Serena Meyer RN, IBCLC

10/24/2025

Patients who had more cells had better outcomes, particularly for aggressive types such as triple-negative breast cancer

09/25/2025

Nurses at 22 different Kaiser facilities in California participated in the day of action.

07/18/2025

07/18/2025

This human is my favorite human. He's currently taking an EMT training before he starts his first semester at Cal for pre-med. I love him so much and he's smart kid. I do sort of hate him practicing all of his assessments on me because he's so damn rough but whatever haha

03/20/2025

Because orange! 🧡

03/18/2025

When you just have to be involved!

01/04/2025

I would be lying if I said that stomach viruses weren't interesting to me. We've all had them; they are a merciless scourge of parenthood. Many of us have been weakened and defeated for 48 hours by this villain. Our children watch days of television, and ate dry cereal for every meal while we were totally helpless.

So let's talk more about the "Stomach flu" better known as the Norwalk virus (Norovirus), which is the prototype strain of human caliciviruses named for the first town the epidemic was noted in, in 1972. It has a beautiful structure seen here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16641296

Recent 2019 study updates that the virus highjacks our ribosomes to reproduce itself. https://elifesciences.org/digests/46681/how-do-noroviruses-multiply

Believe it or not, people voluntarily infected themselves at Baylor College of Medicine so that its viral shedding duration through f***s could be documented (2008). In case you thought those first 2 days were the period of highest infection risk, you're probably right but "Virus shedding was first detected by antigen ELISA approximately 33 hours (median 42 hours) after inoculation and lasted 10 days (median 7 days) after inoculation."http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18826818

In other words, please don't get all relaxed about it, there is some documentation that shedding begins as early as the incubation period (about 10-60 hours before you get sick). It generally lasts about 24-48 hours, and you can communicate the disease actively for 48-72 hours after resolution.

48 hours. Hmm, why is that part interesting? Because generally preschools and regular public schools request that you have *24* hours free from vomiting before you head back to school. Well done, who ever researched that one.

So how do you get rid of it when you need 2 parts per million to get sick? Well good luck with that. You can use a steam cleaner, but the Norwalk virus survives regular temps of heating to 60ºC for 30 minutes, so it has to be a real steam cleaner. According to Public Health Safety of Canada, (data sheets available here: https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/food-poisoning/norovirus/health-professionals.html

You come up with this: "Susceptibility: Formulation R-82 for 10 minutes, 5-10% sodium hypochlorite for 10-20 minutes, peracetic acid or glutaraldehyde for 5 minutes. Recurrent outbreaks on cruise ships and in tropical resorts have been related to improper decontamination procedures." That's it folks.

So now you know what kills it, you're not sure how to get that dilution? If you are starting with 5% household bleach you might think you need to dilute it with water but you don't. You need to spray it on direct with adequate ventilation, and just let it dry.

Noroviruses are the most common cause of viral gastroenteritis in the United States. To determine the magnitude and duration of virus shedding in f***s, we evaluated persons who had been experimentally infected with Norwalk virus. Of 16 persons, clinical gastroenteritis (watery diarrhea and/or vomit...

12/11/2024

I did a little home visit and I got to meet this. Really cute cat and a really cute baby. She has her own Instagram page but I can't remember what it is. I was going to tag her in it. But true story, famous cat!