Summer Brain!

This is where I wish I was RIGHT NOW!

Anyone else out there suffer from "Summer Brain"?

This is an affliction that hits me every summer. I get so excited and jazzed that I don't have to get three kids dressed and out the door every single day that I completely lose my mind.

I think, hey, it is summer, kids are out of school, who cares about going to bed on time, or making sure there are groceries in the house or making sure the kids hair is brushed.

Problem is, I am not on break. I still have a job, and I am never done being a parent, so the kids still have to be dressed and be fed, and occasionally brush their hair, which I am in charge of.

I was placed with a new student. He is a basic literacy student who had to quit high school and now wants to get his G.E.D. He needs help preparing for the test this fall. Right now however I am feeling so lethargic from the "Summer Brain", that I haven't even called him. I am fearing the onset of another responsibility that will remind me that I am not on a break.

Does "Summer Brain" happen to anyone else? Do you start to feel lazy and wish you were on vacation all the time? It is really embarrassing actually, I am an adult with three kids and bills and stuff, I shouldn't feel like going to the beach every day. Right?

A sunset at the beach, pure joy.

Anyway, I am admitting this to the world so that I don't hide from my "Summer Brain" any longer. Time for me to face the facts, life will pass me by if I just sit around with laziness. So here is to my recovery. Hopefully someone else will admit to their affliction as well and we can recover together!

Adventures with Kidney Stones

Or "Tales from the ER!"

So by the title of this post your first thought is, okay, since she has stopped tutoring she has REALLY lost her vision for the purpose of this blog. But stick with me, I have a purpose.

My husband was recently in the hospital for 3 days, intermittently, for kidney stones. I have never had them personally, but every time I told someone he had kidney stones, the person's face would get all squinchy (it's a word) and they would say "OH, I/My Spouse/My Aunt/My Grandma/My Hairdresser's Sister's Cousin, had those and that was the worst pain I/They ever experienced.

So I tried to understand the pain and be supportive while with Tom in the ER.

I really dislike hospitals. The smells, the sounds, the sick and sad people every where. And then there is the staff.

Now before you start in on me about how You or Someone You Love or Know works in a hospital and they are the nicest most caring person you know, I am totally aware that there are exceptions to the rule. I also have a mom and sister in law who are nurses, and many friends who are nurses, and my Aunt and Uncle are doctors. It doesn't mean I don't love THEM, it means I generally dislike the people in hospitals OTHER than them.

Anyway, the first time he was in the emergency room of our local hospital, Sunday evening, he had a really sweet nurse, who actually took the time to explain everything to us. But the doctor was the opposite of this. Dr. Mean Face (her face was scary) was about as warm and caring as a metal chair.

After Tom had been there for about 500 hours (I realize that is an exaggeration, sue me), had thrown up all over the bed from the pain, had a CAT scan, been given 3 different pain meds. that did not work, here comes Dr. Mean Face. She came in and said "I am sending you home and I am giving you prescriptions for these meds., drink lots of water and see a urologist."

My husband is on many many meds. already. He has seizures and needs meds. for that, and then he also has these weird hives and joint pain that we are working with an allergist for, so he is on 3 more meds. for that. So I said to the doctor "Can you please write down instructions for when and how he should take these." I figured this was a reasonable request, and wouldn't take much time, and wouldn't she want to make sure we knew all the information we needed?


Tom after brain surgery in 2005.

She looked at me like my face was on upside down, and had spoken in Klingon language, and said "The information will be on the prescription bottles." And she promptly walked away. Thanks, for that Dr. Mean Face. Luckily Nurse Sweety was nice enough to take the ONE minute it took to write it out for us.

Next time in the ER, Monday afternoon. The urologist, after hearing that Tom had been vomiting all night, totally writhing in pain, and incapable of keeping any of the pain meds., or any other meds. down, told us to go straight back to the ER. The Dr. said he would call ahead and make sure they knew he sent them. I felt a little better about this, and figured, hey maybe they will actually treat him this time. WRONG!

