Health

The next Life Serve Blood Center blood drive will be held Monday, April 1 from 12-5 p.m. at the First Baptist Church in south Waukon.  The LifeServe Blood Center supplies Veterans Memorial Hospital with its blood and blood products.

The LifeServe Blood Center seeks donors to ensure a safe and plentiful blood supply in Iowa. Because there is no substitute for human blood, the need for donors is continuous.

How much does one blood donation help? The LifeServe Blood Center states that one blood donation can do the following:

• Cancer: up to eight platelet units per week
• Burn Victims: Up to 20 plasma units
• Automobile Accidents: Up to 50 red blood cell units.
• Premature Infants:  Up to five units
• Heart Surgery: Up to six red blood cell units plus six platelet units
• Organ Transplants: Up to 25 plasma units plus 30 platlet units plus 40 red blood cell units.

March is National Athletic Training Month.  Brad Krambeer, A.T.C., L.A.T., is the Athletic Trainer at Veterans Memorial Hospital. He has served the Allamakee Community School athletes since 1992, and has since begun offering athletic training services at Eastern Allamakee Community Schools as well.  “I truly enjoy my work with the kids at the schools and especially watching them compete,” states Krambeer.

Athletic trainers help treat and prevent injuries for people of all ages from athletes to laborers. They specialize in the assessment, treatment and rehabilitation of physical injuries to the muscle, ligament and bone, as well as rehabilitation following surgery. Athletic trainers are also key in teaching injury prevention by explaining flexibility exercises, proper use of equipment and applying prevention devices such as tape, bandages and braces.

Pulmonary rehabilitation is a program offered at Veterans Memorial Hospital that teaches a person to live and breathe better with chronic lung disease. Conditions such as emphysema, chronic bronchitis, asthma, restrictive lung disease and cystic fibrosis can make doing every day activities difficult due to shortness of breath and low activity tolerance. Participation in a pulmonary rehab program can help increase strength, manage shortness of breath, decrease anxiety and depression and implement a consistent at-home exercise program.

The Veterans Memorial Hospital Diabetes Support Group will hold its next meeting Thursday, March 21 at 10 a.m. The meeting will be held at Veterans Memorial Hospital in the Large Conference Room, located on the lower level of the hospital.

This diabetes class is open to everyone who has diabetes or has a friend or loved one with diabetes. For more information on the Diabetes Support Group, call  Angie Mettille, RN at Veterans Memorial Hospital at 563-568-3411.
 

Veterans Memorial Hospital will sponsor a Babysitting Seminar Saturday, April 13 from 8:30 a.m. - Noon. The class will be held in the Large Conference Room located on the lower level of Veterans Memorial Hospital in Waukon.

Intended participants are individuals 10 years of age and older who are responsible for their own care after school until their parents come home from work, and individuals who care for other children in or outside of their own home. Girls are not the sole baby-sitters in this society. Boys are also welcome and encouraged to attend.

Topics to be covered include fire and personal safety, accident prevention and emergency actions, nutritious snacks and basic care of children.

Veterans Memorial Hospital in cooperation with the American Heart Association is offering a course in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) for lay people (those not working in healthcare), which includes child care providers, Wednesday, March 20 from 5-8 p.m.

The CPR class, which will cover adult, child and infant CPR, will be held in the Large Conference Room located on the lower level of the hospital. The cost of the class, for certification or recertification, is the same. The card received with the course does certify attendants in CPR for two years.

CPR is administered when someone’s breathing, pulse, or both, stop. When both of them stop, the victim has suffered sudden death, which can be caused by poisoning, drowning, choking, suffocation, electrocution, smoke inhalation, or the most common cause, heart attack.

The Auxiliary of Veterans Memorial Hospital will be holding its monthly Euchre Marathon for all individuals of the community interested  Thursday, March 21. Men and women are welcome to attend, even if they are not an Auxiliary member. The Euchre marathons are held the third Thursday of each month at the Senior Citizens Room at the Waukon Wellness Center.

The Auxiliary’s Euchre Marathons begin at 11:30 a.m. with dinner, if chosen.  Call Northland Agency on Aging at 877-838-8077 if choosing to eat dinner. Card playing will follow at 12:30 p.m. until approximately 2:30 p.m. Anyone wishing to stay and play cards following the Senior Citizens meal is more than welcome to do so. All proceeds go toward the Auxiliary of Veterans Memorial Hospital.  Prizes will be awarded.

Anyone interested in attending, but preferring to play Bridge is also welcome to join in. It is asked that they come with their own table of four players, however.

By Jill Fleming MS, RD/LD
Veterans Memorial Hospital Dietitian

Sure, you can lose weight quickly. There are plenty of fad diets that work to shed pounds fast, leaving you feeling hungry and deprived.  The problem is that most people can only follow these restrictive diets for a short time, eventually going back to their old way of eating. I call this the “diet roller coaster”.

Instead of starting a restrictive diet, which lowers your metabolism, why not adopt a few new choices that can turn into lifelong habits?  The weight you lose with new habits is more likely to be permanent.

Here are 10 of my favorite proven habits to promote weight loss:

The Veterans Memorial Health Care Foundation recently purchased a radio communication upgrade for the hospital. The purchase included 20 pagers and six handheld radios replacing outdated equipment, making a much more reliable paging system. Many of the Foundation members are pictured here with just a few of the radios and pagers recently purchased which have greatly helped improve the communication not only with the hospital and the ambulances, but also majorly improving communications with the Sheriff’s Department and other area ambulance services. Pictured in the front row, left to right, are Foundation members Nancy Schoh, Kevin Stinn, Nona Sawyer and Jane Dietrich. Back row, left to right, are Craig Lensing, Breanna Sommer, Amy Cote’, Diane Butikofer, RN, Emergency Services, Kevin Hanson, Dan Denk, Gail Prestemon and Bev Larson-Needham. The Foundation allocated these funds from the numerous memorials they welcome and receive on a regular basis. Submitted photo.
 

Veterans Memorial Hospital will again be offering a pain control presentation for the public March 13 and March 14. Dr. Dave Schwartz will be hosting these informative pain control presentations which will both detail the two new pain control options he offers at Veterans Memorial Hospital. Both presentations will include the same information, but are being offered on two different days at different times to try to suit more schedules.

The Wednesday, March 13 presentation will begin at 5:30 p.m. and will be held in the Large Conference Room located on the lower level of Veterans Memorial Hospital. The Thursday, March 14 presentation will begin at 10 a.m. and will also be held in the hospital’s Large Conference Room.