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on July 10, 2013 - 7:42 PM
When he was a student at South Park High School in the 1940s, Joe Conley's friends jokingly called him "Hollywood Joe."
"I always had a flair for the dramatic and was involved in plays and shows, but I think they meant it sarcastically," he said.
That flair eventually led Conley to an acting career in Hollywood where he became best known for his role on the long-running series "The Waltons."
Conley died Sunday at 85. The Los Angeles Times reported that according to his wife, Louise Conley, he died at a care facility in Southern California. She said he had suffered from dementia.
Conley had bit parts on 1960s series such as "Green Acres" and "The Beverly Hillbillies" before he landed a role on CBS' "The Waltons" in 1972 that would last nearly a decade.
He played Ike Godsey, postmaster and owner of the Jefferson County general store frequented by the Walton family in Depression-era Virginia.
He would appear in 172 episodes over nine seasons and in TV movie reunions that lasted into the 1990s
In 2001, Conley returned to his hometown to join more than 300 people who attended South Buffalo '40s Annual Stag at Fontana's Picnic Grove for those who grew up in the 1940s.
In an interview with News Staff Reporter Tom Ernst, Conley said he enjoyed coming back to visit his hometown and showing his children the house on Whitfield Avenue where he grew up.
"South Buffalo was a nice place to grow up," he said at the time, "and while the main streets have changed a lot, it's amazing how the side streets haven't changed."
After graduating from South Park in 1945, he moved to California with his mother and started college, only to have his fledgling dramatic career interrupted, in Ernst's words, "by a command performance courtesy of Uncle Sam and a three-year role in the Army."
He did not serve in World War II but was called back into the service for the Korean War and was awarded the Silver Star, the nation's third-highest military honor, for valor.
He was a second lieutenant serving as a forward observer, spotting enemy positions and calling in artillery, he said.
His unit was under heavy attack when a colonel jumped into Conley's foxhole and asked him the situation. The next thing Conley knew, the colonel had run up the hill and was waving for the others to follow.
Conley summoned the two enlisted men who were with him, and they went up the hill, too.
"The colonel was literally blown apart in front of us, and all three of us were wounded," said Conley, displaying a bent finger.
"I don't see myself as a hero," he said at the time. "[The colonel] was. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time."


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Free-agent outfielder Shane Victorino, the only Maui-born All-Star in major league history, confirmed via Twitter that he agreed to a deal with the Boston Red Sox on Tuesday.
According to Major League Baseball's website, the deal, not yet confirmed by the team, is reportedly for $39 million over three years, pending a physical.
"Just agreed to join the Boston Red Sox in the middle of paradise," Victorino tweeted with the hashtag "BLESSED" followed by three exclamation points. "Can't wait to get to Boston!"
Article Photos
Shane Victorino finished last season with the Los Angeles Dodgers after being traded from the Philadelphia Phillies in August. He is the only Maui-born All-Star in major league history, and holds or shares the top career totals for Hawaii-born players in home runs, stolen bases, runs, doubles and triples.
AP file photo
Victorino is on Maui this week to host a golf tournament that will benefit his foundation.
Victorino, who turned 32 on Friday, set a career high with 39 stolen bases last year, which he spent with the Philadelphia Phillies and Los Angeles Dodgers. His batting average of .255 was a career low for a full season. The 1999 St. Anthony High School graduate hit 11 home runs with 55 RBIs and 72 runs.
In nine seasons in the big leagues, Victorino has a .275 average, and his 90 homers are tied with Mike Lum for the most by a Hawaii-born major leaguer. Victorino has driven in 409 runs, and his 201 stolen bases rank first among players from the Aloha State.
Victorino's career has been spent primarily as a center fielder, and he won three consecutive Gold Gloves with the Phillies from 2008 to 2010. According to the story on the Red Sox site, Victorino would likely play right field for Boston this year. The team's contract with current center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury will expire after the 2013 season.
Fenway Park has a large right field - the fence in deep right is 380 feet from home plate, and the distance down the line is 302.
