Infant Hypnosis

The humbling part about medicine is that you usually learn something new every day. New treatments come out nearly every day, and this makes the prospect of keeping up with the times fairly difficult. The current rage of complementary and alternative therapies makes this even more difficult. HumorMD Jr has taken my education to a whole new level, as he always does. I have heard of people getting hypnotized at the fair for fun or even doing it to treat depression and chronic pain. Unbeknownst to me however, hypnosis occurs every day with kids across our great nation. Ladies and gentleman, I give you…the Seahorse.

This is another Mrs. HumorMD discovery in our house. She had seen multiple kids with the Seahorse that loved it and thought we should give it a try. Well my friends, it is pure gold. It isn’t fancy. You press on the belly and music plays while it lights up. I’ve never seen the type of reaction it can generate. My son could be screaming at the top of his lungs. Push the Seahorse’s belly and his fists stop in mid swing when he hears the music. He’ll turn to look at it and will just stare for the duration of the song. As soon as it cuts off, its back to hysteria.

I will admit that it almost made me unconfortable at first. What kind of demon spell is this thing casting on my kid to put him in an other worldly trance? I still haven’t arrived at the answer, but I can tell you that divine is probably a better word than demonic now. It’s amazing how a little experience will change your perspective, right?

Henceforth, we have incorporated the seahorse into our daily routine. Feed him some baby crack (aka milk, see earlier article), put him in the crib around 10, and turn on the Seahorse. It’s like baby Ambien without the nasty morning after grogginess. I highly recommend it to all parents. Just try not to freak out about the transfixed look in your baby’s eyes. It will pass, and the usual chaos will soon commence.

*This isn’t a paid promotion…unfortunately. But, I am open to proposals!*

Toys-R-Us is Scary

We went through Toys-R-Us this weekend to see what might be available for little man for Christmas. We figured we would browse the aisles, come up with ideas, and have fun seeing what toys we played with as kids are actually still around. It turns out going to Toys-R-Us is not nearly that simple. Instead of a nice family outing to a toy store, a more apt description would be an hour long walk through the scene of a horror movie. Let me explain.

I don't really like to shop for starters. I'm the get in and get out type. So, merely walking up and down the aisles looking for ideas sent me into a tailspin after about five minutes. Added on top of that is the complete sensory overload. Toys-R-Us is smart, and they have made it possible to try out nearly every bell and whistle on every toy in the store. This makes for a pretty chaotic environment. The doll aisle sounds like a recital. The toy car aisle sounds like NASCAR. The GI Joe aisle...well, you get the idea. The icing on the cake was the multiple temper tantrums being thrown as other parents attempted to "just look" like we were doing. HumorMD Jr and I had a long discussion about how badly it would go for him if he ever pulled a stunt like that on me in a store (I know older parents...you're laughing at me right now).

Mrs. HumorMD is fairly industrious in these types of situations fortunately. There was a hot item that we needed for another gift, and she had already planned ahead to have it shipped to the store. If I had to go through the warzone, I was at least excited about killing two birds with one stone here. As luck would have it, it had not arrived as promised. Lo and behold however, the item was actually sitting on the shelf. We thought we were home free until we ran into a little problem, Ricki.

Now I know you are wondering who Ricki is right now. I can tell you five facts about Ricki right now:

1. Ricki is now known on a first name basis by every customer in the store with us this weekend
2. Ricki is the manager of this Toys-R-Us
3. Ricki likes to have all decisions run through him
4. Ricki is new
5. Ricki needs help

Ricki informed us that even though we had already paid for the item that had not arrived on time, we could not merely get it from what they already had in stock there on the shelf. Both Mrs. HumorMD and I tried to explain to Ricki that it was certainly in his best interest to let us walk out with the item that we had in effect already paid for. Unfortunately, he didn't see it our way and even informed us that other people were waiting and needed his attention more than us at that very moment (rookie mistake). Mrs. HumorMD and I then accomplished the incredible feat of walking out of the store without an item that both had been paid for and was currently sitting on the store shelves. Mind blowing.

So there you have it. First outing as a parent to a toy store during the holiday season. What a nightmare. I don't mean to be all doom and gloom. We did find a few items for HumorMD Jr. The entire experience did reinforce all of my preconceived notions about shopping however. From now on, I will revert to my trustworthy principle of shopping. Amazon is my friend.