We get there, tell the NURSE, NURSE'S ASSISTANT, DOCTOR, NURSE PRACTITIONER, JANITOR, LADY IN THE HALL, everything that has been going on for the past 24 hours.

In comes Dr. Speedy (he talked about a mile a minute and saw Tom for about 2 minutes and then left for about 3 hours, so I am assuming he was on Speed). He asks what has been going on, feels Tom's stomach and back for one second and says, "It's a Kidney Stone."

I wanted to scream. Instead I said, "Yes we know this, we were here LAST NIGHT for this, but the Urologist sent us back because he has been vomiting and is still in great pain." Dr. Speedy looks at me like my face is on upside down when I also tell him that the Urologist wants this test done (KUB) and he would like you (Dr. Speedy) to call him (Urologist) and speak to him about it.

Dr Speedy says, with obvious contempt, "I don't know why he wants THAT test done, all it is is an X-Ray."

"Please call him (Urologist)." I say.

"Let me go call him." Dr. Speedy says as if he just came up with that idea.

After sitting in the ER for another 3 hours, which included being moved from an actual room in the ER, into the hallway, then back into another actual room, here comes Dr. Speedy again.

This is my favorite part of the whole day.

Dr Speedy says, "Did you have your CAT scan done here yesterday?"

"Yes, we were here in the ER why would we go somewhere else?" (I was obviously losing my patience with Dr. Speedy by this point.)

"Well I can't find the report in the system, would it be under another name?"

"Um no, he only has one name." (I look at Dr. Speedy like his face is on upside down this time.)

"Can you check again?" I say

"I can't pull up a report that isn't there." says Dr. Speedy

At this point I want to punch Dr. Speedy in the face but he walked away. He came back about 2 minutes later and hands the report to the Nurse Practitioner who is now taking Tom's entire life history back to when he fell off his bike in the third grade.

Dr. Speedy looks at ME and says, "The report was under just his name without the Jr."

Then he says with serious annoyance in his voice, "That is why I ASKED you if it would be under any other name."

What I said back to him at the time was, "Oh good."

What I wanted to say back to him was, "You flipping idiot, how many years of education does it take to have the common sense to know that if you can't find the report under the person's name and they have a Jr. at the end, MAYBE I should try looking it up WITHOUT the Jr."


Tom wearing a portable EEG machine in 2008.

Sigh...

So after spending the night in the hospital and not being able to eat, and possibly getting exposed to about 5 million other illnesses, Tom came home in pretty much the same condition. He is not in as much pain, and is able to keep food down, but honestly it was not because of anything the doctors did. From what I hear from Tom, he was pretty much left alone in the room the entire time with intermittent visits from Dr.'s and nurses saying "Everything looks fine you should be able to go home soon." Obviously the definition of soon means something entirely different to them.

Why am I telling you all of this? Well first because it is making me feel better to share this experience. But mostly because it made me think about the health literacy epidemic.

I call it an epidemic because it really is everywhere, and while there are few people working to make it better, the health care professionals and systems in general are pretty much ignorant.

When I asked our Dr. Mean Face if she could write down instructions for us about the meds., why did she treat us like that? Isn't the goal of doctoring to make people feel better, and doesn't that include making sure they understand their medications? What if my husband and I could not speak English. When I think about the implications of that, I literally get knots in my stomach.

When Dr. Speedy was "helping" us, was it really that difficult for him to treat us with just a little compassion? Was it necessary for him to have speak to us with annoyance and contempt?

The main thing I kept thinking while we were there is "what is that smell?" But also, "where is the disconnect?"

When did it become THE DOCTOR on this huge pedestal, and the patient, down here in this little hole? Or was it always that way and now there are some of us who are saying, "this is not acceptable."

Just because we did not go to med school, we have every right to know what is going on with our bodies and to expect that our questions about that will get answered with the same respect we show them.

Maybe I am generalizing too much, but I don't think I am, the statistics prove that most people do not know what their Dr. is saying to them, and even if they ask, what are the chances that the Dr. is going to answer them with any kind of respectful thoughtful answer. My fear is that those chances are slim.