"It's probably the toughest right field in baseball to play, just in terms of the space to cover," Boston manager John Farrell was quoted as saying on the team's site, "so that range comes into play. It might not be your prototypical right fielder where it's a power bat, because we do value the defense in that area. That's not to exclude anyone, but defense takes a high priority, in that position at Fenway particularly."
Red Sox general manager Ben Cherington was quoted as saying: "In our ballpark, we'd like to have someone who's played a lot of center in right field - if we can."
Victorino had nine assists last season, tied for sixth among National League outfielders, and a .994 fielding percentage. In 2011, he did not commit an error in 296 total chances.
Victorino was named to the NL All-Star team in 2009 and 2011. His 1,060 hits, 195 doubles, 65 triples and 616 runs also top the list among Hawaii born players.
Victorino began his major league career in 2003, appearing in 36 games with the San Diego Padres.
He spent all of 2004 and much of 2005 in the minor leagues - in 2005 he was named the International League's MVP while with Scranton-Wilkes-Barre, the Phillies' Triple-A team, then was called up for 21 games with Philadelphia. He spent full seasons with the Phillies from 2006 to 2011, and last year was traded in August to the Dodgers, the team that originally signed him in 1999.
He batted .245 with two homers, 15 RBIs, 26 runs and 15 steals in 53 games with Los Angeles. He hit .261 in 101 games with Philadelphia last year.
According to Major League Baseball's website, the Cleveland Indians were also trying to acquire Victorino.

subset: commoncrawl


text: Well, Jason skated senior nationals this year. Granted he only took 9th but that was without a 3A and with alot of seasoned performers before him. I fully expect him to be in the top 5 this year! I don't see any similarity between him and Johnny Weir other than graceful stroking on the ice and quiet landings on the jumps. And if I'm not mistaken, he's only 18 years olo. So much potential and so much time to develop.


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Abdominal exploration is surgery to look at the organs and structures in your belly area (abdomen). This includes your:
Surgery that opens the abdomen is called a laparotomy.
Exploratory surgery; Laparotomy; Exploratory laparotomy
Exploratory laparotomy is done while you are under general anesthesia. This means you are asleep and feel no pain.
The surgeon makes a cut into the abdomen and examines the abdominal organs. The size and location of the surgical cut depends on the specific health concern.
A biopsy can be taken during the procedure.
Laparoscopy describes a group of procedures that are performed with a camera placed in the abdomen. If possible, laparoscopy will be done instead of laparotomy.
Your doctor may recommend a laparatomy if imaging tests of the abdomen, such as x-rays and CT scans, have not provided an accurate diagnosis.
Exploratory laparotomy may be used to help diagnose and treat many health conditions, including:
Risks of anesthesia include:
Risks of surgery include:
You will have several visits with your health care provider and undergo medical tests before your surgery. Your health care provider will:
Tell your doctor or nurse:
During the week before your surgery:
On the day of your surgery:
You should be able to start eating and drinking normally about 2 - 3 days after the surgery. How long you stay in the hospital depends on the severity of the problem. Complete recovery usually takes about 4 weeks.
Martin RS, Meredith JW. Management of acute trauma. In: Townsend CM Jr, Beauchamp RD, Evers BM, Mattox KL, eds. Sabiston Textbook of Surgery. 19th ed. Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier Saunders; 2012:chap 18.
Squires RA, Postier RG. Acute abdomen. In: Townsend CM Jr, Beauchamp RD, Evers BM, Mattox KL, eds. Sabiston Textbook of Surgery. 19th ed. Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier Saunders; 2012:chap 47.
