Category: health care

Stay Safe as Hot Weather Returns

The temperature will climb into the 90s and beyond beginning early next week. Please stay safe. Follow these guidelines about how to keep well-hydrated when the humidity soars. Be prepared to prevent heat illness.

Hot Water Heater Out, Cold Showers In

Our hot water heater went kaput yesterday and I’ve now endured the only 2 cold showers I’ve ever taken in my life that I can recall.

Sena will be doing sponge baths, even though I’ve told her cold showers are great, easy, and healthy. Her hesitation might have something to do with my screams while I’m in the shower. The neighbors called emergency services yesterday, but now they probably know the story.

It’s strange how hot water heaters can just plain fail, especially on a Friday when the plumber is booked until late Monday afternoon. When I told the scheduler I would be more than happy to donate every single one of my cribbage awards to their company (which number exactly zero at last count), she just chuckled. When she told me our water heater was “out of warranty,” it didn’t surprise me and made me wonder if I would be taking daily cold showers until the day I die (meaning in about one week given my current level of recurrent hypothermia).

My cold shower method is the jump-in-yikes-out approach. Sena hauls me out in a wheelbarrow to unthaw me in the refrigerator—body part by body part.

In fact, there’s some evidence that cold showers are actually healthy for you, provided you don’t die of cold shock. Believe it or not, a cold shower drives blood flow from your skin to your internal organs. I don’t think that includes your brain, mainly because I don’t think you could pay me enough to stick my head into the freezing water which would turn me into a Jimbo-cickle.

On the other hand, there’s not a wealth of scientific evidence that cold showers are always good for you. On the other hand, it may be good for your immune system and circulation. Consult your doctor if you have cardiovascular disease. Cold showers can shrink your blood vessels. They can also shrink other parts of a guy’s anatomy, if you know what I mean.

Hey, did you know that Chuck Norris’ balls make cold water shrink? You get my drift.

This is not the first time we’ve had problems with a hot water heater. A few years ago, in a different house, the water heater developed a leak around the base. This is supposedly something the homeowner can deal with.

You get my drift. You might think you’re lucky this is the age of YouTube and you’d be partly right. However, I found a number of do-it-yourself videos in which different consultants had slightly nuanced approaches to checking and maintenance of hot water heaters. Watching several videos and getting the gist of the steps is what ordinary people probably do if they do this at all.

Is there only one way to check the Temperature Pressure Release (TPR) valve? Do you always have to shut off the gas line valve or can you get by with turning the thermostat knob to the pilot setting?

Should you really watch that MythBusters episode in which there is a very explosive example of how the wrong procedures in hot water heater maintenance can lead to very deadly consequences? No kidding; a couple of experts recommended it.

I gotta tell ya, I can do without the “guttural thud.”

Anyway, start to finish, the project of checking for leaks around the drain valve and the TPR valve, getting the garden hose and hooking it up to the drain valve after shutting off the cold-water valve, turning the thermostat to pilot, draining the 50 gallon tank (don’t forget to turn on your hot water faucets to help the process along!) to see tea-colored water briefly which cleared quickly, and reversing the steps, with a total time of about 2 hours including clean up and shazam—the leak was not fixed.

That’s why I call a plumber. And I’ll be keeping track of the number of cold showers I take.

Thoughts on the GuideLink Center Incident

The attack a few days ago by what was most likely a mentally ill person on staff at the recently opened GuideLink Center in Iowa City reminded me of what may appear to be disparate views by mental health professionals on the link between mental illness and mass violence perpetrators.

The GuideLink incident involved a person who assaulted GuideLink staff and who also left bags containing incendiary devices at the center and another building in Iowa City. The person is being charged with terrorism and is currently in custody in the Johnson County Jail.

I have not seen information about any injuries sustained by the mental health center staff. There were no explosions or fires at either location where incendiary devices were left. Bomb squad experts removed the devices. It’s not clear whether the perpetrator had been a GuideLink Center client.

The GuideLink Center opened in February 2021 and by all reports is a welcome and very much needed crisis stabilization mental health resource in the community. The staff members are dedicated to their calling.

