South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
HOROSCOPES
Overcoming any hesitancy to receive shot means more people are immune to COVID-19, curtailing the coronavirus’s ability to mutate
Pisces (Feb. 19-March
20): Your ideas are attracting attention. Tap a favorable market. Spend less than you bring in. Generate positive cash flow through reliable excellent results.
Aries (March 21-April
19): Invent your own fun. Indulge your passions, obsessions and fascinations. It doesn’t need to get expensive. You’re growing stronger. Follow your heart.
Taurus (April 20-May
20): Take it easy. Emotion could beat reason. Nurture sensitivities with peaceful privacy. Nature and beloved creatures inspire your creative spirit. Imagine and dream.
Gemini (May 21-June
20): Share what you’re learning with friends. Tap into your community. Strengthen networks with participation. Invite others to play. Pull together for common cause.
Cancer (June 21-July
22): Career matters have your attention. Resolve any lingering doubt through research. Don’t fund a fantasy. Make choices and determinations. Figure out the details.
Leo (July 23-Aug. 22): Expand your research. Study the options and determine which way to go. Do the homework to make a strong case. Outline statements, presentations and reports.
Virgo (Aug. 23-Sept. 22):
Manage shared accounts and initiatives. Contribute your energies to reduce debt and build wealth together. Simplify and clarify priorities. Collaborate for common gain.
Libra (Sept. 23-Oct.
22): Share the load with shared commitments. Collaboration sparks in conversation. Romantic possibilities merit investigation. Listen to another’s view. Support each other.
Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov.
21): Prioritize your health, work and energy. Restore it with good food and rest. Recharge and grow stronger with regular physical practices. Pamper yourself.
Sagittarius (Nov.
22-Dec. 21): Listen to your heart. Beauty inspires your spirit. Find and follow a passionate connection. Kindle some sweet romance. Have fun with the ones you love.
Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan.
19): Home improvement projects satisfy. Beautify your space. Clean and clear clutter. Make an upgrade to support family systems. Celebrate results with something delicious.
Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb.
18): Write, research and edit. Analyze the basic structure. Get creative with format and details. Put together presentations, reports or statements. Express your view.
Dear Readers: Every year during this time I step away from my column to work on other creative projects. I hope you enjoy these (edited) “Best Of ” Q&As from 10 years ago. Today’s topic is: unsocial media.
I’ll be back with fresh columns after next week.
Dear Amy: My daughter-in-law “Wendy” uses Facebook to complain about her job, her boss, how much she feels cheated by being a working mother, and even about the shortcomings of her new husband (my son), who apparently failed to buy her a lavish enough Mother’s Day present.
These posts create a kind of online persona that makes her seem vicious, and she really isn’t. But the really embarrassing part is that she is Facebook friends with everyone in my family, and, believe me, her posts are a topic of not-too-flattering gossip.
I have mentioned to my son a few times when her posts have become offensive, and he is trying to deal with it offline.
— Concerned Motherin-law
Dear Concerned: When your daughter-in-law posts her complaints, selfishness or negativity on the public bulletin board that is Facebook, she runs the risk of ruining her personal and professional reputation. And that’s her business.
When her whining veers into family territory, that’s your business.
A gentle and respectful “heads-up” (to her) is in order, and then you should back off, adjust your settings (both metaphorically and on Facebook) and stop reading her posts.
Dear Amy: My dad’s politics are at odds with the rest of the family.
He keeps sending us extreme and hateful articles. We keep asking him to stop, but when he drinks too much (which is almost every night) he will send us articles with messages like, “You won’t be so hard on me after you read this factual article” (which it isn’t).
I’ve asked him to stop sending me any political emails, but then he won’t talk to me for days.
Sometimes he won’t remember sending me anything (because of his drinking), and his feelings are hurt because he has no idea why I am so hard on him. I try to take the high road, but I also will not let him bully me. What can I do to keep him from upsetting me, outside of cutting him out of my life?
— Desperate Daughter
You think this is about offensive or unwanted email, but I think this is about your father’s drinking. You claim his drinking is excessive enough that he does things he doesn’t remember doing, then his feelings are hurt when you (or others) react to his actions.
You should automatically delete his messages to you, or have email from him sent directly to your “spam” folder for you to review periodically.
Has anybody in your family urged your father to get help to stop drinking? You can anticipate denial and/or belligerence when you do, which isn’t much different from how he
Dear Daughter:
relates to you anyway.
Dear Amy: I’ve known a dear friend’s father and stepmother for many years. Recently my friend’s father “friended” me on Facebook. I was happy at first, but he writes diatribes to almost anything I post and has used (somewhat “coded”) obscene language.
