for asking.) I am being irrational about blowing out my veins, because using a caustic med before we know if it will actually treat me is rational.

When my pain quality and location changes drastically in the span of two hours, getting bad enough to wake me up after less than a hour’s consecutive sleep in four days, I’m supposed to be reassured that since none of my vitals changed, that everything is totally okay. I don’t know about you, but knowing something got much worse and there’s no apparent reason, scares me way worse.

I don’t know. I used to love Johns Hopkins, but now it’s just turning into another shitty hospital with nurses who don’t give a shit and doctors who hate you because you’re on pain meds. It’s another ER where I get shunted from room to room for 36 hours. I’m expecting Dr WLS to walk through the door any moment now.

And this hospitalization came at a really fucking terrible moment in my personal life. Yes, including the time I was hospitalized two weeks after my husband dumped me. I really needed, psychologically among other reasons, to have a few weeks where my health was not center fucking stage. I needed to spoons to have some big conversations, and instead the things I could have fixed three days ago are starting to fall apart. I’m losing my ability to be rational and objective, and just want people to stop being stupid jackasses, rather than have to spend an hour finding a nice way of saying, “Cut out your stupid selfish behavior you twat”. I need to get the work I’m doing, done. I need to be have the ability to answer emails. I was ready for this shit in December, but not now.

Things really, really suck. A lot. I am very depressed, and very disheartened. You may see me or talk to me and I’m all smiles and jokes, but inside I feel like I did all this fighting for a life that sucks, that I tried to save something that will just continually disappoint me. In a fucked up way, I feel the same way about my life as I did about my marriage in those two weeks before my STBX dumped me; like staying and fighting is the only decision I’m allowedto make, because of what I believe, but my intuition says RUN RUN RUN.

I don’t get it. I could probably handle this if it was something different, new, interesting. Hearing that I may have the same problem over and over again over the next few years is not comforting in the least.

Oh, and PS? They’re talking about more surgery. Possibly in the next few months.

Don’t panic, my ass.

Rochelle Ritchie explains people are not surprised by the tragic accident.

Mountain Road is highly traveled and many say it’s a road known for problems.

Debris remains on the side of Mountain Road where two teenagers were hit while walking late Friday night.

“It’s really dangerous. We’ve had a couple of people getting hit from our school at Chesapeake,” said Savannah Reynolds.

Anne Arundel County Police say three teenagers were walking not too far from one of the victims’ home. Two of them, a 15-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl, were hit by a large SUV at the corner of Alvin Road.

[worldnow id=8773048 width=385 height=288 type=video]

“I heard a big bang and I thought someone was trying to get in my garage or the basement,” said one neighbor.

The teens suffered serious injuries. The boy was taken to Shock Trauma; the girl was taken to Johns Hopkins.

By the time police arrived to the scene, the drier had already taken off. Suspect vehicle investigators say a Ford Expedition struck the teens. The vehicle should have damage to the passenger side headlight and turn light.

Those who grew up in the area were taught early on this is not a pedestrian-friendly road.

“We were kind of preached at not to do that,” said Jason Jackson.

Accidents along Mountain Road are a common occurrence according to nearby business owners, who say speed is also a factor.

“They drive way too fast. They just don’t realize it. They just fly by here at 60, 70 miles per hour,” said business owner Cynthia Zwobot.

If you have any information, please call police.

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There is a book out called, Reducing Gun Violence in America: Informing Policy with Evidence and Analysis by Daniel W. Webster and Jon S. Vernick.  It came about through a symposium at the Center for Gun Policy and Research at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.  It begins with a startling statistic.  ”On January 21, 2013, President Obama took the oath of office for his second term.  Unless we take action, during those four years some 48,000 Americans will be killed with guns.”

The authors explain their motivation thusly:

One month—to the hour—after the harrowing and unfathomable massacre of 20 children and 6 adults in a Newtown, Connecticut, elementary school, Johns Hopkins University convened a summit that brought together preeminent researchers on gun violence from across the country and around the world. This was a moment when advocates, lobbyists, and politicians on both sides of the gun-control debate were beginning to mobilize and spar. In this unruly mix, Johns Hopkins seized the opportunity to discharge a critical role of research universities and provided principled scaffolding for the debate. We wanted to use the opportunity to cut through the din of the shrill and the incendiary, the rancorous and the baseless, and provide rigorous, research-based considerations of the most effective gun regulations and the appropriate balance between individual rights and civic obligation. 