On a mission to heal body, mind and spirit


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February 15, 2011
Latest House FY 2011 CR Proposes Funding Cuts to Cancer Programs
The text of the House fiscal year (FY) 2011 Continuing Resolution (CR) was released last week and it provides cuts to the cancer research and control programs at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The NIH budget would be cut by $1.6 billion which is 4% below the FY 2010 funding level. Additionally, the CDC will see a decrease of 21% or $1.3 billion below FY 2010. The CR does not contain a specific breakdown of the funding cuts to the CDC cancer prevention and control programs including the Geraldine Ferraro Blood Cancer Program, but it is a safe assumption that they will see funding decreases in FY 2011. The FDA budget is cut by $241 million under the CR. The House will debate and vote on the CR this week.
President Releases FY 2012 Budget
The President released his FY 2012 budget on February14. He proposed $79.9 billion in discretionary spending for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), an increase of $95 million from FY 2011. Within HHS, the budget request for the NIH for FY 2012 is $31.987 billion; this is an increase of $745 million, or 2.4%, over FY 2010 levels. The budget request for the National Cancer Institute is $5.196 billion, an increase of $95 million over FY 2010. The FY 2012 budget request includes $100 million for the Cures Acceleration Network.
The CDC budget request shows an increase of $371 million over FY 2010 levels. However, there would be a substantial change in the chronic disease program where the Geraldine Ferraro Blood Cancer Program is currently housed. There would become a single chronic disease block grant to the states, which would result in the elimination of all disease-specific programs that have been part of the chronic disease program at CDC. The budget request for FDA for FY 2012 represents an increase of approximately $1 billion over FY 2010 levels.
For more information about the legislation listed above or any other IMF advocacy initiative, contact IMF's Director of Government Relations, Christine Murphy at firstname.lastname@example.com or 703-738-1498.


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Room to Read | World Change Starts with Educated Children
Located between India and Myanmar, Bangladesh became a nation in 1971 after a bloody war of independence that separated it from Pakistan. The fledgling country has seen its share of natural disasters and famines, as well as political turmoil and military coups, but since 1991, when a system of parliamentary democracy was established, it has experienced relative stability and economic progress. Home to 140 million residents, Bangladesh is the most densely-populated country in the world and also one of its poorest and least developed. Although per capita GDP has more than doubled since 1975, the country remains 147th out of 179 countries on the Human Development Index.
Poverty in Bangladesh is in decline, having fallen 20 percent since 1990. Most of this economic growth has been fueled by industrialization in Dhaka and other urban centers, where foreign investors can capitalize on the country's large, hardworking labor pool and low wages.
The Government of Bangladesh has made primary education a high priority since passing the Primary Education Compulsory Act in 1990, which made education through 5th grade mandatory and free for all students. Nonetheless, Bangladesh still faces many educational challenges.
It has one of the largest primary education systems in the world, with an estimated 18 million primary school aged children (ages 6 to 10 years). Because of this, the student to teacher ratio in government primary school is 59:1, which is challenging for students and teachers alike, and school hours are limited to four hours per day. Access to resources can also be a problem, with no formal library system in the country's schools.
As a result of these and other factors, school completion rates and academic achievement in Bangladesh remain low, with 56% of all students dropping out before secondary school.
As in many other developing countries, educational access is particularly poor in rural areas, where schools are few and far between and children are expected to work to contribute to family income. This divide is reflected in the stark contrast between literacy rates in rural and urban areas—a nearly 30% difference.
For girls in Bangladesh, the barriers to education are even greater than those of their male peers, with cultural norms and early marriage often preventing young women from fulfilling their academic potential.
Room to Read Bangladesh was officially established in 2008, and program operations launched one year later. Initially, our operations in Bangladesh included School Libraries, Girls' Education and Book Publishing in the Bengali language. In 2011 our team also introduced Reading & Writing Instruction and School Construction. Our key NGO partners in the country include SHARP and EC Bangladesh.
Results updated annually
Zaki Hasan was Room to Read's founding country director in Bangladesh, and says he was initially drawn to the organization for our commitment to building local capacity. His career in international development has focused almost exclusively on education, including work with Save the Children, ActionAid and Helen Keller International.