Now like I said before, I know that not all Doctors and Nurses are like this. And I will say that most Nurses seem to really care and be concerned for their patients. Also most of us have health insurance and are lucky enough to pick and choose who we go to for help. But when you are suddenly hurt, and sick and afraid and you visit an ER, you don't have that luxury.

The CDC released a study in 2010 showing that about 46.3 million Americans do not have health insurance, that is about 15.4%. In my mind these people are at the greater disadvantage because they are sometimes forced to use only the Er's or Urgent Care Facilities. They are faced with over worked, over tired, doctors and nurses. And it is abundantly clear to me that they are severely understaffed.

I think more than ever we need to put an emphasis on the need for health literacy for anyone working in the health care arena. It should be a requirement.

Even more importantly we as patients need to stand our ground and not allow ourselves to be bullied. That never means it is ok to be mean, but maybe it means we can get a little bit angry, and a little bit loud, and make ourselves heard.

My husband and I are coming away from his experience with knowledge and understanding. We understand that doctors and nurses have a really hard job. We now know that in order to break through that barrier we have to be much more assertive.


Tom with a little home health aid.
(He obviously decided against the ER that day.)

Do you have any stories like this? Any thoughts on how to handle them? We all need to be our own best advocates!

The Power of Shame

Watch this video from the Children of the Code website video series.

From A to Z: Literacy Treasures

First up, we have a list of the TOP TEN teaching requirements, for GOOD teaching. From the U of Hawaii website, written by Richard LeBlanc. Check them out, I love lists!

This next story is about a really cool program started at the Adult Literacy League in Florida. "Read to Me" is the name of their project and it is all about family literacy. It really hits home because my kids go to a charter school in an urban area and so many of their classmates come from homes with NO books. The first time I learned that, I almost cried. I really wish we could start something like this program here in NJ. Click the pic to see the story.

D.C. Learns a literacy coalition in Washington DC has this very smart blog that I just recently started following. Check out this post about the difference between advocacy and lobbying.

Check out this study posted on the American Academy of Pediatrics Journal website. In short, a study was done determining the link between childhood literacy or language ability and several components of home and family situations, including education levels of their parents. Interesting, but really nothing we didn't already know.

In this article on Nurse.com there is a useful list of ideas for nurses working with low literate patients. Here is the list:

"Once literacy is assessed, nurses should tailor their oral and written communications to match the patient’s level of understanding. For patients with low literacy, Mullen suggests:

• Developing written materials below fifth grade reading levels.

• Keeping content and format simple, with shorter words and sentences.

• Using larger, boldface or underlined fonts, increasing space between lines and black ink.

• Having a magnifying glass and good lighting available for older adults.

• Ensuring patients have assistive devices, such as reading glasses and hearing aids.

• Involving a significant other or caregiver.

She also notes that nurses can refer patients to online resources for medical information and community programs that help improve health literacy levels."

and here is a link to the entire article.

Have you heard of this website: Patients like me? It seems like an easy tool for people to use to find information about their health and also to connect with people who have the same problems. Very simple questions are asked on the main page in order to join. It is only in English though.

This really funny clip from one of my favorite shows "The Big Bang Theory." A funny look at what happens when you don't get the pronunciation right.

And this really cool video of one women saying the same sentence in 21 different accents!

Blogging is (not) Easy!

A friend of mine, C, that I have know since HS is thinking about starting a BLOG.

C and I were in a writing class in HS together. I loved that class. I loved taking it with her, she was and is so smart and she taught me just as much as the teacher did. She went on to become a fabulous lawyer and now mother, we were able to reconnect through Facebook (Love It) and I love seeing her posts about her cute little daughter.

C asked me for some advice so I wrote up this really long reply which basically listed everything I have learned since I started blogging. They are things I wish someone had shared with me when I first started.

While I was writing I thought, "this would make a great post." So I am adapting it a bit to make it less personal, and am sharing it with all of you!

So anyway about blogging, there are a few blogs I follow that I get inspiration from for my blog, particularly with design, I will list them below.

Here are some things I have learned about the blogging world, these are just my perceptions based on my experience.

First, pick a name that is short and catchy and fun and totally relates to the topic!

