I’ve completed Day 16 of 26 for my pledge to walk daily in support of the Boston Marathon victims using the Charity Miles app on my phone.

For the next two weeks, Lifeway is not only sponsoring regular Charity Miles donations to the charities we choose to walk, run & bike for they are also paying an additional 25 cents per mile to The One Fund as part of #BostonStrong10K.

During MLA there are a group of runners organized by Bart Ragon & Montie’ Dobbins at MLA Runs4Boston and I piped up and asked if speedwalkers would be welcome because I just can’t pull off running even at a really slow pace.

If you’re like me and want to be with other walkers, come join in! The times the group will leave from the front doors of the Sheraton are

Fri        6:30pm
Sat        6:00am (this will kill me but I’m going to drag my jetlagged Seattle self out the door and DO IT)
Sun       3:30pm
Mon      2:00pm
Tues     4:00pm

If all of us with smartphones used Charity Miles, think of the additional impact we’ll have raising money for The One Fund for free. I’ll have Charity Miles running even when I’m just strolling along seeing the sights of Boston too – every step counts!

Let’s just say I know for a fact that being Local Assistance Committee (LAC) Co-Chair is hard work, especially in the last few weeks ramping up to the meeting coming to town. It is so exciting, to be certain, but you want to make sure everything goes well for people to have a great time while they’re hanging out at your place.

Now, level that up that intensity by… oh, let’s say a thousand for a dangerous situation happening in the neighborhood 2 weeks before MLA.

Moved to tears by Sarah McCord, MLA 2013 LAC Co-Chair for Boston at about 1:37 in

WHDH-TV 7News Boston

This is what Watertown is, and what Boston is. There’s always more helpers than haters. I love this city, I love this town, and this is what it is. This is why no one can break our spirit.

So glad you’re safe and sleeping well tonight, Coug.

It’s a beautiful Spring Break vacation week for our family. Yesterday we played miniature golf and haven’t laughed so hard chasing each other around with bumper cars for a long time, completely unaware of what was happening in Boston.

The Medical Library Association (MLA) sent a message out in less than 24 hours that needs to be heard by everyone about our upcoming meeting in Boston, and keep an eye on the official meeting blog for updates.

Update on One Health

We want to let MLA members and other colleagues from around the world who will be participating in the “One Health: Information in an Interdependent World” meeting in Boston that our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of the Boston Marathon tragedy and their families and friends. We also express our support and concern for our members, colleagues, and others who live and work in the area and thank those who have communicated with us.

MLA is in contact with the meeting hotels who have reported that they are open and are providing help as needed. The John B. Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention Center is also open. We anticipate no changes with regard to the “One Health” meeting, other than increased security. Members and staff are looking forward to welcoming attendees to the meeting next month and supporting the city of Boston during this difficult time. We will continue to update members and attendees as needed. Please contact us with any questions or concerns.

Yesterday, instead of sitting and watching the news on repeat, I headed out the door for a walk. I made a commitment to walk for 26 days in honor of the Boston Marathon victims for Charity Miles supporting Achilles International. That will include those long Seattle to Boston travel days and each day of the meeting.  If you’re out walking, running or cycling during our time in Boston and have a smartphone I encourage you to consider doing the same – think of the positive impact this could have not only for your health, but if hundreds of us did as One Voice of support for injured athletes.

“For our own sanity, we needed to create a new way to look at this stuff,” said Peter Speyer.

These are two different stories, but since both crossed my path yesterday my brain merged them together and I had to share.

Peter Speyer, of course, was referring to the impressive array of global health visualization tools the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) has developed and launched. My colleague Mahria wrote over in the work blog with some tips on a few of them to check out, and I love the twist covered over on Humanosphere about how the Netflix algorithm was tapped regarding death modeling. If you’re not familiar with that term, it’s probably not what you think. What I do wonder is where Humanosphere was originally going with this article and title when the URL includes ‘or-how-netflix-and-burger’ Tell us more about the burgers, there’s no trace of them in the article now…

In other news, over on PBS Newshour there is a great story about ICD-1o coding, which I didn’t think could be full of fun and excitement until they lured me in with turtle injury codes. I also believe it is possible to incur Y93D1 & Y92253 simultaneously,  but you know what is going to be a real problem for the library and information field in the future?

Differentiating between work-related and non-work related knitting injuries at conferences.

No, really, I’m not making this up per the ICD-10-CM Diagnosis Codes. These work/non-work classifications also apply to running, jogging, walking, skating, golf, bowling, biking, football and a plethora of other sports – but not Y93.18 (Surfing, windsurfing and boogie boarding.)

I have confidence my colleagues will find a way to make it Y83.18×2.

America to Moon: We Surrender on Flickr by methodshop.com

I’ll be honest: January sucked. My husband and I were in accidents involving both our cars within 60 hours, neither of us injured and neither our fault, but the number of phone calls with their insurance companies and our insurance company (who was rather confused when we called in the new claim so soon) and time spent in auto shops to fix everything was epic. The day after all vehicles were repaired and the voice mails referencing claim numbers ceased, our son was home sick from school for three days then UberSnot made the rounds through the rest of the house.

So now it’s February… and our family received truly life-changing news over the weekend. Not a c-bomb or health diagnosis, and not anything negative for that matter, but it requires even more phone calls with bonus emails, appointments and a decision to be made by next month. Oh, and as much research as I can cram in each night when things settle down.