So what did they find out?  Turns out, quite a lot.  They consulted the best research on the subject, compared what worked and what didn’t work in past policy.   It’s quite good.  I think a lot of people will be surprised that their recommendations are not already in place.  Most people don’t know that even if you have a restraining order against you, in some states you can not only keep the guns you have, but you can buy more.  If you’ve been convicted of stalking, you can buy a gun under current law in many states.  This is what we mean by COMMON SENSE GUN LAWS.  It’s unimaginable to me that our legislators are struggling with the idea of background checks for all gun sales.  They’re not even bothering with private sales – which means that I can buy any number of guns, and sell them privately to whomever I choose whether they be a gang member, terrorist, or depressed housewife, with no check whatsoever.  That doesn’t make sense.  I recommend you pick up a copy, but I have provided here the recommendations they put forth that are, “the most likely to reduce gun violence in the United States.”

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]]> http://winluckshayo.com/2013/04/10/free-online-road-safety-course-from-johns-hopkins-international/ Tue, 09 Apr 2013 22:15:59 +0000 winluckshayo http://winluckshayo.com/2013/04/10/free-online-road-safety-course-from-johns-hopkins-international/ For access to the free online course from Johns Hopkins click here

All interested please give it a try and contact me after you receive your certificates!

All the best!

Weighing in on the matter, and explaining why she has personally prescribed the allergy drop therapy to her clients for years, AIM’s founding Naturopathic Physician Dr. Brooke Azie-Rentz writes,

“At AIM, we have been using a company called Allergy Easy (www.allergyeasy.com) to provide sub-lingual allergen therapy. The product treats 60 of the most common Pacific Northwest allergies through a desensitization process involving homeopathic dilutions of these antigens. The results are stunning to say the least. Most people will experience a 50-90% resolution of symptoms after the 3 month program. Some patients may need to do it one time per year, others need to do a maintenance dropper only at the start of the allergy season, some people do 1 drop daily to weekly. Basically, everyone is treated as an individual at AIM, and so is their treatment protocol. The ease of this treatment makes it doable for even children, due to no shots being involved and no daily medication beyond the initial series. This article just further illustrates the benefit of sub-lingual allergy drops through clinical studies. Here at AIM, we are always looking for the science to back up what we are already seeing work for our clients! Here’s to your health this allergy season.“

If the onset of spring has found you sniffling and sneezing, please give us a call today. Using the best available alternative and traditional therapies, we are here to help.

Elaine Tuttle

I have had the privilege of working for the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth program for 7 years and have never been more amazed by the level of brilliance and ingenuity amongst America’s Youth.  In her piece at the Chronicle of Higher Ed, their Executive Director, Elaine Tuttle Hansen, highlights the fact that it is not only America’s low achieving students that are struggling to acquire core skills necessary for success in college, but our top students as well.

She notes that: “What’s changed is that today, college readiness is more often a hot topic for educators and policy makers focused on at-risk students.” This focus, for laudable reasons, on at risk children has largely left gifted and advanced students out in the cold. This is especially problematic for bright children in disadvantaged homes.

“…the focus on low­-achieving students in public schools has disproportionately left more smart minority and low-income kids behind, creating a well-documented ‘excellence gap.’”

Elaine highlights programs, like CTY, help to engage and promote gifted youngsters  thus giving them a leg up when it comes to college life.

“Take David, a college student I heard from recently, who loved the summer program he took at the Center for Talented Youth a few years ago. But it wasn’t enough to save him from being so bored in school that he “coasted” through elementary, middle, and high school and his first two years of college. ‘By the time I found academic work that challenged me, … I realized my work ethic and study skills were atrocious, in large part, I believe, because I had never been forced to use them,’ he said. ‘I would like to know the person I would have become had I been engaged as a young learner.’”

Unfortunately, gifted summer programs (even those with generous outreach and scholarship programs) remain out of reach for many underprivileged children. To read Elaine’s argument, see her article in the Higher Ed Chronicle as well as her interview on NPR’s “Tell Me More”.

I hope everyone got a chance to read my broad introduction to Social Media and its implication for businesses going forward. For everyone who has a social media account…. how exactly do companies use social media to communicate with it’s consumers? The most obvious would be that most companies in this day and age have some sort of social media presence, whether it’s a Facebook fan page or a twitter account. Using those platforms, companies post daily on new product launches, consumer opinion, discounts etc.… This social media interaction stands at the very basic levels of how businesses can disseminate information to end-users and expand their marketing reach.