Having been a part of the Room to Read family for several years, Zaki's favorite part of his job is the opportunity it provides to innovate and interact with education experts from around the world. When he's not wearing his country director hat, Zaki can usually be found spending time with his two children or writing articles about various social issues.
Visit a school or library in any of the countries where we work and meet the local team that makes it all possible.
Site visits »
Less than 1% of US nonprofits have received nine consecutive Charity Navigator four star ratings. Our transparency and accountability place us among the best charities. See for yourself.
Documentary filmmakers travel to Room to Read projects across Asia and Africa to tell the stories of children who are benefitting from our programs.
See our work in person »
Send a girl to school, start a library, or build new classrooms. We can help you run your own fundraising campaign with your friends and family, complete with your own microsite to collect gifts and track your progress.
Check out a great campaign »
Contact us online at firstname.lastname@example.com.
Global Office:+1 (415) 839-44009am-5pm Pacific Time (US)Mon-Fri, excluding holidays
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Privacy and Cookies Policy | Terms & Conditions Copyright © 2015 Room to Read. All rights reserved. Room to Read, the Room to Read Logo and World Change Starts with Educated Children are registered trademarks of Room to Read in the United States and other countries.


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Somewhere Between with special guest Q&A with Dir. Linda Goldstein Knowlton
Enjoy these special screenings of Somewhere Between with special guest Q&A with Director Linda Goldstein Knowlton. She will be in attendance for four screenings over three days during opening weekend of the film. Additional screenings will continue in the days to follow without a question and answer session.
Enjoy this rare opportunity to meet Chicago native Linda Goldstein Knowlton and cast members of the documentary and ask them questions about Somewhere Between during a brief question and answer session after each of these screenings:
Friday, January 11, 2013, 7:30pm
Saturday, January 12, 2013, 3:00pm
Saturday, January 12, 2013 7:30pm
Sunday, Janaury 13, 2013, 2:00pm
Additional screenings through January 17th will not include a Q&A.
For groups of 20 or more please email groups@musicboxtheatre for a special group rate.
About the Q and A panel:
Linda Goldstein Knowlton co-directed and co-produced the feature-length documentary, THE WORLD ACCORDING TO SESAME STREET. The film examines Sesame Street's international co-productions, made primarily in some of the world's political hotspots, including Kosovo, Bangladesh, and South Africa. The film made its World Premiere in competition at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival as an Official Selection in the U.S. Documentary category. The film was selected and screened at the Hot Docs Film Festival in Toronto, the Seattle Film Festival, and other festivals including Boston, Dubrovnik, New Zealand, Melbourne, and Zurich.
Born and raised in Chicago, Goldstein Knowlton studied neuroscience at Brown University. Following college, she remained in Providence to serve the governor of Rhode Island in the Office of Intergovernmental Relations. She subsequently worked raising funds for film preservation at The American Film Institute, in Washington, D.C., and, later, in Los Angeles. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter.
During production, Ann was 14 and lived in a suburb near Philadelphia, PA. White picket fences, a flag on every porch. She loved her life and had little desire to know anything about where she came from. When asked if she would ever like to visit China and explore her roots, she said, "I¹d like to see the orphanage, but I wouldn't want to meet my birth parents." Her attitude, however, shifted when she met other adopted girls in the CAL/Global Girls organization, and signed up for a trip to Europe with them. Once she was exposed to the innermost thoughts of other girls like her, girls who admit they have a nagging desire to find their roots, her world cracks open.
Ann is finishing her freshman year at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She is an International Business major and is a member of Phi Sigma Pi, a national coeducational honor fraternity. She and Haley remain close friends.
When we see her in the film, Jenna is 15 and attends the prestigious Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. She plays guitar, is the JV crew coxswain, and a member of the ice hockey team. She's bright, serious, and articulate. She struggles with the pressure to be "perfect," and her fears of being rejected if she's not. As strong as she is, she breaks down discussing the word "abandonment" and its effect on her life. And, in her sophomore year of high school, her carefully constructed walls begin to crumble. She thinks more and more about her birth mother: Who was she? Why did she give Jenna up? The film documents her courage and commitment to facing her past as she volunteers for summer work at the very Chinese orphanage that housed her as an infant.