When I first started blogging it was mostly one giant paragraph with no pictures. The more blogs I read, the more I realize how important it is to always have some visual eye candy in every post, i.e. pictures, drawings, links. Also it is so important to break up the post with lots of paragraph breaks and such.

Huge pet peeves of mine, and most serious bloggers, use spell check! Even the most seasoned writers out there make the worst mistakes with spelling and grammar usage. It is so annoying to readers because they will be really enjoying the post and then BAM! All they see is the mistake blaring at them.

Set a clear goal and objective for your blog. I have a really hard time with this because my blog is so specific, but it relates to so many areas of my life, because anything that takes time away from my family is personal time to me. But I try really hard to stay relevant to what my main goal is for writing the blog, which makes it easier to keep my posts from wandering.

Be warm and personal in your posts. Readers want you to be real and they will pick up on fluff really quickly, and not want to come back. You should decide before you start whether you want to remain anonymous in your blog or not. I personally prefer to not be anonymous because I feel I have nothing to hide, and I never say anything on my blog I wouldn’t say in person to someone. I use my kids’ full names, but I know some people who change their kids’ names in blog posts. I do keep other people anonymous, so when I mention my student or boss I use only their first initial. That way I don’t need to really get permission to use their name, although I never say anything bad about them. Here is a link to a post from one of my favorite bloggers (Four Eyes Rella) about this subject: Should your blog be anonymous or not.

Don’t get discouraged. I have been blogging for about 5 or 6 months now and I only have 10 followers and rarely get comments. When I first started I would check for comments like every 5 minutes (SHAME), but then I started to talk to myself about how that is so not why I started blogging. I really wanted to create an honest blog about what it is like to be an adult literacy tutor, and to share those feelings with the world. I had to remind myself that I did not do it to be accepted or validated. Don’t get me wrong, it feels great when people do comment, and I love to check the stats and see how many times it has been read, but I don’t allow the lack of comments to keep me from posting again and again.

Use pages. I don’t know what blogging tool you are using (I use blogger with google) but they all have a function where you can create “pages”. It makes it fun for the readers, and basically people love to click on things. I have a “blogroll” page, a “My favorite internet trips” page, a “My tutor bag” page and an “Adult Literacy Book list” page. You can look at other blogs to get some inspiration for that.

Post often. Especially in the beginning, because when people find you and start following you they want to see something new every time they come back.

Have fun! If you are enjoying yourself it will come through in your writing.

Okay here is a list of my favorite blogs and why:

Four Eyes Rella: - I stumbled on her blog from I don’t even know where. She lives in Canada and works at a tattoo parlor and has tattoos all over her body and has a really cool bull dog named Tank. She takes fabulous pictures and she does a post every Thursday called “Things I Love Thursday” that is so cool. She scours the internet and brings back all of the coolest things you could find and lists them for you. She is insightful and funny, and very real. I also love her blog design. I discovered great ways to share things from her posts, and I have also learned about blogging etiquette which is important.

Angelina La Dawn Tomato: - I don’t know where I found this blog either. She is a teacher with two cats that are hysterical, and she takes funny pictures, and she also creates the coolest crafts and artwork and such. She is also very real and funny.

Blogging is for Dorks: - I found this blog from Four Eyes Rella’s blog roll. She is a seriously great writer, very touching stuff. She has 5 kids and she writes about them in her posts and it is so funny and heartfelt and relatable. She also crochets which I love and has funny pictures and videos.

A(n) (Un)common Family: - I found this blog from the Studio30+ website which I will tell you about in a minute. She and her husband adopted two kids, their son from Vietnam and their daughter from Ethiopia. She is so funny, like when she talks about how her daughter loves Yo Gabba Gabba I laughed so hard because I could of course relate. She is very open and real in her posts which I also love. Good stuff especially for parents who adopted.

Hyperbole and a Half:- This is the first blog I started following. When I first found it I was so addicted I spent like a whole day looking at all the archived posts. She does mostly comic posts now which I think take a really long time so there are long periods in between her posts. SO, so funny! I have never laughed as hard as I have when reading her posts. She doesn’t take herself or life too seriously. She has funny animals which she posts about and is very smart with her writing.

