Monthly Archives: December 2014

Farewell to 2014 and all who sailed in her!

Fear yeeh not! This will not be a blog-by-blog review of 2014! I just wanted to take the opportunity of these stats that have been produced by WordPress to say a few (hundred) words!

I have been blogging/Tweeting/Facebooking for a year now on matters medical, health-related, ethics, end-of-life care, dementia and much much more. I’ve been lucky enough to gain nearly 300 followers on Twitter and have 100+ Likes on Facebook and to date 11 followers for my blog!

Most of my followers and or people who have visited my Social media sites appear to come from the UK with the US and Canada not far behind. However, I have followers from other European countries as well as South Africa, India, Nepal, Thailand and Russia! So i’m happy to say that my appeal is truly global!

This is not enough though! I want to spread the word further around the globe in 2015! For those of who already follow or “like” me, then i’d like to say a very big thank you for all your interest and support throughout this year. I hope you’ll continue to support me into 2015. Please share any posts, retweet them, like them or do whatever you can to help me gain more support next year. I’d like to have 500+ followers on Twitter by the end of 2015 and maybe 200+ Likes on Facebook! I intend to expand the blogging side of “radiographerben” in 2015 also, such that I might get 50+ followers for my website!

As well as expanding the blog side of things, I would also like to add a bit to my Tweets. At present I have 3 regular “slots” in my social media week:

#TTT or ‘Ted Talk Tuesday‘ – This as it says, is published every Tuesday and is a link to a Ted Talk usually with a health-related theme, although this I may change for 2015 and include a wider variety of topics for. Suggestions welcome!

#14TW or ‘One for the Weekend‘ – Here, either on a Friday or Saturday I choose a story that is usually nothing to do with health matters at all! It can be a music video, a Formula 1 story, a general news story – anything that catches my eye and I think it would be good to share basically! Again, any suggestions for topics would be happily received!

#TOTW or ‘Tweet of the Week‘ – Pretty self-explanatory really. I pick a tweet from the previous week and write a little bit about it on my blog. This gives me the chance to say a bit more than I can in 140 characters! Either it will be the most popular tweet from the week or I might choose one that I feel was lost amongst other tweets and deserves a second chance!

I’m looking to maybe do a bit more in 2015. I might add a top 5 tweets of the month or something like. I haven’t really used the stats to date, but I might see what they can show about my blog and followers in 2015!

Thank you again for your kind support this year and I very much hope to see you all (and friends and family!) in 2015!

Happy new year to you all!

Ben

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 740 times in 2014. If it were a cable car, it would take about 12 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

#TOTW (from 24-12-14) ‘Arthritis sufferers offered hope after electrical implants leave patients ‘pain free”

Well here it is the last #TOTW for 2014! I’ve chosen a tweet that I think kind of got lost in the Christmas festivities and felt it needed, well, deserved another airing:

sufferers offered hope after electrical implants leave patients ‘pain free

If you read the article you will see that the study is a small one so the results of the trial need to be treated with caution. However, if a larger scale study were to replicate the same results then surely this would be a massive step forward in the treatment of arthritis and possibly many other chronic diseases that currently rely on patients taking long-term medications to alleviate their symptoms.

Check it out! It’s actually rather interesting!

#TOTW (from 18-12-14) ‘Amputees get new lease of life from pioneering prosthetics centre’

This week’s #TOTW comes 12hrs earlier than usual seeing as i’ll be at work this evening when i’d normally publish it. It’s a special offer this week 2-4-1, as I have tweeted twice about prosthetics, once just earlier this morning! As I find it a fascinating area of healthcare, and there appears to be lots of great work being done at the minute in the field of prosthetics, I just wanted to provide another opportunity to take a look at these links and give you the chance to learn more about what it is that is being done to help those who have lost limbs, whether it be in combat or through industrial accidents, or however.

‘Amputees get new lease of life from pioneering centre

“There’s nothing I can’t do,” says Carberry (a 47-year-old former forklift truck driver – who had his below-knee amputation in May 2013 after an industrial accident who wants to compete in a triathlon). “I run, I swim, jump over walls and take part in fitness challenges involving lifting tyres, because they have the specialist knowledge and staff here to make the tiny adjustments I need to keep my socket healthy.”

…and

VIDEO: ‘Bespoke designed with motion capture’ 

Here, @BBCClick take a look at the work of The Royal British Legion’s Centre for Blast Injury Studies and how bone and muscle function can be monitored and used to design better prostheses for those in need of them.

Enjoy!

#TOTW (from: 08-12-14) “Be careful what you say to people.”

Short, but maybe not so sweet #TOTW this week. I’ve chosen a retweet from @MrJonnyBenjamin who has been recording his thoughts/feelings as he deals with his mental health problems:

RT from I’ve been vlogging everything in my ‘recoverlogs’ to help others going on the same journey ”

It comprises a link to 8 short videos, or ‘vlogs’ in which he talks openly about what he is going through. Some might ask why is he doing this, but he seems to me that he’s doing it in order to help both himself and others who may be experiencing similar such issues.

The clip I found most interesting, and the one from which I took the title of this update is the 4th one in the series ‘The Cause of the Problem.’ In it he describes where his problems all started, with what appeared to be a throw-away comment from a friend. Hence, his message, “be careful what you say to people.” If you watch only one of the clips, then watch this one.

If you’re interested to learn a bit more about Jonny, then simply enter his name into a search engine and you’ll find plenty of links about him. You can follow him on Twitter on @MrJonnyBenjamin.

#TOTW (from: 4-12-14) ‘Dehydration an issue for elderly people’

I often blog about the elderly, but more often than not it is in relation to dementia, and although there is a dementia aspect to this piece, it is more about the issue of the elderly, particularly those in care homes not receiving enough hydration. So, this week’s #TOTW is:

Dehydration an issue for people

Dr Lee Hooper of Norwich Medical School at the University of East Anglia (UEA), delivered the results of her research to a conference of the Royal Society of Medicine. She stated amongst other things that, “Being dehydrated could cause confusion as well as an increased risk of heart disease, infection and falls and research had shown that the level of anxiety among residents in a care home could fall enormously if they are getting enough fluid.” 

Caroline Abrahams of Age UK stated, “Both hospitals and care homes must get better at picking up on the warning signs of dehydration and at ensuring that while older people are in their care they get all the help they need to eat and drink.”

Surely in this day and age to allow this to happen, if as a result of poor care, is simply unacceptable and should not be allowed to happen. Everything that can be done, should be done to ensure those at risk of dehydration are monitored and given the help they need to keep hydrated.

It’s not exactly rocket science is it!?

Please take a look at the link and learn more about this problem.