*UPDATE* We have now been contacted by Toys-R-Us to let us know that they are out of the item nationwide. Not sure when they'll get more...and no, I'm not making this stuff up.

Shhh...The Baby is Sleeping

Happy Friday everyone! As all of you parents know, the first few months of baby’s life are filled with milestones. Here at the HumorMD, we had a breakthrough a few nights ago. HumorMD Jr. decided to sleep for more than three hours straight! Of course, this didn’t mean that his parents slept more than three hours straight. We woke up promptly at the three hour mark and spent the new portion of our evening staring at hime. Why might we do this you ask? Well, we just didn’t believe. All of you parents know the feeling. We were confident that he was going to wake up as soon as we tried to doze off again. So, we waited…rookie mistake. We eventually did go back to sleep for a short while before he really woke up, and we had a mini family celebration at his newfound ability to no longer be nocturnal.

In case you’re wondering, we now sleep just fine while the little munchkin snoozes. I feel confident that we will be able to sleep right through him crying in short order (just kidding Mom!). In all seriousness, it’s pretty cool to watch little man progress. He’s starting to figure out a few things, and it’s fun to watch.

Lastly, what would a Friday update be without an outlook for the weekend football games? Really looking forward to a few games. TCU vs. Kansas State will an interesting one. Oregon St. and Stanford is also on my radar. I think that the game of the weekend is Texas A&M vs. Alabama however. The Tide are officially on upset alert. I would not want to play Johnny Manziel if I was this close to going to the SEC championship game. I’ll be pulling for the underdog. Love the spirit at A&M and my grandparents Auburn roots don’t allow for anything less!

Uncle Sam's Definition of Value

With the impending fiscal debate that is headed our way, I thought I’d make a few comments as my chosen profession, medicine, is undergoing a substantial change currently. As you may know, the election of President Obama on Tuesday goes a long way towards making Obamacare a permanent part of American healthcare. Given what has happened to other fields that have become annexed by the government, I have an observation for how Americans place value on goods and services. In short, you want to be deemed important…but not too important.

Let’s look at some examples here. Lebron James makes millions of dollars. He’s an excellent basketball player who entertains people across the globe. Let me be clear, I have no qualms with him getting paid. He is the best in the world at what he does, and people enjoy it. Watching Lebron play is important to people, but it’s not important enough for the government to care much about it. Hence, Lebron makes money.

A more everyday example would be Facebook. More than a billion people use this. Their stock price may not be that great currently, but they have changed the landscape of how people relate to each other. Again, it would be tough to argue that Facebook isn’t important. But it’s not too important. You could live without it if you had to. Therefore, they get paid in a big way.

And then, there are some different examples. Let’s say you want to spend your life educating the future Facebook founders. What would Mark Zuckerberg be without his kindergarten teacher that taught him to tie his shoes? Can you imagine a CEO wearing Velcro sneakers? Not cool. We all recognize the importance of this. We recognize it so much that the government has decided to run the whole deal and make sure it is done right (cue laughter). Lo and behold, teachers are vastly underpaid.

The same could be said for countless other professions. Firefighters, police officers, EMT’s all do some of the most vital work to sustain our communities, and they don’t get paid enough. Physicians have been screaming for years that we are under appreciated and very important. Well, the government has turned around and said, “You know what? You’re right!” The caveat of course is that this is not said like a proud father to a son, but it’s more like a cat grinning at the mouse that is about to be lunch. We are getting taken over ladies and gents, and we know where this goes.

I want to be clear about one thing while saying all of this. No government regulations will affect my ability to care for patients. I went into medicine becauseI enjoy it, not because I thought I would get filthy rich from it. Additionally, I think that doctors still get paid good salaries minus the ridiculous amount of student loan debt we are forced to take on. This entire post is designed to question our
principles as a country. What does it say about us when we don’t pay the people that do the most important work? I don’t like looking in the mirror at that question right now, and neither should you.

Election Day

It’s election day here in the good ole’ USA. You are hearing the get
out and vote pleas from everyone on your Facebook wall, so I won’t
hound you on here as well. One thing I have noticed with Facebook is
that it seems the trendy rhetorical device is to simply type your
opinion in all caps as a means of justifying it. Had no idea that
merely increasing your font size was a way of implying sound logic.
Regardless, I enjoy seeing everyone involved. There seem to be two
distinct camps that I have noticed so far.