It’s really weird and disturbing. I asked him not to use the language, and he seems to have backed off a bit, but he spends way too much time on Facebook and way too much time “challenging” me on political and religious stuff. How can I stop it?
— Facebooked
Dear Facebooked: You have attempted to influence this person to behave differently, but he is an adult, and he can do as he pleases. So can you.
You could “unfriend” or “block” him but if you feel this would cause additional unpleasantness, you could limit his access to your posts.
You two would still be Facebook friends, but if he doesn’t see your posts, he won’t have much to push against.
I don’t think there is any reason to involve your (actual) friend in this. If this man contacts you wondering why he isn’t seeing all of your updates, be honest and say his responses bothered you. Then accept the fact that he might not like this reaction.
Had I been polled last fall, I would have registered as a COVID-19 vaccine skeptic. I told anyone who asked that I was going to wait at least six months after a vaccine was approved, by which time I hoped we would know more about the degree and possibly the duration of its effectiveness and its potential side effects, especially in older adults.
I was hardly alone in my concern that political influence might result in premature approval of a vaccine before its safety was well-established.
Well, that hesitancy quickly dissipated after listening to reports from the directors of the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and several vaccine experts I know and trust, all of whom gave an enthusiastic thumbs-up to both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
So in mid-January, when Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York announced that residents 75 and older would qualify for the vaccine, I found a computerized link to schedule an appointment five days later.
At the mass vaccination site I went to in Brooklyn, everyone I encountered was cheerful, patient and reassuring, even the young woman checking me in who couldn’t find me on her list of 3 p.m. appointments.
“Don’t worry,” she said reassuringly, “you’ll get the vaccine.”
At the next window, a young man from Nigeria checked my ID and Medicare card and figured out what had happened. Turned out I had inadvertently booked a 3 a.m. appointment, not realizing the site was open 24/7. Another “don’t worry,” and I moved on to a young technician from Florida who painlessly injected the Moderna vaccine into my left arm.
I then sat in a holding tent for 15 minutes to be sure I would have no serious reactions. The next day I got a text: “Hi Jane, It’s time for your daily v-safe check-in” and a link to a CDC site that asked: How are you feeling today? (good, fair, poor); Have you had a fever or felt feverish today? (yes, no); followed by a symptom check, first at the injection site for pain, redness, swelling or itching and then generally for chills, headache, joint pains, muscle or body aches, fatigue or tiredness, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain and rash or any other symptoms I wanted to report.
Finally, I was asked several overall health impact questions about my ability to work and do my normal daily activities and whether I needed to consult a health care professional. I received the same text at the same time each day for more than a week and was also given a link if I wanted to send a report to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System.
The second dose, administered 34 days later, went even more smoothly.
By then I had spoken to dozens of others of various ages who had gotten both shots. Only two reported bad reactions — fever, nausea, extreme fatigue — that lasted a day or two. I was prepared for the worst, but it never happened. My arm, shoulder and neck hurt the first night, but most of the pain was gone the next morning. Although my son was on call in case I couldn’t walk my dog, his help wasn’t needed. I was even able to swim that afternoon.
But I assure you, even if I’d had a bad post-vaccine reaction, I would have sucked it up as a small price to pay for protection against a most devastating and too-often deadly disease like COVID-19. And I will continue to urge everyone and anyone I meet to do their utmost to get immunized against COVID-19, especially now that potentially more potent variants are beginning to appear and spread.
The more people who become immune to the virus, the less this scourge will be able to mutate and evade the vaccines already available and the updated versions of vaccines scientists are now scrambling to produce.
Some people — hearing that vaccinated people may still be able to spread the infection and should continue to wear masks and practice social distancing, which I will definitely do even after being fully immunized — question whether it pays to get the vaccine. Absolutely, it pays.
While there’s a chance that an immunized person might be able to infect others, existing evidence suggests the risk is very small. Far more important is unimpeachable data that the vaccines are lifesaving. They nearly eliminate the risk of severe illness, hospitalization and death from the virus. Of the 32,000 people who got the vaccine in the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine trials, only one person developed a severe case of COVID-19. Even if future mutations of the virus make an annual booster necessary, what’s the big deal? We already do that with the flu shot.
Keep in mind, too, that up to a third of people who develop COVID-19 can end up with debilitating symptoms that persist for many months, perhaps indefinitely for some. This is not always just a bug like the flu or common cold that is over and done with a week later. Eight months after recovering from a rather mild case of COVID-19, an otherwise healthy middle-age friend said his lungs still hurt when he exerted himself.
I can’t wait to again attend live performances of classical music and opera and watch movies and plays not on my computer or TV but on the big screen and in the theater with others who can laugh, cry or sneer with me. But until most of us are reliably immune to the coronavirus that has terrified and secluded so many of us for so long, none of this can happen.
