I like mayo on fries. I don't specially seek it out, but will happily eat it if mayo is right there.

Total tangent on the salty-with-chocolate theme: The scouts in my group have developed a taste for hotdog-water hot-chocolate. A recipe born from efficiency on the trail: boil hotdogs (because they can cook lots at once this way), then use the water to make hot-chocolate (from powder mix), so as not to waste water, and also not have to wait to boil fresh water. Sounds absolutely disgusting, right? But it's actually pretty good. The salt and oil from the hotdogs adds a certain umami and mouth feel to the hot chocolate that's really good! And it doesn't tast like hotdogs at all.

"Smart Thermometer–Based Participatory Surveillance to Discern the Role of Children in Household Viral Transmission During the COVID-19 Pandemic", JAMA Network Open, published June 1. Here, the kids-don't-spread-it rhetoric dates from the first few months of the pandemic, when schools were closed (March to end of school year 2020) and public health restrictions were at their most stringent. Really what was proven is that school closures work to prevent spread of infectious disease. I had a pointed email exchange with our national scouts org when they requested feedback on proposed covid policy, and one of their tenets was "kids don't seem to get it or spread it". NO, no, no, no! At that time, what we knew was that that kids who are locked down don't seem to get it or spread it, and that kids did not, in general, seem to get as desperately ill with it as older adults. We had no specific data at that time to forecast what the burden would be on children and how contagious they would be. (Other than the knowledge that children, in general, are prodigious spreaders of just of about every other respiratory viral illnesses out there.....)

Nah. That's my MIL's name 🙂 I've never used it; it's no mine. I use professional honorific plus original (and only) lastname.

Anti-NMDA receptor autoimmune encephalitis is one interesting example of neuropsychiatric autoimmune disease. Brain on Fire is a great read; a first person account by Susannah Cahalan. One of my amazing ED colleague made a this diagnosis last year (different patient!). It was a very challenging case, complicated by presentation to multiple different facilities and complex and cumbersome electronic medical records that are both internally and externally siloed and don't talk to each other very well. We are really on the dawn of a new medical era for chronic disease. Both auto-immune and latent viral (often linked). The recent link between MS and Epstien-Barr virus comes to mind. And the negative correlation between shingles vaccine and dementia (suggesting that shingles vaccine may be protective against dementia). We are about to find many like of these, I think.

Same. No issues worth worrying about. Pretty much my entire professional peer group have done the same, with no problems. There is the occasional misunderstanding, but no real problems: DC's friends sometimes assume and mistakenly call me Mrs Husband'sLastname. A teacher once assumed I'd turned up for the wrong parent-teachet interview (but I suspect that was more based on racial mismatch rather than name mismatch -- maybe both?) All easily sorted within a few seconds.

Soror, I'm sorry that your thread has gone pear-shaped. I see you and I hear you.

I like to use books as a tool: Make sure I don't miss anything, and also, the pictures/diagrams are super helpful. It's Perfectly Normal series has great pictures!

Adding: I see a lot of sex-gone-wrong at work. Abortion complications in a 13yo, anal herpes in another young teen, a case of Mpox, unwanted pregnancies, assaults, sexting contributing to mental health crises, the list is endless. My motivation to make sure my chidren well-informed and thus prepared and protected is very, very high.

Early and often. Discussing the idea of consent from toddler-hood - not with respect to sex per se at first, but in other domains like sharing, not taking stuff from other people without their consent, privacy, bodily autonomy. Using the language of consent from a very early age. Always proper names for body parts. Taking care not to assume sexual orientation. It's Not the Stork was in the bed-time book rotation from about age 3-4. We progressed through that series: It's so Amazing, and It's Perfectly Normal at the younger side of the recommended age range (7ish and 10ish, respectively). I made "health" a homeschool subject and used those books as a sex-ed spine. Then a refresher/review before starting public highschool in grade 9. Covered Farrar's list of topics: porn, social media/internet is forever, consent, healthy relationships, what to do if something goes very wrong. Well-child visits with our family MD, even though they are healthy and don't really need them medically; the goal is establishing a relationship with the MD, so that if anything ever came up that they felt they couldn't talk to us about, they would feel comfortable to seek medical help. We are very open and proactive in talking with all kinds of heavy topics with out kids, not just sex. Substance use, risk-taking behaviours, relationships, racism, sexism, it's all one the table. We are also a feminist household. Somehow it all goes together.

