We hear it over and over again: delays in seeking medical treatment are responsible for huge numbers of preventable deaths each year. Sometimes the delays are financial: not having the money to pay the doctor, buy the medication, schedule the procedure. Sometimes they are logistical: unable to get time off work, car isn't working (or a driver isn't available), or there isn't an available doctor or treatment facility space within the necessary timeframe. Then there are the diagnostic delays -- often because life-threatening medical conditions don't show symptoms until they reach emergency status, but sometimes because the condition is difficult for one's healthcare team to diagnose.

In this case, though, the expression is idiomatic, and the cause, meteorological. At least, that's what I'm going with.

  (READ MORE)

My fellow blogger Nicole Purcell, wrote an amazing entry the other day called, How Do Our Bodies Do It? She captivates very brilliantly what it is like to experience a severe late night episode of hypoglycemia. Some of us, fortunately, have never had an experience quite like the one she describes. Others are all too familiar with them. Speaking for myself, I am one of the fortunate ones, who has only been dangerously low a handful of times. I have never been injected with a glucagon shot and I've never really lost consciousness due to a low. But still, I could definitely relate to her experience because I can recall the episodes where I was just so unbelievably out of it. But her post got me thinking of the time when I was a camp counselor at a children's diabetic camp.
(READ MORE)