Meanwhile, I will continue to present the known facts and try to dispel misleading information about the vaccines. And I’ll hope that celebrities who enjoy the respect of vaccine-hesitant communities will be able to convince their members that controlling COVID-19 infections and spread is critical, not just for their own sake, but for the future of their families, their towns, their country and a life that might again assume some semblance of normal.
PHILADELPHIA — Even for identical twins, Elana McDonald and Delana Wardlaw have a lot in common.
Both Philadelphia physicians, the sisters graduated together from Central High School, Temple University, and Penn State’s College of Medicine. They inherited their parents’ belief in the power of education. They also learned well their mother’s lessons about standing up for yourself, for what you believe in and for the people you love.
And if you ask which twin is the outgoing one and which is more demure, their answer doesn’t miss a beat.
“There is no quiet one,” says McDonald, chuckling. “Neither is quiet.”
They don’t want their patients to be, either.
Patient empowerment is a key mission for McDonald, a pediatrician, and Wardlaw, a family medicine doctor, in their community medical practices, their city and state advocacy and, increasingly, on a national level through social and broadcast media.
A year ago, they launched TwinSisterDocs — accessible at TheTwinSisterDocs. com, and on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram — to further the goals that have fueled their activism for the past 20 years.
“TwinSisterDocs was created to promote health, wellness, self-advocacy and address health disparities in underserved communities,” said Wardlaw.
They do this through what they call the three Ts: trust, translate and transform.
“As trusted messengers,” Wardlaw said, “we provide culturally sensitive,
accurate medical information, which translates into patients becoming active participants in their health care, and it leads to transformational outcomes.” That includes transformation for their communities as well as the individual patients themselves.
In the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, the
46-year-old sisters joined with the Black Doctors
COVID-19 Consortium to fight barriers to virus testing by bringing it to people in Black and Latinx communities who were having difficulty accessing it. They’ve since refocused their efforts on educating people about the virus and the vaccine and addressing vaccine hesitancy.
Distrust of the medical establishment has persisted among some members of
the Black community, not without good reason, the sisters acknowledge.
In their own family, their maternal grandmother died of breast cancer at the age of 53. Wardlaw said their mother shared that lack of quality health care due to lack of insurance as well as distrust of the medical profession kept their grandmother from getting the help that might have saved her life.
It inspired Wardlaw to become a doctor. For both twins, it was early evidence of the disparities in access to quality medical care, including preventive care and early detection, that still affect underserved communities such as those they grew up in and work in now.
In many ways, the lessons of their upbringing
helped inform the activists they became.
From the first grade through the eighth grade, the sisters, along with their siblings and other children in their neighborhoods, were enrolled in a desegregation program by their parents that took them to higher-ranked public schools.
They found the schools they attended to be welcoming, even though their schoolmates and teachers were mostly Caucasian. That’s not to say there weren’t challenges.
“They didn’t understand your hair. They didn’t understand your skin,” McDonald said. “And when a teacher doesn’t understand your cultural nuances, you have to navigate all that stuff.”
But, the pediatrician said, those experiences helped make her the person she is today.
“I’m comfortable going into any room anywhere, having a discussion with anybody because I learned to interact with other people,” McDonald said.
She sees helping her patient families learn to do the same as part of her role.
“Sometimes families and parents have to be taught how to advocate for their children,” she said.
The sisters understand because they’re parents, too; both are married and still live in Philadelphia. Wardlaw has 12-year-old twins — a boy and a girl — and McDonald is the mother of two boys, 13 and 16. Just as their family was always there for them growing up, the sisters said they couldn’t do the work they’ve done without the support of their spouses and kids.
And the sister docs always have each other’s back.
“We are best friends, each other’s strongest cheerleader, but also each other’s biggest critic,” Wardlaw said. “It is great to have someone help you identify your strengths and weaknesses with any endeavor, at any time, without asking. Having her as a colleague is great because we can consult one another about clinical scenarios.”
Added McDonald, “We are always rooting for and encouraging each other. There is no competition. We’re great working within our own specialties, but we realized we can do something phenomenal working together.”
One of the reasons Wardlaw and McDonald started TwinSisterDocs was to give their voice a broader reach. They also do public speaking and push for their communities with elected officials and other leaders. And they advocate for increasing diversity in the medical profession and creating more mentoring programs to facilitate that diversity.
In the meantime, they believe that improving cultural competency in the medical field could help lessen health care disparities that have contributed to high rates of chronic illnesses like diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and kidney disease — all of which disproportionately affect Black Americans.
“Once we get out of this pandemic … we want to (increase) access to quality health care so people have less chronic health conditions and, if they do have them, that they are well-maintained and treated,” McDonald said.
“We’ve got to get out of this pandemic, and we’ve got to learn.”