There are, however, companies and digital media agencies that have transcended this approach and a great example of this is this article on the latest Fast and Furious movie that will launch this summer: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/18/business/fast-furious-6-focuses-on-its-online-following-for-promotion.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

The article touches on the massive Fast and Furious franchise that lacks the cache of the new age CGI dominated movies like Transformers and Spider Man but has nonetheless nurtured a massive cult following. The latest installment is due to launch on Memorial Day this year, the official launching pad to the financially lucrative movie-going summer season, and the studio behind the movie, Universal, has managed to win the marketing battle for the hottest upcoming movie this summer. The movie has over 24 million likes on its Facebook page alone and it has managed to do so “because it has spent years working to make fans feel a sense of ownership in the series.” Its marketing pitch is focused on consumer engagement, and rather than sending out marketing blasts, they’ve listened and actively engaged their consumers and thus been rewarded with an eager fan base that is sure to make the newest Fast and Furious movie a winner this summer. I highly encourage you all to take a look at the article and get a glimpse into how businesses can better communicate with its consumers.

While the potential to engage consumers, and ultimately the company bottom line, is huge, companies need to be aware that there are certain things to be mindful of when using social media. The following Forbes article touches on some of what-not-to do’s: http://www.forbes.com/sites/capitalonespark/2012/12/20/9-things-businesses-shouldnt-do-on-social-media/

While some of the advise in the article may seem obvious, you would be surprised at some of the mistakes that have happened in the past. Take for example what happened when McDonalds tried to engage its consumers through what is known as a promoted trend on Twitter (i.e. company pays to have a hash tag of their choosing trend worldwide). The company failed to realize that it has little control of what happens after the fact, and rather than great stories that would improve the McDonald’s brand many twitter users decided instead to talk about some of their worst experiences at the fast food chain using the promoted hash tag #mcdstories. Another example would be when the American Rifleman, an NRA publication, decided to post the following tweet as the Aurora shootings were unfolding to the eyes of the nation: “Good morning, shooters. Happy Friday! Weekend Plans?” Now by all indications the tweet seemed to have been planned ahead of time but it just goes to show the bad PR that can come out of a company mishandling the social media tools it has its fingertips. For a summary of the worst social media mishaps over the past year, check out this article on Mashable.com: http://mashable.com/2012/11/25/social-media-business-disasters-2012/?replytocom=18394283

While the internet can sometimes feel like a free for all when it comes to what businesses can get away with, there are still certain disclosures laws that companies need to abide by when posting or tweeting away. A good example of this came in December when the CEO and founder of Netflix, Reed Hastings, posted a note on his Facebook feed (which is publicly available) congratulating the company for going over 1 billion hours of video watched in a month. The Securities and Exchange Commission warned the company that this was potentially a violation of Regulation Fair Disclosure rules, which requires companies to publish relevant information to all investors at the same time. The SEC recently updated its rules stating that CEO’s can now feel free to use social media and post what they want so long as they disclose ahead of time what their social media strategy is. For more information on what happened and how these rules came about check out the following DealBook post: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/04/02/s-e-c-clears-social-media-for-corporate-announcements/

For those on the East Coast it’s finally Spring! I hope everyone enjoys this great weather I’ll be back soon to discuss social media’s impact on advertising!

The biggest hypocrite amongst all the Carson haters is Johns Hopkins. The Hopkins monolith does not tolerate bad press and it will do just about anything to avoid it or cover it up from within. It is not a shock that Hopkins has not tossed a life preserver toward the sinking Carson. When one takes a few steps back and looks at the bigger picture the institutional bias that trickles through Hopkins has been revealed by how they handled Dr. Carson compared to how they welcomed the so-called “Reverend” Jeremiah Wright. You did not know that Johns Hopkins invited Jeremiah Wright to speak within its sacred walls on February 16. 2013?

See the PDF flyer here.

“The Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute is hosting a panel discussion, Transforming Urban Communities: Building Equity and Equality, featuring Reverend Dr. Jeremiah Wright. The event will take place Saturday, February 16, 2013 from 12:30 pm to 3:00 pm in Sommer Auditorium, located in the Bloomberg School of Public Health. The discussion will include political, community, and Johns Hopkins leaders. The event is free but space is limited.

To RSVP visit http://www.urbanhealth.jhu.edu/events/Wright_form.html or call 443-287-2708. “

Wright was also the honored guest at the church where Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and former Mayor Kurt Schmoke belong.