Last but not least,

Cake Wrecks: - Found this one from the Hyperbole and a Half blog roll. Seriously, funniest blog ever! They post every day which is great because there is always something new to read.

Studio Thirty Plus: - This site is like a gathering place for bloggers over 30. You have to sign up, then you create a home page and you can list your blog on there. It is sort of like a social network for bloggers. They have a featured blogger each week, and they also have great writing prompts every week, which is a cool way to come up with ideas when you can’t think of something.

I really hope this all helps, and I can’t wait to read your blog, I know it will be great!

Brenda

Uncertainty is unconfortable...

Hey blogger world, it's me again!

I have noticed as the weather gets warmer and the days are sunny longer I have had less desire to blog. I also noticed many of the blogs I read have had fewer posts as well.

I have had less and less things to write about also because my student has bailed out of every session we have scheduled for the past month and a half. She was in the hospital with pneumonia, then she was away. Then she just stopped calling.

I keep thinking I have done something wrong. Maybe I haven't been encouraging enough, why else would she stop coming. I know she gets discouraged because she wants to finish that masseuse course and get a certificate, but as much as I want her to get to her goal, it is never going to happen as quickly as she wants it to.

That is the frustrating thing about volunteer tutoring. Generally it is only one hour a week, a very slow timeline when you are working with a low level reader. And if the student is not seeing results fast enough, it can be so discouraging for them.

I understand that and try so hard to make it worth her while, but my enthusiasm is just that, mine. I can't force someone to be excited to learn, or dedicated to the process just because I am. I struggle with this in almost every aspect of my life, my kids: why can't they see that with every fall from the bike with no training wheels there is another opportunity to get back on and try again, with my colleagues on the board: why can't they see that there is value in helping out every chance they get, with my friends: why can't they see that helping others is so much more rewarding than complaining about what they don't have in life.

I lament because I no longer have the answers, and I am feeling disheartened and it is affecting my life. I feel my level of patience has been exhausted with my student and that worries me.

But saying it "out loud" helps. I know I will get over this disappointment quickly, rally myself up toward a new goal and seek to make it work.

I did make a big decision recently. I am going back to college. I have always known I would go back some day, but with three small kids I felt there was always an excuse, and I felt afraid of the amount of work that would be involved. After this year I am confident I can handle it.

I went to a year of college at a national technical university and really learned so much there, more than just computers and code. I had an excellent writing teacher who taught me to let go of my inhibitions about writing. I enjoyed going to school and learning, but I put enormous amounts of pressure on myself and when I felt myself slipping (below and A), I started to lose my confidence and dropped out. I am so sure that will not happen this time. I know it will be hard, but I have learned that nothing worth having in life comes easy. I have also learned I don't have to be perfect.

I still plan to tutor, whether it is with D or a new student I don't know right now. But I love tutoring and would never dream of giving it up.

Stay tuned...

P.S. The photo above is a picture I took of my girls on a bridge at a local park. I love when I find bridges now because when I see them I am reminded of my journey.

Fun Finds For Funky Tutors

One thing I have learned since officially becoming a "blogger" is that bloggers read many many blogs. I have a blog roll on my page that lists my favorites, but I read so many more than that. I get ideas, both for content and for style from my fellow bloggers.

One thing I have picked up while strolling across the 'net is this obsession most bloggers have with Etsy.

Etsy is awesome. It is a website where crafters and artists and sculptors and thrift shop junkies can sell their wares.

I recently purchased that really cool necklace above from Etsy. I wear this thing every day. I have a thing for bumble bees and have decided this necklace is just a first for my collection. To add to the variety of my posts I have decided to post some cool things, all literary, that I come across on Etsy.

SO... This week we have:

This really cool print, I want it!

Wouldn't these be cool to teach an ESOL student the alphabet

Yes Please!

Yes Yes Please!

Ok, the description for these says "for your child" (which actually is cool too) but I could see using these for a student also. They are super cute!

And last but not least, I so need one of these!!

Have fun shopping ya'll!