Jenna is finishing up her sophomore year at Yale University, where she majors in Socio-cultural Anthropology and participates in a Chinese dance troupe called Phoenix. She is the founder and president of Adopted Yalies, a student group for adopted people, and she¹s the founder and director of The Teen Program, a subset of Chinese Adopted Siblings Program for Youth (CASPY), which is a big sibling/little sibling program for Chinese adoptees in the greater New Haven area. This summer she will search for her birth family and plans to document the process. Through this autoethnographic project, she hopes to share the methods used and the external and internal obstacles encountered, in order to provide a resource for younger adoptees who also may wish to search for their birth families. This research is funded by the Kingsley Trust Association Summer Travel Fellowship, the Yale College Public Service Research Grant, and the Yale College Dean's Research Fellowship in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
We meet Fang, a fiercely intelligent young woman, when she is 14 and a resident of famously liberal Berkeley, CA. She was adopted at age five, is fluent in Mandarin, and remembers vividly being left by her biological brother on a street corner. In Berkeley, however, she is safe and secure‹until her family starts to unravel. Her adopted parents divorce, and Fang must relive the "abandonment" she faced as a small child. Amid this emotional turmoil, Fang travels to China and sees a little girl in a Chinese foster home, unmoving because of her cerebral palsy. Touched, Fang becomes determined to find the little girl a home. This self-imposed task becomes Fang¹s salvation, letting her watch her own adoption story unfold anew with this little girl and turning her past into her strength.
Fang is finishing her freshman year at Mt. Holyoke, where she is a double major in sociology and economics and is a member of the Mt. Holyoke Tennis Team. Some of her favorite hobbies include dancing, swimming, yoga, taking walks, writing poetry, having impromptu pow-wows with her friends, and attending lectures given by guest speakers. She plans to spend the summer in Tibet doing an internship program.
Tickets are $9.25 each
Somewhere Between
directed by Linda Goldstein Knowlton in English
This film follows four teenage girls adopted from China as they attempt to answer the uniquely human question, "Who am I?"
Four baby girls are born in China to families who are unable to keep them, largely because of China's "One Child Policy." Instead of being raised by their biological parents, the baby girls are raised in orphanages, and then eventually adopted by American families to be whisked halfway around the world to the United States. There, they grow up with Sesame Street, hip-hop, and Twitter. They describe themselves as "bananas": white on the inside and yellow on the outside. All is well, until they hit their teen years, when their pasts pull at them, and they begin to wonder, "Who am I?"
All four know they were probably "given up" because they were girls (they are understandably uncomfortable with the word "abandoned"), and grapple with issues of race, gender, and identity more acutely than most their age.
Documentaries have been made before about international adoption, but they have always been from the point of view of the adoptive, Caucasian parents, or the adult adoptee. Young women's voices are rarely heard—especially young women of color. Somewhere Between lets four teenaged girls—Fang, Haley, Ann, and Jenna—tell their own stories, letting the film unfold from their points of view and shedding light on their deepest thoughts: about their families, their feelings of being "other," and their powerful connections to a past that most of them cannot recall.
The film captures nearly three years in the lives of these four dynamic young women. The emotional journey took the film crew across America where they documented the girls in their hometowns, facing racism and struggling with stereotypes. Their journeys were also documented as they traveled to Europe to meet other transracial adoptees and back to China, where they witnessed China's gender gap resulting from its One Child Policy.
The film also witnesses their emotional coming-of-age. As the girls discover who they are, viewers—no matter their color, gender, or culture—will find themselves exploring their own sense of identity and their feelings about family and belonging. Through their experiences, we will also see our still-prevalent cultural disconnects around stereotyping and race.
As Somewhere Between plunges the viewer into the ordinary and extraordinary days of these four girls lives, we, too, are forced to pause and consider who we are—both as individuals and as a nation of immigrants.