Dr. H. Steven Moffic, MD, a retired psychiatrist who writes for Psychiatric Times, readily says that the perpetrators sometimes do have mental illness that at least contributes to committing acts of mass violence. Dr. George Dawson, MD, another retired psychiatrist, seems to say that the major reason for mass shootings is the ready availability of guns, a culture of gun extremism, and mental illness accounts for a small proportion of acts of mass violence.

But neither Dr. Moffic nor Dr. Dawson say that it’s only either mental illness or guns (or other instrument of mass violence) that lead to acts of mass violence. Both are important.

I’m a third retired psychiatrist and by now some readers might be asking themselves whether they should listen to any retired psychiatrist. Experience counts.

Speaking for myself, as a general hospital psychiatric consultant I was frequently faced with violent patients in the general hospital. Often, I found it necessary to ask a judge for a court order to involuntarily hospitalize a violent and/or suicidal patient on a locked psychiatric unit by transfer from an open medical or postsurgical unit.

In order to obtain an order in the state of Iowa, I had to be able to state to the judge that the patient in question had a treatable mental disorder and was an acute threat to himself and/others. In most situations, I had an open bed on a locked psychiatric unit available ahead of time.

Even if a Code Green was necessary, I usually had an inpatient resource to which I could move the patient. A Code Green is a show of force or takedown maneuver by a specially trained team to control a violent patient while minimizing injury to everyone involved.

I don’t know if that kind of approach is even possible in a community crisis stabilization setting like the GuideLink Center. I think it’s fortunate that it partners with many other community resources including the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office.

The outcome of the incident at the GuideLink Center was that the overall safety of the staff, the patient, and the community was preserved. More resources like this are needed everywhere. They deserve all the support we can give them.

FDA Advisory Committee Approves Adding Omicron component to the Next Covid-19 Vaccine

On June 28, 2022 the FDA Vaccine and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee came to a majority “yes” vote to the question:

“Does the committee recommend inclusion of a SARS-CoV-2 Omicron component for COVID-19 booster vaccines in the United States?”

The meeting was recorded and is available for review.

Learning About Monkeypox

The University of Iowa podcast Rounding@Iowa, hosted by Dr. Gerard Clancy, MD talked with Infectious Diseases specialist Dr. Jeffery Meier, MD about the essential facts about Monkeypox for health care professionals, recorded on June 2, 2022.

This podcast would also be interesting to anyone interested in learning more about Monkeypox.

No Swimming at Terry Trueblood Recreation Area

There is no swimming at the Terry Trueblood Recreation Area because E. coli has been detected in Sand Lake. Check Iowa City parks web site for updates.

No swimming: E. coli bacteria detected in Sand Lake at Terry Trueblood Rec Area; can lead to gastrointestinal illness

How Hot?

It’s 97 degrees and with the heat index it feels like 103 this afternoon. There is an Excessive Heat Warning today. I was going to replace the sun room door jambs weather stripping today—but decided against it. I’d have to turn off the air conditioning and leave the door open. I did that yesterday when replacing weather stripping elsewhere in the house.

It takes a while to cool back down.

I’m reminded of working as a survey crew assistant way back when, working on new asphalt airport runway construction sites. That gets pretty hot.

On a 90-degree day, the asphalt temperature can get up to 110 degrees. Now imagine you have to work next to the asphalt paving machine. The asphalt mix usually arrives at the job site at a temperature of 275 to 300 degrees Fahrenheit.

I don’t recall ever seeing anyone pass out from the heat on those job sites. But it was awfully hard to drag yourself up and down the runway.

Temperatures today are nowhere near what it is on an asphalt paving job—but if you don’t have to work out there, it’s a lot safer to stay indoors with the air conditioning on than to venture out for very long in 100-degree temperatures.

You can risk heat exhaustion or heat stroke on days like this. Read about the different kinds of heat stress at the University of Iowa web site.

And from the time I started writing this post to the time I stopped, the temperature got up to 105 degrees with the heat index.

Stay cool.