Tracy Welling and a friend in Chile's Atacama Desert.
Friend of UVA Today Christine Kueter, a communicator at U.Va.’s School of Nursing, sent us a report:
Tracy Welling has tended her share of aching feet. She’s hydrated the spent, urged the exhausted up massive sand dunes and trod — in sneakers, 35-pounds of supplies on her back — across some of the world’s most remote, barren and starkly beautiful terrain.
All for fun.
A some-time emergency pediatrics nurse at Fairfax Hospital in Northern Virginia, Welling – who’s currently entering her second year in the Nursing School’s Certified Nurse Leader program, offered to students with at least a bachelor’s degree in another field who are interested in advanced practice nursing – recently returned from Chile, where she worked on a team ministering to the health needs of 170 athletes making the 250-kilometer (nearly 156 miles) journey in seven days.
“I’ve been able to beat every doctor’s timeline thus far,” said Simmons, who is taking a convalescent leave at his parents’ home in Fairfax. “All stitches from every wound are out and my only limiting factor now is the wound to my right hamstring that still needs time to close fully.”
He is waiting for the four layers of muscle to bind together and is stretching his now-shortened hamstring out to its full range of motion. He may be allowed to resume running next week, and his surgeons expect a full recovery with no loss of function. He hopes to be able to return to Afghanistan in January, but before that he plans to attend the Chick-fil-A Bowl in Atlanta on Dec. 31, when the Cavaliers face off against Auburn University.
“I’m eager to see U.Va. win, but for me it’s also about using my time in the States to catch up with as many friends and fellow alumni as I can,” he said.
A timely note from WTJU general manager Nathan Moore:
U.Va.’s community radio station, WTJU-91.1-FM, is marking World AIDS Day with special programming all week.
World AIDS Day is held on Dec. 1 each year and is an opportunity for people worldwide to unite in the fight against HIV, show their support for people living with HIV and to commemorate people who have died.
WTJU has been airing two dozen short audio stories from a number of the Charlottesville and U.Va. people who lead the fight against HIV/AIDS and the attendant problem of violence against women.
As part of this week of special programming, Bruce Penner of Radio Tropicale hosted a panel discussion on Wednesday that included Claire Kaplan of U.Va.’s Women’s Center and Peter deMartino of Charlottesville’s AIDS Support Group. The archive of the show will be available until Dec. 14 at WTJU’s Tape Vault.
Today from 4:30 to 5 p.m., WTJU will air a special World AIDS Day program, featuring testimony on the fight against AIDS in rural South Africa as witnessed by a team from the U.Va. Nursing School. The WTJU special will also include a discussion with U.Va. law Professor Deena Hurwitz about her published reports on the crisis of violence against women and American law.
For information about the guests and voices heard on WTJU, or for links to HIV/AIDS resources, click here.
First Lt. Andrew W. Simmons, 24, a 2009 graduate of U.Va.’s College of Arts & Sciences, was wounded Nov. 20 while serving as an infantry platoon leader in Eastern Afghanistan.
Just eight days earlier, he appeared in a video on Scott Stadium”s Hoovision video board during Armed Forces Appreciation Day at the U.Va. vs. Duke football game. Simmons received shrapnel wounds to both legs and his right arm in a mortar attack. Simmons is currently recuperating at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.
(UPDATED JAN. 28, 11:20 A.M.) Many medical researchers today work with HeLa cell lines. Most probably don’t know that “HeLa” is short for Henrietta Lacks, the woman who was the source of the line, the oldest such cell line in research. Nor do they know of her story.
Lacks was an African-American woman and cervical cancer patient who in 1951, without her consent, became a medical research subject, and ultimately the source of the stem-cell line still in use today. Her family, while proud of her contributions to science, are also deeply resentful of how her body was used for science without her consent.
The discussion was moderated by U.Va. bioethicist James Childress, University Professor and John Allen Hollingsworth Professor of Ethics in the College of Arts & Sciences. The panelists included Charlottesville Vice Mayor Holly Edwards, a parish nurse in the Westhaven community; Karen Waters of the Charlottesville Quality Community Council; Dr. Jeanita Richardson; and Patrick Tolan, a Curry School of Education professor and director of Youth-Nex, the U.Ca. Center to Promote Effective Youth Development.
One of the University’s little-known secrets — at least outside of the Medical Center — is the weekly “Medical Center Hour,” generally held Wednesdays at 12:30 p.m. in the Jordan Hall Conference Center Auditorium. The lectures are subtitled “Medicine and Society in Conversation,” and the topics and the language are usually very accessible to the general public.
This week’s topic is potentially fascinating. Dr. Jonathan Edlow, an emergency medicine physician from Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital and Harvard Medical School, will talk on “The Deadly Dinner Party: Doctor as Detective.”
According to advance publicity,
Outbreaks of disease are a part of life on our planet. Whether it’s a single unusual case or an outbreak involving hundreds of patients across a wide swath of geography (for example, the 1,600-plus cases of salmonella [pictured above] across the U.S. earlier this year due to tainted eggs from contaminated Midwestern farm facilities), it often takes considerable medical detective work to sort out the cause and prevent the next case.
