Think #5

Grandparents

• Can have a wealth of knowledge and life experience that’s interesting to hear about. And they usually have silly stories about your parents, which help with developing an understanding of parents as normal people with flaws instead of the ones with all the answers.
• Old age can be lonely. Grandparents usually just want a little attention and love from their grandchildren. My grandma always answers her phone on the first ring and is overjoyed when my sister, Joint-Cracking Meal Prepper, or I call her, even if it’s just for a 2-minute conversation.
• Recently, I sat down with my grandparents (on my mom’s side) and made a family tree. Both of their fathers had remarried after their first wives died during childbirth. They each have multiple siblings and step-siblings, who in turn have many children, some of whom I met at family weddings. It was cool to see how far the tree extended on both sides. Ancestry.com could never (it actually couldn’t, because none of my ancestors are from the US or Europe).

Names that aren’t pronounced like they’re spelled

• I grew up reading names like Phoebe and Geoff in chapter books and pronounced them exactly how they looked: Foeeb and Jeeoff. Imagine my surprise when I found out there was a Feeby on my school bus who spelled her name like “Phoebe.” Some parts of my brain were re-wired that day.
• Irish names, in particular, are often not pronounced like they’re spelled. There’s a YouTube clip of Saoirse Ronan pronouncing Irish names during her The Late Show appearance that was very educational. Who knew that Niamh is pronounced “Neev?” If you did know that, good for you. Nerd.

Antibiotics

• People are so fickle when it comes to antibiotics. They could have a cold and want antibiotics, which aren’t indicated in that situation. They could have a diabetic foot infection and emphatically, adamantly, doggedly REFUSE antibiotics because they don’t want to be “pumped full of chemicals” that are very much indicated to save their foot. Sadly, some of those people also believe the doctor is “getting paid by pharmaceutical companies to prescribe” those chemicals, which is, for the vast majority of doctors, not true. I get that no one likes to take pills they don’t absolutely need (*staving off a tangent about supplements being a counterexample*), but if you really think a decent doctor is going to push antibiotics on you for no good reason, I don’t know what to tell you.
• Antibiotic resistance is a global public health threat per WHO. Medical students and physicians are educated about multidrug resistant organisms that are created when antibiotics are used unnecessarily. No one is going to prescribe antibiotics unless there is high suspicion of a bacterial infection, because no one wants to contribute to the selection of more drug-resistant bugs. There are antimicrobial stewardship teams in hospitals combing through patient charts and advising providers to stop antibiotics if there’s no obvious indication for them.
• I think some of the general public misunderstanding about appropriate antibiotic use is tied to the overall weariness with the US health care system, and there’s unfortunately no adequate solution to that issue without major systemic overhaul.