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Sir.—In the September 1991 issue of AJDC, Keating and colleagues1 presented results of compelling, descriptive, epidemiologic research on the growing problem of oral water intoxication in infants.
The authors suggest that the unavailability of infant formula was a major factor in the increased occurrence of oral water intoxication and substantiated this conclusion with the fact that the current amount of formula supplied through the Women, Infants, and Children program is inadequate for the growing infant. Mothers simply supplement with water when the formula runs out.
We agree with the authors that more formula must be made available for poor infants and that care givers must receive better education about using formula. However, the obvious and most cost-effective solution to this serious health risk is the promotion and support of breast-feeding through infancy by all providers of maternal and child health care.
The superiority of breast-feeding for both infants and
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Indicate all relevant conflicts of interest of each author below, including all relevant financial interests, activities, and relationships within the past 3 years including, but not limited to, employment, affiliation, grants or funding, consultancies, honoraria or payment, speakers' bureaus, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, royalties, donation of medical equipment, or patents planned, pending, or issued. If all authors have none, check "No potential conflicts or relevant financial interests" in the box below. Please also indicate any funding received in support of this work. The information will be posted with your response.
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Listening to emo music...
also masterbation
also masterbation
Everytime you listen to emo god kills a kitten
Everytime you masterbate god kills a kitten
Everytime you masterbate god kills a kitten
de Evoon 16 Iulie 2005
Trending Now
Can you define these popular missing words?
Photos & Videos
Top Definition
The act of masturbating
Damn I'm soo horny, I better go kill some kittens
de Matt R 28 Martie 2005
Every time you Masturbating - god kills a kitten
Jean? yeah! Jean the kitten killing machine!
de Mike 03 Martie 2005
masturbating, usually guys jerking off to pornographic images. a common phrase on fark.com.
Please forgive me in advance for the one or two kittens that I may be directly responsible for killing after looking at this boobies link.
de tonmeister 14 Februarie 2005
Very powerful young felines, under your control.
If you masturbate, a kitten kills God. The kitten is one of the killing kittens.
de Fearman 06 Noiembrie 2007
Slang for "The slaying of innocent people."
?George Bush is killing kittens in Iraq while ignoring North Korea."
de Brainiac 07 Ianuarie 2005


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I consider death pretty serious. Now then ...
I was watching television with my son, forcing him to endure an hour or so of shows I wanted to watch (i.e. anything without a cast of overenthusiastic pre-teen "actors" and a laugh track).
Once he settled down, realizing I wasn't going to give in to his demands for Nickelodeon, the Disney Channel or Cartoon Network, he began watching the program, an innocuous home improvement show, in earnest.
The program wasn't the problem - it was the commercials.
"Mom!" my son exclaimed at one point, "It's ANOTHER commercial for pills!"
His pronouncements became more urgent with each successive ad.
Thanks to his alerts, I became painfully aware of these ads.
But could I find a pain reliever for it, I wondered? I saw pain reliever ads for arthritis pain, headache pain, back pain, tension headache pain and menstrual pain.
I didn't see any for painful awareness.
During one inordinately long commercial break, we were urged to call the doctor to inquire about no less than five prescription medications.
I know, because I counted them.
Keeping all of this in mind, I am wondering why owners are surprised that their veterinarians also can offer various prescription medications for their pets.
Did you know that we have a drug to treat senility symptoms in old dogs? Owners think I'm joking when I mention it.
But, it's not only real, it works in many cases.
How do you know if your dog is senile? He starts to forget stuff, like where he put his keys, where he should urinate and defecate, his name, who you are, where he parked the car - dog stuff.
From prescription heartworm control medications and dewormers, to pain relievers, drugs for behavioral problems, heart problems, breathing problems, thyroid disease, urinary tract problems - including incontinence, and now, a drug to aid in weight loss for obese animals, we've got a lot to offer.
We've also got a lot to explain, since the "magic" pill hasn't been invented.
