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BIAMD's #5ThoughtsFriday - 02/03/2017
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Here are the 5 things we thought were
worth sharing with you this week:
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5) Did You Catch the Story about MTA's settlement with
Disabled Riders?
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The Maryland Transit Administration agreed to overhaul its MTA Mobility/Paratransit Service to settle a federal lawsuit contending that the service was unreliable and inaccessible to some riders with disabilities.
Among other steps, the MTA will spend up to $160,000 to hire independent consultants to review the service over the next three years and make faster decisions on whether someone is qualified to use it.
The class-action lawsuit was filed in 2015 on behalf of thousands of riders with disabilities who alleged the service was plagued by routine lateness in picking up and dropping off riders with serious illnesses and other disabilities for critical medical appointments.
Riders with disabilities were often put on hold for long periods of time when calling to make appointments, and some were denied service or had their access revoked with little explanation, according to the suit filed in Baltimore's federal court by the AARP Foundation Litigation and the Maryland Disability Law Center, now known as Disability Rights Maryland.
To read more about this important settlement, CLICK HERE.
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4) You need to read this powerful article...
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I should have put his socks back on.
The thought kept nagging me as I finished my clinic notes, replaying the afternoon in my head. My final patient of the day — a man with dementia — was a late addition to the schedule, after his daughter, herself a patient of mine, called to report he hadn’t been himself lately. We scheduled him for the last appointment, so she could join after finishing work across town.
She recounted the subtle changes she’d noticed in her father. He’d been eating less, sleeping more. He was less steady on his feet and seemed uninterested in playing with his grandchildren — an activity that normally filled him with irrepressible joy.
From her purse, she pulled out no fewer than eight pill bottles — each with a dose, time and frequency meticulously labeled. She handed me a handwritten transcript of his other recent appointments: an ophthalmologist, a neurologist, a cardiologist. As I examined him, her phone rang.
“Grandpa isn’t feeling well, sweetie,” she said. “There’s macaroni in the fridge. We’ll be home soon.”
To learn more about what you can do to bring the Caregiver Advise, Record, Enable (CARE) Act to Maryland, CLICK HERE.
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3) One More Reason to Keep that New Year's Resolution...
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Once you get over the hill, obesity really starts to take a toll on brain function.
Researchers from the University of Cambridge were interested to see if obesity fast-tracked the brain shrinkage that naturally occurs with age. They went inside the heads of 473 adults aged 20 to 87 — some lean, some overweight — to look for any characteristic changes. And they found that leaner individuals in middle age had more white brain matter than those who were overweight. So an obese participant at age 50 looked to have the amount of white matter typically seen in someone 10 years their senior.
If there's an upside to this, it's that when researchers gave participants with lesser white matter a sort-of IQ test, it didn't seem to affect their overall cognitive ability, researchers said.
For More on this story, CLICK HERE.
To View the Cambridge Study, CLICK HERE.
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2) What We Are Reading That You Might Find Helpful...
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Will I still be able to work? How will I take care of my family? What is my long-term prognosis? These are common and pressing questions after a diagnosis of a neurologic condition such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Parkinson's disease, or multiple sclerosis (MS), or after experiencing a stroke, a spinal cord injury, or a traumatic brain injury. It may not be until months later, after you've settled into your new day-to-day life, that you ask yourself, “How will my condition affect me sexually?” or, “Will I ever have intimate relationships again?”
These are normal, legitimate questions that experts say shouldn't be discounted or ignored. “Sexuality and intimacy are often put on hold after a diagnosis. And that's sad, because they are so nurturing,” says Debbie Schlossberg, a patient services coordinator with the greater New York chapter of the ALS Association. “Both people in the partnership need intimacy in order to thrive and care for one another."
To read the rest of this article, CLICK HERE.
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1) Quote We Are Contemplating...
“Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.
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"Partners in Progress"
on March 23-24, 2017,
is a multi-track
neuro-
conference focusing on issues related to:
individuals with brain injury
and family members, children and adolescents in the school system, advocacy, and professional and clinical training. The purpose of the two-day conference is to provide state-of-the-art information about brain injury treatment, services, research, and advocacy
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and to improve collaboration and networking between individuals with brain injury, families and professionals.
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Did you enjoy #5ThoughtsFriday? If so, please forward this email to a friend! Got a story we need to follow or share?
Send it to info@biamd.org.
Want to find a story from a past #5ThoughtsFriday blog posts, visit the archive by clicking HERE.
Please let us know your requests and suggestions by emailing us at info@biamd.org or contacting us on Twitter.
Which bullet above is your favorite? What do you want more or less of? Let us know! Just send a tweet to @biamd1 and put #5ThoughtsFriday in there so we can find it.
Thanks for reading! Have a wonderful weekend.
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