Vaccines Can Save Kids Who Can’t Get Them

My conversation with the school nurse at the start of every academic year ends with me say this: If anybody comes down with chickenpox, call me immediately -- it could save my daughter's life.

Chickenpox – deadly?

Most adults remember chickenpox as an irritating childhood rite of passage. No one ever died from excessive itching, right? I didn't, though I still bear a small, circular scar on my right cheek from my fingers getting the best of me during my bout. U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics, however, show that before development of a vaccine in the mid-1990s, chickenpox killed more than 100 children annually and hospitalized over 10,000 for complications, including pneumonia, meningitis and encephalitis. The more severe consequences tended to happen to those with underlying health issues, such as a comprised autoimmune system.

Sledding – It’s Been Downhill All the Way

When the frosty flakes start to stick, most children rush outside to build snowmen, toss snowballs or flap their arms and legs for snow angels. Mine grab a bowl and spoon to make a meal. Yo, kids—they are “frosty flakes” not “Frosted Flakes.” Once sufficiently stuffed (or intestinally hypothermic), my offspring then often head for the garage to dig out their sleds.

For me, growing up among the rocks and trees of North Stamford meant only being able to venture out to our pre-shoveled driveway or the backyard for a zip downhill on an ancient wooden Speedaway with half-rusted runners. However, one moonless January evening after dusk, I learned metal TV trays provided a superior riding speed and distance when I promptly rocketed up and over a wire fence and into our mucky backyard pond.

My children have more (and drier) options, provided they can stop our Labrador retriever from chewing on their foam Snow Boogie boards like they were Milk-Bone burritos. Within a short trudge of our home is the Sterling Farms Golf Course, which I understand from longtime residents in my neighborhood was an even shorter trudge way back in the day before use of wire-cutters was deemed poor civic etiquette. The most obvious choices here are the long, wide fast rides from the sixth green and the seventh tee box. However, we sometimes just avoided the crowds by staying on the short but steep side-to-side approach to the ninth green. Note I wrote “side-to-side.” Sledding lengthwise down the 350-yard ninth fairway is a breathtaking ride until you discover the neck-breaking cliff behind the tee box. Don’t ask how I know. When the need for speed wasn’t so great when my kids were young, we’d stay on the gentle slope of the eighteenth fairway. I wish my tee shots would adhere to such a smooth path.

One great sledding venue still unknown to my kids, but familiar to my wife and me is Cummings Park. When we were young, single and (don’t tell the priest who married us) living in sin in a downtown condo in the 1990s, we took more than a few trips down the 60-degree hill overlooking the playgrounds. Our rides—cheap plastic roll-up sheet-sleds purchased from the old Caldor store at Summer and Broad streets. Those offered good speed, lousy control, and worse cushioning for your, um, bottom line. Trust us.

NOTE: This article first appeared in Stamford Magazine.

Christmas Lights: Them’s The Breaks

The late Mel Torme, back before he croaked, sang that there's a broken heart for every light on Broadway. As I will not be outdone by any one nicknamed “The Velvet Fog,” let me croon about my developing a headache for every broken light at my house.

Ooh, the colors of Hell ARE pretty … when lit.

I'm an always home and uncool #HealthyDad

Being a #HealthyDad is all about making time for myself as well as my family. That’s why I have been working hard at working out of late, hitting the elliptical and treadmill to lose my annual summer microbrew gut.

Getting enough exercise isn’t just good for the body, it is good for the mind, and when you are healthy it makes everyone around you feel healthier, too. 

Hence, I’m proud to be part of the #HealthyDad campaign.

Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield -- which has very good to our family in dealing with Lil Diva's Juvenile Myositis treatments over the years -- knows a thing or two about staying healthy, for instance, do you need a doctor? You can find quality doctors who are part of their network through their Find a Doctor tool. And you can check out hospitals and compare costs—including out of pocket expenses—with their Estimate Your Cost tool.

Turns out, different facilities may charge different amounts for the same service. Who knew? Also, higher prices don’t always mean better care (knew that part). You can estimate your share of the costs before you get your care, and compare facilities based on their quality measures for certain procedures, like length of stay, patient experience, complications, and more. Check it out!

XY Media sponsored a #HealthyDad video contest on Facebook and a bunch of my fellow healthy dads won some awesome prizes. Check it out: https://www.facebook.com/healthydads.

NOTE: If you didn't guess by now, the preceding was a sponsored post.

Thanks to Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield who sponsored the #HealthyDad campaign and for including dads in this important discussion about family health care. My views are based solely on my experience as a parent, and not as a medical professional. 

Lost in Political Translations

The leaves have started changing colors all around us so that means the nuts have started falling out of the trees and into campaigns for elected office.

With so many prestigious titles up for grabs this year (governor, U.S. representative, most likely to get snarled in a sexting scandal), the voting public needs to fully understand just what the heck these would-be office-holders stand for. You'll hear or read a whole of mess of sound bites filled with buzzwords from candidates over the next few weeks, so I'm providing the following guide as a public service to help you understand exactly what these folks are saying out of both sides of their mouths:

Nobody Expects the Spanish Imposition

Parents tread a thin line between success and failure at raising their children, and rare is the time when your own kid inks that line as clearly as our daughter Li’l Diva did.

This tale, like so many we were supposed to learn in school but cheated only ourselves by simply poring over the Cliff Notes, begins in medias res with a shocking discovery. Enter my wife -- concerned look, furrowed brow, a question tinged with accused failure on her lips.

"Have you ever had the drug talk with your daughter?" Note the girl is mine. Possession is nine-tenths the other parent's in troubled times.