Sad to say, I've not had the bicycle out since Sunday morning. A combination of parental schedules, the Tour de France, rush hour traffic, and a heat wave have conspired to keep me indoors for most of this week. Now, this year's Tour de France has been about as predictable as an adolescent Type 1 girl's blood glucose levels are around menarche -- many favorites crashed out early; the second and third race leaders hung onto their leads far longer (and through more difficult terrain) than expected; expected attacks were never launched (while others were launched at unexpected times), and the French press has been having a field day (or ten) with the first potential French winner in more years than they'd care to count.
So much for "why watch, when I could be doing?".
Meanwhile, The Other Half's mother has been recovering from a freak accident, requiring daily visits from a wound-care nurse. Ever curious, on Monday, I asked the nurse about the software she was using to look over MIL's chart and how the Phillips TeleStation system the healthcare provider uses interfaces with everything. I mentioned that one of the reasons for my interest was an ongoing discussion on personal health records and medical-device integration. From what I've gathered so far, the Phillips system gives the HCP the data, not you -- but it gathers blood pressure, weight, blood glucose, blood oxygen levels, and/or EKG data into a single patient chart. Putting that all together and in our hands is one of the goals of the e-patient movement. [It appears that Microsoft Health Vault already includes a lot of this functionality, but the list of supported devices is still limited.] From there, the conversation moved on to the reasons for my interest (no, I'm not a healthcare professional, I'm a patient activist and peer advocate -- neither of which are medical professions) and the diabetes online community.
Before she left, I gave the nurse my card with links to a few of our health-related Twitter chats to give her an idea of what has been going on from the patient side of the equation, as well as resources to pass on -- particularly to diabetes patients, but to other patient communities as well.
Between Sunday and Tuesday, MIL said the nurse had mentioned a possible need for compression hose, and expressed some concern over the cost. I've been wearing compression hose since some adverse reactions to diuretics shortly after my diagnosis. I buy my hose on the Internet directly from the manufacturer. Not only do I pay about half the price I would in the store, but I have a much wider selection of styles (and I really hate both the surgical-weight hose and those "sheers" that look like the hose my great-grandmother used to wear). The topic came up again Tuesday, and while the nurse wrote down some options for MIL to ask her doctor about, I was able to pass on the link to my source. More business for them, lower entry barriers for patients who need the hose, everybody wins.
Bottom line is, you never know when you'll have the opportunity to learn something, to share something, or to pass along something to help others down the road. It's what makes the human network... human.