Combining that with the job that pays me for a living and every institutional, state, regional and national professional board, liaison, committee member and various iterations of how I am one of the Responsible People Doing Things all planning events and needing things from me between now and March, something had to give and this blog is it for now. I have been feeling  guilty that I haven’t been writing more but you know what? I’m barely making it through the days with my sanity intact as it is, so enough of that. When I gave a dear colleague a brief overview of the events going on next month, I received a reply of ALSO YOUR MARCH SOUNDS HELLISH. It is. I’ve always been a fan of quality over quantity, but since I have neither for the foreseeable future I’ll be back when I have a decent amount of brainpower to spare.

The past few days my Presbyterian self has been surprised by my answers to questions at a website inspired by the traditional ten days of reflection that occur between the Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

Take time to slow down and ask, “What am I doing with my life?” Reflect at DoYou10Q.com

— 10Q (@10_Q) September 15, 2012

Go ahead and give it a try. In the hectic pace of helping others, we can easily lose sight of where we are going with our own lives. Your answers can be as short or as long as you want them to be, and locked away until this time next year when 10Q will email them to you and you can see how things have (or haven’t) changed.

I can’t think of any other place where the second question on a frequently asked questions page about an organization is Are you a cult? and I love their honesty for it.

While you’re at it during this National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, consider sipping some Callie’s Coffee that supports the Ben Towne Foundation until a cure is found. I’ve been a satisfied club member since July to help move our BUNN at work!

I have a confession to make.

The past three Thursday nights at 6pm Pacific/9 Eastern I have been totally terrified that no one would show up to participate in the Twitter #medlibs chat (medlibschat.blogspot.com), especially last night after the 4th of July and the East recovering from being whomped by that derecho.

Of course I was wrong. Medical librarians on Twitter are bright, insightful and energetic people and it’s high time I started sharing some survey results that reflect this. Currently I don’t have any brainpower left at the end of each work day for much in terms of  assessment, so I’m letting Wordle do the talking because it does so quite well for these two questions in particular.

Keeping in mind our first three chats have been about MLA 2012, eScience and a designated ’1st Thursday of the month free range’ that evolved into discussing new residents, iPads & an UpToDate vs. Dynamed showdown, I bring you the raw data tossed in Wordle for (click to enlarge for the small words that are squishy)…

Suggest Topics We Should Start With

What Outcomes Would You Like to See Come from a #medlibs Twitter Chat?

It’s happening! Another outcome is the desire to have others pitch in to moderate/arrange for things, which is still a process to figure out but I’ll be touching base with people who indicated they were interested in this over the weekend.

I initially tried Storify to spread the transcript into themes but that is very time consuming. I will go through and pull out websites shared to include an annotated list of them under the Transcripts for each chat though since I’ve noticed a trend of people favoriting those tweets to refer to later. Thank you so much for participating and I hope you’re finding them as fun as I am!

Let’s keep this to a Q&A format.

What? There’s a whooping cough epidemic in Washington?

Yes, there is.

Now can someone explain to me why Wisconsin, which has almost 2,000 diagnosed cases as of May 8th to our 1,284 as of May 5th (new number at this same link every Tuesday afternoon), has not declared a state epidemic nor is getting anywhere near the current national coverage as Washington is?

What do I need to know about pertussis in Washington?

The Public Health – Seattle & King County website has a great section about pertussis. Scroll all the way down for King County (which Seattle is in) specific epidemiology information.

The Washington Department of Health  updates this report http://www.doh.wa.gov/cfh/Immunize/documents/pertupdate.pdf with statistics every Tuesday afternoon. This report is also linked from the above King County link in the upper right hand corner.

Why haven’t I heard about this before social media and listserv posts on Monday the 14th?

I’ve tried. Repeatedly. Things really did escalate recently (see May 10th Seattle Times article) and I’ve contacted many people directly since then in addition to using the hashtag tweet. I’m just one person though.

For perspective and comparison, when American Library Association held its joint meeting with the Canadian Library Association in Toronto during the SARS outbreak in 2003 they released a FAQ dated May 2nd and the conference was being held June 19-25. Please note the severity of the situation (the World Health Organization is not involved here in Seattle) and the length of time they had to plan. There are no travel bans to Seattle.

What do I do now?

You’re a medical librarian or student interested in the health information field, right?

Right. Then you already know the importance of going to authoritative sources of health information such as CDC, speaking with your own healthcare provider about you and/or your family’s current immunization status and health situation(s), and staying calm while eating bacon while not contributing to panic, misinformation or a negative hype cycle. Major props to those who are staying focused on the facts.

But MLA is less than two weeks away and my best friend’s sister’s boyfriend’s brother’s girlfriend heard that Tdap doesn’t work by then…

Repeat the above  in What do I do now? Props if you get the movie quote without Googling.

The ‘two weeks’ timeframe is mentioned specifically for the time between receiving a Tdap vaccination and coming in close contact with infants per CDC. The CDC advice for travelers tab about pertussis has

Travelers should be up-to-date with recommended pertussis vaccinations before departure.

Not two weeks before departure. No excuses. Talk with your healthcare provider about your health information. Is that not what our profession encourages people to do every day?

I talked with my healthcare provider, who recommends Tdap for me now, but I have no time to get it before MLA

No problem! Were you planning on going to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation? How about EMP or the Space Needle? Stop by the pharmacy at the nicely remodeled QFC (part of the Kroger chain) nearby at 501 Mercer Street (5th & Mercer) for your Tdap in addition to a snack (check Yelp reviews).  The store is open 24 hours a day, but the pharmacy hours are M – F 9:00 am – 9:00 pm, Sat 9:00 am – 6:00 pm and Sun 10:00 am – 6:00 pm.