So we have a city filled with all sorts of insane social ills and danger where a brain surgeon is destroyed by the media and the prevailing establishment institutions for his controversial comments while a so-called “Reverend” with a long history of controversial comments and sermons is welcomed, honored, and celebrated by Johns Hopkins and all sorts of political players. Is it any wonder why Baltimore is in the shape that it is in?  Don’t worry though it must be the right wingers’ fault even though this is a one party city.  If we bring up non-Democrats enough and blame them for everything I am sure this will solve everything. It has been working quite well for Baltimore since about 1968 or so.

I’m a first year Masters of Public Health and MBA student at Johns Hopkins University. For my public health degree, I’m concentrating in Epidemiology and Biostatistics, but I have also taken many health economics and management related courses as a result of my dual degree. So far my graduate academics have served to compliment my background in health communications. As an undergraduate at Boston University, I studied mass communications and international development.

Prior to graduate school, I was a health services consultant for an international public health management consulting firm. It was in this position that I really fell in love with the role that technology, in particular mobile devices and social media, can play in health communications. My work focused on social media campaigns to increase immunization rates, and numerous technical assistance and trainings to support emergency responders in using social media to communicate with citizens.

At Johns Hopkins, I’ve continued to explore this interest area through coursework, presentations, and competitions. Most recently, a team of five students and myself placed 2nd in a mobile app concept design competition. The objective was to design an app that empowered citizens in Manilla to organize and demand smoke free public spaces. I’m sure I’ll speak more about that competition in a futurepost.

Herein, I’ll write mostly about the role of information communication technology in public health, healthcare, and global development. The blog will start will a series on the use of mobile devices for healthcare.

I look forward to sharing what I’m learning with you, my readers, and I hope that you join the conversation by commenting on my posts.

-Arielle

My first day of school at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

St. Baldrick’s Foundation was shaving heads again to raise money for childhood cancer research.

The clipping took place during halftime of the Hopkins-Albany lacrosse game.

The goal was $10,000.

Excerpt:

The Student Government Association at Johns Hopkins University has denied a pro-life group official club status at the Baltimore school for fear the group will make students feel uncomfortable.

“They were denied status because the students on the student council felt being pro-life violates their harassment policy,” Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, told Fox News.

The SGA at Johns Hopkins voted March 12 to deny the group, called Voice for Life, the right to become an official student club. The vote was affirmed on March 24 by the SGA’s Senate, Fox News reports.

According to emails obtained by Fox News, members of the SGA compared the pro-life students to white supremacists, which Ms. Hawkins said was deeply offensive to the group’s black members.

“To compare pro-lifers with white supremacists — it’s unreal,” she told Fox News.

Another SGA member said that allowing pro-life demonstrations made her feel “personally violated, targeted and attacked at a place where we previously felt safe and free to live our lives.”

An SGA senator said: “We have the right to protect our students from things that are uncomfortable. Why should people have to defend their beliefs on their way to class?”

Voice for Life is searching for an attorney to help them fight the ban. SGA representatives did not return calls seeking comment, Fox News reports.

Now the secular leftists who run the universities like to think of themselves as tolerant, open-minded and diverse. But, actually, they are so intolerant that they cannot even bear to listen to any view other than their own view. What we need on university campuses is an Academic Bill of Rights that guarantees basic liberties to students and faculty who do not toe the leftist line. That would be real diversity, and it would encourage real critical thinking. The university feels that it is fine to make pro-life students uncomfortable, with the many pro-abortion groups on campus. But making pro-abortion students uncomfortable is unthinkable.

Reblogged from The Leader's Edge:

• 
• 

Registering for my final semester of classes at JHU, I made sure to accomplish one important goal: take classes that I will enjoy. Having completed my major and minor requirements, I rolled the dice and enrolled in Professor Leslie Kendrick’s Advertising and Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) course.

Beyond the ISIS description, I had no clue what the class would be about. 

Read more… 524 more words

According to Todd Starnes of FoxNews (http://goo.gl/Q2sOK), the SGA at JHU voted on March 12 to say no to a request by Voice for Life to be recognized as an “official student club.” In an effort to rationalize the rejection of a pro-life organization, one SGA member compared Voice for Life with “a white supremacist group at Towson University.”  Naturally, this association did not sit well with African-American members of Voice for Life.

While calling hateful names without cause is odious and egregious itself, almost as remarkable were some of the other reasons given by SGA senators for the censorship of the pro-life group. SGA senators defended their decision using what I call the Uncomfortable Defense.  In this defense, if certain words or ideas make a person feel uncomfortable, those words and ideas must be banned.  This defense is similar to the Offended Defense often used by legal groups like the ACLU to seek bans on religious ideas and symbols in the public square.  Both forms usually apply only to conservative religious or political speech, never to comparing pro-life groups to white supremacists.