The first are the people that are pretending like they don’t care who
you vote for. You see the pictures of “I voted” stickers, etc. but no
candidate mentioned. These people will not post who they voted for if
their lives depended on it. They may drop hints that are so obvious a
blind man could read it, but they won’t come out with it. This could
be because they have had a bad experience doing so before, or they
think this should be a “personal” decision. If I had time, I would go
around writing statements underneath their posts trying to bait them
into tipping their hand. It would be fun to see just how far they will
go to not really give their opinion.

The second camp are those that tell you who they vote for in a
heartbeat. They are passing out stickers underneath public restroom
stalls because they have realized there is no more captive audience
than a person on a commode. These are the people that get defriended a
lot during election season. Nothing personal usually. Some people just
like to have a little variety on their newsfeed other than politics.

Personally, I usually fall into the first camp. I think this has been
somewhat of a mistake. I do not advocate repeatedly campaigning for a
candidate on your friend’s Facebook walls. However, social media was
created so that we can connect better…so let’s connect. I would tell
you who I voted for, but I vastly misjudged the wait time at my local
precinct this morning and had to leave the line after waiting an hour
and a half. Don’t worry all of you democratic attack dogs, I am going
back after work. When I do, I’ll be casting my vote for Mr. Romney.
Feels good to say it out loud. Honesty really is a great thing, except
when you’re too honest of course…topic for another day. Enjoy the day
everyone, and try to get enough sleep so that you’re not worthless
tomorrow. Your boss doesn’t care who the President is!

My Kid is Crying...Pump His Jam!

I'm going to delve outside of my realm as a doctor for adults a bit here. Dealing with a crying baby is a universal problem for parents. Pediatricians and other parents have all sorts of suggestions they throw out (very few of which are evidence based by the way). I have no new revelations today. Just something fun that I have noticed with HumorMD Jr.

Like many babies, HumorMD Jr. likes music. One of his favorite pastimes is laying on his playmat, swatting at overhanging objects, and listening to some tunes. At first, we went straight to the children's music. Baby Einstein and the Children's Worship station on Pandora are some of his favorites. I discovered something a few days ago, however. My son, at the ripe old age of 7 weeks, has developed musical taste.

We had reached a point where playing music calmed him some, but he still wouldn't quite settle down. I decided to up the ante a bit. I turned on the Youtube video of Little Big Town performing "Pontoon" at this year's CMA awards (great performance by the way). Immediate silence. He even looked towards the screen the entire time it played. We haven't explored any other musical genres yet, but I'm interested to see what the little man prefers.

This little discovery of mine confirms something I have long thought. If you think that some children's item is annoying, well...your kid might think so too. Don't let your child cry while Barney sings the ABC's if you could simply turn on the radio and have a family jam session. As a parting thought, this has serious potential for reality television. How about replacing the judges on the The Voice with a group of babies? The person that makes the least babies cry wins. It'll be a scream.

Cough, Colds, and Chaos Saturday

There are a lot of big match-ups in college football today. HumorMD Jr. is a bit upset about the timing of all of them. The four games that he wants to watch are all scheduled within an hour of each other. What can I say major network producers? I'm not mad, just disappointed (cue maternal shake of the head). Regardless of the poor planning, tonight could either clarify the national championship race or set off an atomic bomb in the college football world. I'm hoping for the latter.

Here in our house, Chaos Saturday has a whole different meaning. HumorMD Jr. is right on the border between bottle sizes. We tried out the bigger one today, and his eyes were a bit bigger than his stomach. Overall he did well, but he did manage to give Dad a formula shower a few times. Not a big deal as far as I'm concerned. I've already written about the showers that the other end of his gastrointestinal tract can produce. I'll take this end any day of the week.

On the medical front, I've been doing some work for Yahoo recently. There have been many coughs and colds coming into the clinic with the weather getting cooler. To that end, I wrote up some educational material on antibiotics and sore throats that you can find here. For those that have been struck by a viral pharyngitis, here are a few things to try for symptomatic relief:

• honey tea
• salt gargles
• Halls lozenges
• Chloraseptic spray
• Mucinex (if you have a lot of junk running down your throat)
• Fluids

That is the list I usually give out to my patients. Nothing is a magic bullet, but it should help some. Time is your best friend. Try not to scream at the TV when your team loses tonight as well. Nothing like a little laryngeal irritation to go with your pharyngitis!