What do I mean?
It's the same reason you're urged to call your doctor about the medications you see on television: education.
The drug companies can make you aware of their products, but the doctor, or in my case, the veterinarian, is responsible for making sure you know the details.
Sometimes, this is easy, sometimes not.
Take pain relievers, for instance. You can't watch prime time television without seeing many, many ads for different types of NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) for people. Celebrex, Advil, Aleve, Bayer aspirin, to name only a few.
Why so many? Because not all of them work on everybody, and some cause more side effects than others.
In the same vein, the veterinary field has developed its own NSAIDS, for the same reasons.
And, since all of these drugs are slightly different, there is more for the doctor to learn and be able to communicate to you about their use.
We also must keep in mind that when dealing with animals, the warnings may be very different between species.
For instance, most people nowadays are aware that Tylenol and aspirin are quite toxic to cats.
Aspirin has fallen out of favor for dogs with chronic pain, with the advent of newer, more effective drugs with fewer long-term effects on the GI tract and blood clotting mechanism.
One of the important things to remember about veterinary prescription drugs is that they mimic prescription drugs for humans - none are without side effects or warnings.
And yes, just about all of them, if you read the fine print, may cause death.
This wigs people out. Nobody wants to risk their loved ones' lives for any reason.
Although side effects may be scary, they have been with us as long as drugs.
Even seemingly innocuous herbs can be toxic.
The best policy when deciding whether or not to use a prescription drug, be it for yourself or your pets, is to discuss it and your concerns with the doctor.
Being informed is being empowered. Know the risks, and follow the prescribing doctor's dose and recommendations for monitoring.
By "follow the prescribing doctor's dose" I mean give the medicine as directed.
If you have concerns about the dose, or something doesn't seem right to you, ASK.
Many times, we hear about pets not getting better, only to learn that they were not given the medication at the correct dose.
Less is not more, and more may be detrimental.
As for monitoring, veterinarians tend to recommend blood tests or other objective diagnostics in addition to our follow-ups to watch for trouble in its early stages.
Animals can't describe how they feel. Medicines, especially those given long-term, can cause various organs to work harder to clear them from the body, and eventually cause these organs to malfunction.
Many medications' dosages should change with the development of other diseases such as kidney disease or heart disease, which may happen spontaneously, especially in our older patients.
Also, many senior patients need multiple medications at once, which can have other consequences.
Now that my kids are in bed, my cats and I have some important TV to watch.
At least I know that the cats won't beg me for toys or sugar-coated sugar if they watch my shows.
And, since I know they definitely don't suffer from insomnia, they won't beg me for sleep aids, either.
As for that juicy cheeseburger, I'm not so sure.
They may just want the burger for the toy surprise that comes with it. They are cats, after all, and cats love toy surprises.
My biggest concern is that I may be part of the target demographic for the ads that appear during the TV programs I enjoy.
If that's true, I may suffer from restless leg syndrome, insomnia, depression, high cholesterol, various pains, rheumatoid arthritis, an irregular GI tract, menopause and PMS, osteoporosis and COPD.
I know I don't have erectile dysfunction, so for that one, I'm off the hook.
Of course, if I have developed Alzheimer's, I may have forgotten some important stuff.
The fact that I may need a vitamin-mineral supplement that will cause me to look forward to taking it above all other things each morning frightens me.
I'm wrestling with the urgent ads for me to ingest sandwiches larger than my head, followed by miracle diet pills, followed by diet programs that actually will deliver food to my door, all with "results not typical."
With other disclaimers in these commercials that tell me if I take the medicines, I may develop various detrimental symptoms, including death, all I can say is: I'll take it!
One ad goes so far as to urge those who develop hives, trouble breathing and a severely swollen tongue as a result of taking the medicine they're pitching, to call their doctors.
I am mildly concerned that if I develop hives, trouble breathing and a severely swollen tongue, my doctor may not understand me when I call.
Daverio is a veterinarian at Williamsport West Veterinary Hospital.