Epidemics are nothing new and have long captured the imagination of historians, medical personnel, writers, and the public alike. The modern medical detective story has an illustrious history too, including the work of Berton Roueché, whose tales enthralled New Yorker readers for decades. In the tradition of Roueché, physician-writer Jonathan Edlow talks in this Medical Center Hour about the doctor as detective and uses illustrations from his own books of true medical detective stories, “Bull’s Eye” and “The Deadly Dinner Party.”
The talks are free and open to the public. And if you can’t make it, talks are also archived online.
The Wall Street Journal’s “Hire Education” blog annually chronicles the efforts of a select group of college seniors as they seek to take their next steps after graduation.
On Wednesday, the blog introduced this year’s crop of students, and among the nine panelists is U.Va. fourth-year nursing student Haley Stephens of Fairlawn — complete with the Journal’s traditional ink line drawing.
We’ll keep an eye out for her postings as the year rolls along, and we’ll all be rooting for her to track down a great job.
UPDATE, Sept. 20: Haley’s first blog post has appeared. Read it here.
Dory Hulse, director of communications for U.Va.’s School of Nursing, spent the weekend with the hundreds of U.Va. volunteers who helped staff the Remote Area Medical clinic in Wise, Va. The annual clinic draws thousands of people from Southwest Virginia and neighboring states seeking medical attention. This is her third and final dispatch from the clinic.
July 24, Wise — Breakfast under the stars. Lions Club volunteers are serving a hot breakfast to all of us volunteers in a buffet line on the stage at the Wise County Fairgrounds. Groggy and bright-eyed people line up for pancakes, eggs, bacon, biscuits with sausage gravy, fruit and juice and coffee. Other volunteers are circulating through the parking lot with food for the patients. I had to clear foggy car windows this morning, but we’re all grateful for the chilly air. Soon enough it will be hovering around 100 degrees.
At least we all slept in beds and enjoyed showers. Out in that parking lot whole families have spent the night sleeping in cars, the backs of vans and in tents. Who are they? Stan Brock, founder of Remote Area Medical, and Dorrie Fontaine, dean of the U.Va. School of Nursing, are at the gate greeting hundreds of people eager for coveted first-come, first-served numbers that will gain them admission for free health care. I circulate through the crowd with an audio recorder and camera.
Dory Hulse, director of communications for U.Va.’s School of Nursing, is tagging along this weekend with the hundreds of U.Va. volunteers who are helping with the Remote Area Medical clinic being held in Wise, Va. The annual clinic draws thousands of people from Southwest Virginia and neighboring states seeking medical attention. She has agreed to provide us with updates through the blog as she goes along.
July 22, Wise — After six hours along interstates and country roads, through undulating banks of thick kudzu and past massive coal operations, my friend and I have arrived at the Wise County Fairgrounds to join the rest of the U.Va. team of volunteers gathering and preparing for the weekend’s annual free clinic.
Some have been here since Tuesday installing wiring and computer and communications networks. A group of Air National Guardsmen are hooking up generators to supply power for lights, equipment and air conditioning. The U.Va. telemedicine department is already geared up to connect patients and on-site clinicians with specialists back in Charlottesville for consultations. Pharmacy students from Virginia Commonwealth University are sorting and bottling medications under a tent and under the watchful eye of their professor. Nursing and medical students are hauling tables and equipment to help set up operations for triage and medical care.
Dory Hulse, director of communications for U.Va.’s School of Nursing, is tagging along this weekend with the hundreds of U.Va. volunteers who are helping with the Remote Area Medical clinic being held in Wise, Va. The annual clinic draws thousands of people from Southwest Virginia and neighboring states seeking medical attention. She has agreed to provide us with updates through the blog as she goes along.
July 21, Charlottesville — Like swallows to Capistrano, flocks of people are heading to Wise this weekend for one of the largest free clinics in the country. Organizers expect to see a repeat of last year’s 20 percent increase in the number of patients who drive for hours to get what may be the only health care they’ll have all year: medical, dental, vision and hearing.
Interesting piece in yesterday’s New York Times, featuring research led by U.Va. nursing professor Ann Hamric. It discusses how “the competing demands of administrators, insurance companies, lawyers, patients’ families and even one another” can cause nurses — and some doctors — to abandon hope of doing the thing that they believe is best for the patient.
(UPDATED JAN. 28, 11:20 A.M.) Many medical researchers today work with HeLa cell lines. Most probably don’t know that “HeLa” is short for Henrietta Lacks, the woman who was the source of the line, the oldest such cell line in research. Nor do they know of her story.
One of the University’s little-known secrets — at least outside of the Medical Center — is the weekly “
The Wall Street Journal’s “Hire Education” blog annually chronicles the efforts of a select group of college seniors as they seek to take their next steps after graduation.