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BLOG: November, again!
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On Nov. 21, 2016, we launched this blog on Healio.com/Endocrinology. We mutually agreed to call the blog, “From the Doctor’s Bag.” On the occasion of the first anniversary of the blog, I wish to emphasize my gratitude to Healio.com/Endocrinology for giving me this opportunity.
In this post, as the blog enters its second year, I will share some thoughts about the month of November and talk about some of the many occasions that occur in the month. I will also refer to some selected posts from the blog.
The title of the blog came from two experiences: the first dates back to the late 1990s. I participated in a medical column titled, “The Doctor’s Bag,” that was published as a regular health educational series in the newspaper of Siketon, Missouri. This experience was covered in the post titled, “Whose bag is it?”
The second experience was the story of trying to find a doctor’s bag to use in this blog. After a brief search, I found an old leather doctor’s bag in our medical department. The bag dates back to the 1960s era when doctors made house calls. I did not know who the bag’s owner was, it only had the initials JFC. After extensive investigations, I still did not know the owner so I gave up. Six months later I incidentally discovered the owner. That story was detailed in the blog titled, “Whose bag is it? Part 2”
The first post of this blog was titled, “World Diabetes Day, the super moon and Yanni: What do they have in common?”
As the title implied, the post was about the many occasions that the month of November witnesses. Besides its dedication as National Diabetes Month, the month of November marks the principal hunting season in many parts of the country.
Other occasions in November include the Daylight Saving Time change and World Diabetes Day.
November 14th, besides being World Diabetes Day, is also Yanni’s birthday. As stated in the post, Yanni is my favorite musician. As a loyal fan of Yanni, I learned from his website that he donates to charity. I appealed to Yanni in my post to do something for the cause of fighting for diabetes. It has been my dream to work on hosting a Yanni concert at Michigan State University where a portion of the proceeds would go to a diabetes research fund, titled Yanni’s Award for Research in Diabetes.
Last November also witnessed the Super Moon phenomenon, a very rare astronomical occurrence, November 14, which coincided with World Diabetes Day and Yanni’s birthday. Nationally, last November witnessed the presidential election. This year, November continues to witness the same recurrent annual occasions.
At a personal level, November 15th is the birthday of my daughter Jinan, who would be 21 this month, whose story was featured in the post, “Code Status: DNR (Jinan’s Story).”
Jinan was born with a crippling congenital disorder, both physically and mentally, called Schizencephaly, of which there were about a dozen of case reports from around the world. Jinan lived in almost a vegetative state for a little over 4 months. In Jinan’s post I discussed the difficulty of being a doctor and the father of a child with a DNR code status at the time the child had a terminal acute illness.
Finally, I wish to end this post with this last reflection about the Month of November. This has to do with the daylight saving time fall change, which occurrs in the early morning of the first Sunday of November. During the daylight saving time change, I write a public reminder to patients with diabetes regarding adjusting insulin pump clocks as discussed in the most recent post about the daylight saving time change, “A reminder to insulin pump users – reset the clock for daylight saving time.”
Intriguingly, the State of Michigan’s legislature tried to get rid of the daylight saving time practice last year in a new bill jointly proposed by a democratic and republican legislators. A reporter at a local TV channel in Lansing, Michigan was enthusiastic about the proposed bill. In the story produced to cover the news, the reporter used an interview I had given prior to the TV Channel about the risks associated with the daylight saving time change. Specifically, I emphasized in the interview that if patients using insulin pumps forget to adjust the pump clocks, there may be a potential risk of insulin dosing errors. The bill was defeated.
Here is the funniest part about the daylight saving time change — a fresh personal experience: in the week following this fall’s change, I was working in the office in the afternoon. I had a scheduled meeting at 4 p.m. with a department staff candidate. The meeting began a couple of minutes before 4 p.m.; they at 4 p.m. sharp the air conditioner was shut off in my office as well as in our whole office building on campus.
I looked at my watched at asked the candidate about the time — it was 4 p.m. The air conditioner in our building is usually shut off at 5 p.m. and without the air conditioner in the office rooms the atmosphere becomes suffocating and humid. I asked myself, “why would they shut off the air conditioner now? I bet their clock is still on the summer daylight saving time setting. ”
The next morning I told my academic assistant, Jinie Shirey about the incident and asked her to call the department of infrastructure and parking facilities. Jinie agreed that the daylight saving time hypothesis made sense — the department engineer told her that the system clock was not updated for the time change. Then Jinie and I laughed about it and we reiterated the insulin pump clock issue, the fact that the daylight saving time ritual is disrupting and can post inconveniences in many ways.
In my mind it was reminiscent of the story of the Heathrow Airport shut down which I wrote a blog about titled, “Heathrow Airport, insulin pumps and daylight saving time — What do they have in common?”
The glitch occurred in December 2013 in the British air control system’s internal clock which failed to switch from the p.m. to a.m. setting. This trivial glitch resulted in a total shutdown of all air traffic in the United Kingdom’s skies as well as most European airports.
November is a special month. The last spectacular thing about November is the pretty natural piece of art — the leaves change color! But, one of the downsides about November is that it marks the beginning of the bitter cold season of winter in my part of the world!