Uncomfortable Dogma

According to Starnes, an SGA senator wrote in an email, “we have the right to protect our students from things that are uncomfortable. Why should people have to defend their beliefs on their way to class?’”

Beliefs are the very things that most university students are eager to defend.  Apparently, the SGA is afraid that JHU students have dogma rather than beliefs, and that their dogma, in this case “a point of view or tenet put forth as authoritative without adequate grounds,”[1] will crumble in the face of questioning and evidence, making them uncomfortable.

In his 1876 inaugural address as first president of JHU, Daniel Coit Gilman seemed to seek a generation of uncomfortable students.  “The object of the university is to develop character — to make men. It misses its aim if it produced learned pedants, or simple artisans, or cunning sophists, or pretentious practitioners. Its purport is not so much to impart knowledge to the pupils, as whet the appetite, exhibit methods, develop powers, strengthen judgment, and invigorate the intellectual and moral forces.” (http://bit.ly/yIbdXz)

Comfortable Free Speech?

Another SGA Senator wrote, “I understand people’s right to freedom of speech, but this is a private university, and as such, we have the right to protect our students from things that are uncomfortable.”

Translation: “Your free speech ends precisely where it begins to question or to contradict our cherished moral dogma, especially regarding abortion.  Our dogma cannot withstand evidence, arguments, or questions.  JHU students must be protected from these things.” When university student leaders are reduced to defending their decisions with the Uncomfortable Defense, their inability to defend their beliefs and ideas is on parade.  It is a sad day for JHU, for freedom of speech, and for comfortable university students everywhere.

My name is Michael Digafe and I started this blog to take a look at how social media has affected businesses and how this change has altered the way business are now interacting with their consumers. Why the interest? I’m a current Global MBA student at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School and my primary interest lies in marketing. As any marketing professional or student will tell you, the underlying essence of how companies and consumers interact has radically changed over the past decade or so since the advent of social media and understanding how to take advantage of this change is critical for businesses to thrive. 

Lets start by taking a look at some of the key player’s in the social media world and how they allow their users to interact with each other.

Facebook: With an estimated 750 million unique monthly users*, Facebook is easily the largest social media site in the world. Despite its lackluster IPO last year, the site is still growing and learning how to cultivate the large reams of data at its disposal.

Twitter: Largely known for it’s ubiquitous 140 character “tweets”, the site draws an estimated 250 million unique monthly users and has transformed the way celebrities and companies communicate with the masses.

Linkedin: The largest social networking site for professionals, Linkedin draws in an estimated 110 unique monthly users. As an MBA student, I can’t tell you how invaluable this site has been in making connections and expanding my professional network.

Pinterest: The latest darling in the social media world, the site has rapidly grown to the point where it already draws an estimated 85 million users every month. Since it’s launch in 2010, the site has popularized theme based image collections by allowing it’s user to create their collections based on common interests.

Google Plus: Google’s attempt to combat Facebook’s dominance in social media has somewhat allowed the company to gain a social foothold with its consumers.  Despite a built in user base that has allowed it to gain 500 million members, users have largely shied away from actively using the site and it has struggled to engage the users with advertisers.

* All statistics taken from eBizMBA

So what do all these sites have in common? All rely on providing users a free product that allows them to interact in different ways, be it pictures, posts or resumes. By providing this free platform for the users to network, social media sites hope to cultivate massive amounts of data that can allow them to learn more about each user and in turn specifically target them with certain marketing efforts. In effect, the business model aims to replicate what search engines do by learning more about their end users but on a much more personal level.

While there is a certain amount of trepidation about the amount of information that these search engines have managed to learn about their users, it’s important to note the important trade off that consumers make with social media sites. Consumers knowingly sign up for these free services with the understanding that their data is being collected with what will eventually amount to targeted advertising. This aspect of the business has yet to be fully understood and Wall Street has started to slowly pressure the larger of these companies to start showing a more tangible end product from the information that they are sitting on. In addition, social media companies have certain safeguards in place for this data but there has been much debate about how this data is being guarded. While these issues have started to chisel away at the initial luster these group of companies generated, social media has undoubtedly has changed the way companies are communicating with their consumers and in upcoming blog posts I’ll talk about how marketing efforts have changed as a result of social media. In particular, I’ll look into how companies gather the “big data” to specifically focus on consumers and whether that information is actually secure. We’ll also explore whether the business model is sound enough to generate the expected returns or if it will need to be altered, specifically by looking into the different ways social media companies have started to introduce secondary income streams.