Show Me the Coffee!

Today marked the first day of a 4-day training I'm attending on the topic of HIV prevention counseling. It's a small class. There are only six of us completing the training: European Gay Man, Gay Man In Denial, Talkative Prison Worker, Disney Princess with Plastic Hair and a Diet Coke Addiction, myself, and one of my office colleagues. We spent the day discussing the first three steps of a counseling session:

1) Introduction and orientation to the session;
2) Identify the risk behavior(s); and
3) Identify safer goal behaviors.

To get us started, the nice but long-winded, wig-wearing Trainer read a list of common health risks (unrelated to sexual activities) and asked us to pick one that we engaged in. Of the ones she read, I selected the risk of not practicing monthly breast self-exams. It bothers me that I am not more diligent about performing these. I have a family history of breast cancer and of fibrocysts, and I have even had a few lumps examined in an ultrasound, which turned out to be nothing but dense tissue, but which my doctor has strongly encouraged me to monitor. Despite all this, however, I still lack the motivation to do the exams.

After selecting our health risk, we partnered up with another person who would role play being a counselor and try to persuade us to change. My partner was Talkative Prison Worker, and I just knew there was no way she could motivate me to do the exams regularly. To my surprise, though, one of her suggestions sounded really promising. She suggested that I schedule a day for the exam each month and then reward myself each month that I followed the schedule. Now, I do like rewards. I pondered that one for awhile and decided that promising myself a Starbucks Frappaccino with whipped cream might very well go a long way to getting me to be a poster child for breast self-examination.

So I'm going to schedule myself for one now. I think I'll arbitrarily pick June 15, cause that seems like a good day for a sweet, frosty beverage. Feel free to check me on this when the day rolls around. I want my reward!

For more information on breast self-exams and breast cancer in general, visit this blog from a nurse's perspective.

Bamboo

I received my first bamboo plant over the weekend as a present. It's a special kind of bamboo called Phyllostachys Rubromarginata, otherwise known as "Red Margin." The leaves have a little red edge to them, and apparently, it's the kind of bamboo that flutes are made from. The real test will come with seeing if I can keep it alive. As much as I've learned over the years of my college education about keeping human beings healthy, I know very little about keeping plants healthy. The old adages of eating right and exercising regularly just don't apply, although I guess there are similarities with needs for plenty of water. In any event, my track record is not good. Most recently I killed some tulips; in the past, I've even struggled to keep vines that people tell me are impossible to kill alive and kicking. But maybe I'll surprise myself and be a master at it. Maybe I'll have a whole bamboo forest, or at least a nice screen from the road. Either way, I'm excited to try.

Pencils, Crayons, and other Sundry Objects

I had somewhat of an epiphany yesterday. I was sitting at the kitchen table talking with a school teacher and a child life specialist. Something was said about the craziness that abounds when students manage to get crayons and/or pencils stuck in their noses or in their ears. From the school teacher's perspective came the issues of arranging whatever first aid the child might need while also trying to regain the composure of him or herself and the other students in the classroom. From the child life specialist's perspective came issues surrounding how to prep that child for the medical procedures needed to remove said crayon and/or pencil upon arrival at the hospital. I didn't say anything much out loud, but I was thinking to myself of equivalent events I've experienced in my profession. When students come to me with questions or "hypothetical situations" involving the removal of items from body parts, however, it's never a crayon or pencil that's stuck. It's a tampon, contraceptive device, or, as in one student's description, "something orange" (who knows?) that has failed to resurface from whatever orifice into which it was inserted. So I suppose the moral of this story is that no matter how old you get, you always run the risk of getting something stuck somewhere it shouldn't be and having to deal with the embarrassment of the attention needed to get it out. Rest assured, however, that any medical practitioner you see whose nimble fingers and stainless steel devices are needed to remove the item has seen other patients with similar objects stuck in similar places and will be happy to assist you. It will also give him or her a good story to tell the next time (s)he sits around the kitchen table engaging in a casual Sunday evening conversation.

Gotta Start Somewhere

Okay, so, I'm pretty new at all this technology stuff. Using the Diffusion of Innovations theory of behavior change, one could even say that I am (optimistically) a late majority adopter or (more realistically) a laggard. But I have had oodles of fun reading other people's blogs and think I'd like to try my hand at it. So yeah, you've gotta start somewhere....