Seconding CR boxes. We've built lots of these. @bolt. If 16x25 inch filters are easier to source (they are in my area), you can use those too; results in a taller, thinner box. The filtration area 4x25x16 is the same as 4x20x20 . You'd need to add a second cardboard shroud under the fan to fill the gap. My local costco sells 16x25 inch high-filtration Kirkland brand filters in convenient 4 packs, at a decent price (were $37.99 locally in the fall, on line price now higher). 20-inch box fans are $30 at Canadian Tire or Home Hardware. You can build the whole thing for well under $100, including the cost of tape and GST. Website with everything you could ever want to know about Corsi-Rosenthal boxes.

My 13yo and 15yo still do not have phones. They have email accounts, which they use to communicate with friends over-seas. They use the family computers for this They may access my phone when I am home to facilitate communication with friends - usually used for planning IRL meet-ups, not for chat. There is one friend they will use my phone to snap-chat with, as this is the only means of contact (friend is in remote arctic community and this is what works for her)

I wouldn't personally worry too much about getting a little on skin either. Permethrin is used directly on skin to treat lice and scabies all the time.

From the EPA, "We have reviewed these data for permethrin factory-treated clothing and found that the clothing is effective in repelling target pests." and, "When used to pre-treat clothing, it is an insect repellent." Bolding mine

Don't be surprised if MD resists ordering X-rays. They are a low-value test for non-traumatic back pain, and current guidelines advise using them only when certain high-risk criteria are present. Spine X-rays look at bones. They are of extremely limited value for assessing soft-tissues and essentially useless for looking at disks. L-spine films are also relatively high radiation films (an order of magnitude higher than a chest xray), aimed right at reproductive organs.

We have family in the totality zone, which is just a few hours drive away from us. We will be visiting!

Canada has dropped "Defender of the Faith" from Charles' Canadian title

It's not like commonwealth countries are theocracies, though. Canada has freedom of religion enshrined into the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. And separation of church and state is true in the US only on paper and in theory. In practice, dominant religion (christianity in general) has a much larger influence in state matters and laws in the US than it does in Canada or UK, I think. IME, Canada and UK are much more secular places in daily life than the US. Religious culture seeping into daily life for everyone seems to be much more of a thing in the States than here. Reproductive rights, trans rights, same-sex marriage laws, god references in pretty much every US presidential speech and political candidate speech, swearing on bibles in court and when taking oaths of office (not complusory, but the is the default and norm and generally expected).

That would be grounds for a regulatory college complaint here. The regulatory college in my jurisdiction is very clear that patients must be provided with privacy in order to disrobe for sensitive exams (clinician must leave the room or behind a screen), and be provided with appropriate draping or gown. If the paitent requires assistance that may be provided with consent, but to expect the patient to disrobe in front of the HCP - no no no no no no.

Communal for mammograms here too. The gowns are very nice cloth front cross-over style. The waiting room is pleasant, with a fake fireplace, real art on the walls, and, I kid you not, a chandelier. No TV or radio. It is a really pleasant environment. The wait has never been longer than 10 min Aside: This is in the same hospital where I work in the ED - with holes in the walls, stains on the ceiling, broken and missing equipment, worn-out furniture, colourful characters and many-hours wait-times. The gowns are thin; some are near worn-out. The contrast could not be more stark

It's compact and easier learning curve for beginners. Can have multiple courts going in one gym.

It's popular here. Our city rec centres offer pickleball drop-in almost every day. It's easy to learn the basics, it's very inexpensive, equipment is durable, and it has a small physical footprint - you can set up pickle-ball in any inddor gym that has badminton lines on the floor, and can usually fit multiple courts per gymnasium. It's a great social and accessible indoor sport; especially important factors in cold climates.

Yes! But least the numbers make some kind of sense to me now. I still can't get my head around ingesting mercury intentionally as medicine.

That table is actually helpfu, thank you. I think I can see the logic: 30mg of an 8x mercury product, compounded into a 300mg tablet, makes 9x (bc the 8x mercury product makes up 10% of the final tablet by weight, so the tablet represents a further 10-fold dilution). 75 mg of a 4x belladonna product, compounded into a 300tablet, makes 4.6x (belladonna product comprises 25% of the final tablet by weight). What you don't get to know is how much mercury is in the original 8x product and how much belladonna is int the 4x product in the first place. Probably not very much. I hope. Knowing the dilution is only useful if you know what you are starting with! If starting with pure mercury, the tablet should have 30*10^-9 mg of mercury per tablet? 30 parts per billion? Maybe? Not very much, anyway.

Does anyone know if the notation means sequential dilution? You all are close with your guesses re circumstances. @Spy CarI am not considering this for myself! I often run into alt-med substances on med-lists at work that I'm not familiar with. My jaw just about hit the floor when I read the ingredient list this particular one and saw that it contained mercury and atropine, and wondered just how dilute is dilute (and just how poisonous is this stuff). I'm not sure if the notation means sequential dilution or something else.