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Learn CPR for your dog too
Most people are encouraged to learn infant CPR when their kids come along, but what about the family pet? I never fail to drop jaws at a dinner party when I tell this story of how my friend Leah and I performed CPR on my drowned dog and saved his life.
I'm still not quite sure how the dog ended up floating lifeless in my swimming pool. He had epileptic seizures a few times in his life, so we are guessing he had one and fell in the pool. Regardless, I found him with no pulse, his eyes vacant and glassy. My friend Leah was thinking on her feet better than I at that moment and said "Quick, let's do CPR." She laid him on his side and did chest compressions on the side of his rib cage, closer to his heart. It took a few tries for me to figure out that the way to blow air into his lungs was by closing his mouth and blowing in his nose. I blew and I could hear water gurgling. ... Read more
Health Nut
It’s six o’clock in the morning and my husband and I greet the day together enjoying some of the many new healthy lifestyle changes I’ve recently implemented in our household.
Husband: Um, what are you doing? ... Read more
Which sunscreen do you use?
So I'm reading this very thought provoking article on sunscreens on the Environmental Working Group's website and it's making me reconsider my stockpile of sunscreens as we head into prime sun exposure season. As the environmental research and advocacy group notes: The best sunscreen is a hat and a shirt. No chemicals to absorb through the skin, no questions about whether they work.
But when you can't get away from exposing your skin to sun, you need a bottle of help. Their article notes that surprisingly little is known about the safety and efficacy of all those creams and sprays we smear on little bodies all summer. If you read EWG's Hall of Shame you'll never look at the skin care counter the same way again. ... Read more
Now it's boys who will be offered HPV vaccine
I have to admit that I've been relieved that as the mom of boys I haven't had to wrestle with the issue of giving an adolescent child the HPV vaccine. Not so fast, slacker.
Now comes the news from my colleague, medical writer Letitia Stein, that the vaccine has now been approved for boys and the pediatrician is likely to talk about getting the expensive, three-dose vaccination against the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus. In girls it has been found to prevent cervical cancer and in boys they say it can prevent genital warts, some cancers, and the vaccine could protect a boy's future sexual partners from HPV infections.
One leading expert in the field notes that getting boys vaccinated would slow the spread of the virus. Since only 18 percent of girls have received all three shots, according to the latest CDC data, boys could help to protect girls. Gardasil carries a sticker price of $130 per dose, or roughly $400 for the series. Insurance covers much of the cost for girls, but coverage for boys may be spotty, the story notes. ... Read more
Pediatricians group: It's okay to teach tots to swim
For so many years, the American Academy of Pediatrics was opposed to teaching toddlers under the age
of 4 how to swim. This largest group of pediatric doctors felt that teaching a toddler to swim would give the tot and his or her parents a false sense of security. ... Read more
Children's Tylenol, other medicines part of voluntary recall
This happened over the weekend so some of you might have missed it. The 
makers of Children's Tylenol and several other drugs began a voluntary recall because of some possible problems in the manufacturing of the products, the Food and Drug Administration said. ... Read more
Health care bill has perks for adoption, breastfeeding moms
We've been inundated with stories on the health care bill that President Obama signed into law (and here's a good explainer from our friends at Politifact), but some little-known facets of it are getting attention from mom bloggers.
Workplaces will have to provide “reasonable” break time and a private location — other than a bathroom — for breastfeeding mothers to pump breast milk for one year after the birth of a child. If the company has less than 50 employees they can opt out if they show it causes undue hardship. This is something working mothers have long fought for.
Postpartum depression will get more attention with expanded funding, worker training, public education and research. ... Read more
Helping children with mental health problems
story of how she discovered the pressing—and very real—mental health issues that many children struggle with.... Read more
Should all kids get screened for rare heart defect?
Should kids get EKG's to pick up rare heart conditions? That's the debate a national advocacy group is hoping to open up while it gives free screenings next week to hundreds of students in Hillsborough County.
As the story by our colleague Letitia Stein notes, Dr. Anne Curtis, USF's chief of cardiovascular disease, found perhaps one in 10 EKGs may pick up on something not perfectly normal. She could think of just one athlete who was told not to participate in sports in all her screenings. ... Read more
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THE AUTHORS
E-mail Sharon Kennedy Wynne:
wynne@tampabay.com
E-mail Kate Brassfield:
katedaphne17@gmail.com