FIRST STEP: YOU HAVE TO WANT TO BE WELL TO DO WELL.“I had to think out of the box…” I did all the “right” things: went to college, graduate school and medical school, got married, had children. Still, when I looked at my career, things just didn…
Sneezing, coughing, itchy eyes! Oh my!
It’s that time of year. In my practice, I am seeing more children and adults with sneezing, puffy eyes, itchy eyes, forehead headaches, you name it. Look outside and the reason is clear, our region is plagued by significant amounts of tree and plant pollen and flowers and trees are blooming. The pollen blankets our sidewalks, cars, and homes with fine, green powder that causes a range of allergic symptoms.
My son and I have horrible seasonal allergies. I get runny eyes and sinus headaches (the pressure above my eyes, across my forehead, and next to my nose) and he gets puffy and itchy eyes, sneezing, coughing, and asthma flares.
Here are the basics that we use to keep things under control:
– Avoid indoor allergens by vacuuming and dusting regularly.
– Avoid strong smells indoors such as bleach and air freshener plug-ins and instead try fragrance-free cleaners and a few drops of essential oils mixed with water.
– Let kids play outside as much as possible but pay attention to the Air Quality Index on the news. After playing outside, have kids wash their hands and face to rinse off the pollen.
– Rinse your sinuses with saline (special salt) water to get rid of all of the pollen. You can buy a sinus rinse bottle or neti-pot for less than $15. When you are having a lot of symptoms use it two times a day, once in the morning and once at night. When things are going well, just use it once a day at night before bed. Sometimes my patients do not even need other medicines when they rinse their sinuses out regularly.
– If needed, talk to your doctor about fluticasone nose spray or antihistamines that don’t cause sleepiness such as cetirizine (Zyrtex) or loratadine (Claritin).
– Avoid using antihistamines that cause sleepiness such as diphenhydramine (Benadryl) too often unless prescribed by a doctor.
With these few tips, I hope that you can avoid sneezing, coughing, and itchy eyes.
For more information, check out a short article: https://kidshealth.org/en/parents/seasonal-allergies.html
Originally posted at: https://www.healthyhomepediatrics.com/blog
My ideal medical practice – I opened up shop!
House call doctor tools of the trade. I have since gotten another rolling bag.
Over the last few years I have slowly been inching toward establishing my own practice. And this January, I did it, I incorporated my practice, Healthy Home Pediatrics! It is a house call based concierge, or direct primary care, practice serving Washington, DC and the surrounding Maryland and Virginia areas.
In my first blog post as a new business owner, I wrote:
It feels so good to work hard for my own vision. For the last 5 years I have worked extremely hard for visions that were established by hospital administrators or the organizations that I worked for. Too often, these visions fell short of what I knew my colleagues and I were truly capable of and far short of what patients really wanted and needed.
During times like this, when I am venturing into the unknown, I often go back to one of my all time favorite books, The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho. I have read this book countless times. In it, Coelho shares the story of a young shepherd boy who leaves home and goes in search of his dreams. Along the way he is tested and experiences both profound joy and deep disappointments. One of my favorite sections of the book shares a conversation with the boy, his heart, and the alchemist:
“People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel that they don’t deserve them, or that they’ll be unable to achieve them. We, their hearts, become fearful just thinking of loved ones who go away forever, or of moments that could have been good but weren’t, or of treasures that might have been found but were forever hidden in the sands. Because, when these things happen, we suffer terribly.”
“My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer,” the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky.
“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity.”
“Every second of the search is an encounter with God,” the boy told his heart. “When I have been truly searching for my treasure, every day has been luminous, because I’ve known that every hour was a part of the dream that I would find it. When I have been truly searching for my treasure, I’ve discovered things along the way that I never would have seen had I not had the courage to try things that seemed impossible for a shepherd to achieve.”
This is my dream. To practice medicine in the way that feels good to my heart, in a way that I know will help families and my community. To be unhindered by traditional systems such as hospital systems and clinic administrators. To collaborate directly with my patients and their families. To build sustainable relationships with families that help prevent disease and suffering. To be there for my patients when they need me.
Many thanks to KC and others for encouraging me and supporting me. A gentle nudge from her is what prompted this post. Even though it is scary, sharing such a personal detailed account on MiM, I want to share this new phase of my life because I have already received countless messages from colleagues, friends and family saying how much my business has inspired them to pursue their own dreams. I want to take you all on this new path with me. Let me know if there are particular topics about entrepreneurship and balancing work and life that you would like me to write about.
Thanks Mothers in Medicine for inspiring me!
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