Blogging About Health Issues: ME??

my children are still alive and in good health!

I am a relatively green, 57-year-old blogger who has barely one toe in the  21st century and is basically a computer illiterate. Unwittingly, I have  just agreed to blog for 30 days in a row on health issues. As I sit down to type my first post, reality suddenly clashes with my impulsiveness. My mind is blank, I hold my breath but I have decided to jump into the unknown with a grin and a sense of challenge.

On the other hand, I have raised nine children and managed to keep them all alive on a lively hobby farm. It is a miracle. Do you have any idea what can happen on a hobby farm swarming with nine kids who generously share germs with each other?

 I wish that I had access to the incredible mounds of health information on the Internet that I am just discovering this year. Many nights in the wee hours before dawn, I frantically flipped through out of date childcare books, encyclopedias, condensed family books on symptoms, treatment and diseases, hoping to find relief for a whimpering sick child. Most of the time it was to no avail and I was forced to wait till the morning to speak with my doctor’s nurse or someone in the hospital’s emergency room who was not allowed to give me any real advice.

melanie jean juneau

In the thirty odd years since the birth of my first baby, suddenly it is easy to use libraries, scientific studies, to question doctors, nurses or even other mothers and to get answers in seconds. The internet has changed society even more than the arrival of the Gutenberg Printing Press at the end of the middle ages. Suddenly “commoners” have access to health information that was only available to researchers or health professionals only a decade ago.

On the positive side health consumers are more knowledgeable  ask better questions and feel empowered to ask for a second opinion and not take their doctor’s opinion as a pronouncement from God.

However, this new-found freedom has caused problems as others jump to conclusions, argue with their health care provider or refuse his advice because they have read some obscure article written by a self-proclaimed health guru. Not all advice is wise or asked on fact. Students have even sabotaged Wikipedia, presenting fiction as fact, just for the fun of confusing the ordinary reader.So it is with excitement tempered with common sense that I start this journey and begin to write a Health Blog on my family site as well as posting on the official Health site of Facebook. I hope you enjoy these posts as much as I will.I will gear most of them to women, children and of course families.

 A friend , Elaine Plummer, a registered nurse who writes on health issues on BlogHer has agreed to save my ignorant middle-aged brain  and keep me up to date..  ElaineR.N., as she calls herself, has kindly agreed to let me quote her massive collection of articles as well as  interview her. Thank-you Elaine

http://www.blogher.com/member/elainern

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