A little over a month ago, I entered into a blogging agreement with Jon, the owner at My Identity Doctor. While I updated the official disclosure page at that time, I held off on the official announcement until I got going blogging.

The deal: Jon offered me a position blogging 6-8 times per month. He’s paying me and has offered product discounts.

What this means: For this site? It means from time to time I’ll probably let Kerri on the Prairies readers know of new posts I’ve written for My Identity Doctor if i feel they’re relevant to what the core themes of my blog are. Otherwise, it means very little for what I do here, which is chronicling my life. For the My Identity Doctor blog? It also still means that my views on my own–however, science is science–which is what my primary focus will be–and I believe strongly in the necessity of medical ID jewelry, which I’ve communicated before on this blog.

If you have any questions about the agreement, shoot me an e-mail and we can chat–transparency is a big deal to me, and I want to be sure that anybody reading my blog or having any concerns still feels that transparency.

Otherwise, if you’d like a fresh primer on who I am, head on over and check it out!

293063_10151992567335375_721240625_n.jpgSince my asthma entered a level of weirdness beyond control by the standard FloVent/Ventolin combination, I’ve worn some sort of medical identification (they started off with random ICE tags I got made at the pet store with the engraving machine, if you want me to be perfectly honest, and then i got a plain silver dog tag made at an American Wal-Mart).  I wear ID not with the anticipation anything will happen rendering me unable to speak, but in case it does. I’m as active as possible, and all over the place–whether I’m out on the road, at work or school, outdoors training for a race, indoors working out or hanging with my friends, not everybody around me is going to know my medical history. And while I don’t go to great lengths to “hide” my asthma, it happens often enough that people don’t know (that part gets kind of awkward when I’m playing goofy gym games in school and have some sort of coughing spasm/respiratory situation. Ahem). In reality though, you just never know what will happen, and being proactive is NEVER a bad idea.

Sidebar: I spent a year as a MedicAlert member, but I was not impressed when they jacked the prices up for membership into their database–and this is without mentioning that the Canadian system, which is linked to the same hotline as the American system, costs significantly more for IDs as it is. I loved the security of the MedicAlert system, but when it was going to cost $60 a year, I realized there were many more things I could do with that much money. They offered to lower my membership fee, but that doesn’t help anybody but me. So i didn’t renew when it came time to.

Additionally, I like to have options. I don’t have a choice that I have asthma. I choose to wear medical identification jewelry, but that doesn’t mean I’ll wear just anything. I have a necklace that looks like a guitar pick that simply says “asthma; organ donor” [the fact that I want my organs donated in the case that I die unexpectedly is so important to me that it is engraved on all of my medical IDs]. I have a RoadID Slim, which I can change the band colour on. The Interactive RoadID is an integral part of my medical ID, as the bracelet I am wearing in the picture on the right contains the information to access my Emergency Response Profile that is connected to my RoadID.

My “everyday” bracelet is the one in the picture to the right. It’s simple, and while it looks like a medical ID, it’s not drawing a huge amount of attention to itself. [Oh, it also now has a cupcake charm on the opposite side of the ID plate]. I’m planning to at some point get another tag made so I can put pretty beaded bracelets on it, but I kind of suck at making those and stuff.

And, obviously it’s important that it coincidentally matches my guitar! I ordered the bracelet before I bought that guitar, but I am way okay that they match.

On recommendation from my friend Steve, I got this bracelet from My Identity Doctor. You’ll notice I don’t have the front engraved, which is for multiple reasons. I fit tons of information on the other side, so I didn’t need to use the front side. And while I’m open with the kids at work if they ask me any questions about my asthma, I really don’t want them staring at my bracelet all the time–“What’s your bracelet for?” “I have asthma.” “Oh! So-and-so has asthma too! Can you draw me a kitty? When are we going to the gym?” is much better than “What are all those numbers for?” “So can you do _____?” x 8000 other questions [those questions are fine infrequently. Every day not so much]. Other reasons include sketchy bus strangers and people I don’t know. If they really need the information, they can flip it over. Hopefully, though, the only time it needs to be flipped over is next time I have to play the casualty in first-aid training and the first-aid-knowing bystander finds my bracelet [it happened once. I was used as an example and everything].

The engraving on the back is black-filled and laser-engraved, and is super clear to read. Jon at My Identity Doctor does an awesome job, and I’d highly recommend checking out his store when you’re in for your next medical ID purchase. Available IDs feature a variety of colours and a couple different styles–they’re simple, high quality and a decent price. Jon also shared the discount code SSRJ which can be used for a 25% discount off your purchase until the end of September.

So, if you’ve got some sort of ongoing medical shenanigans, are you wearing medical ID? Why or why not? Let’s talk in the comments. [Perhaps I should start saying “ongoing medical shenanigans” instead of “chronic disease”. That’s academic paper material right?]

Disclosure: As always, I never post about a product or service if I don’t believe in it wholeheartedly. I contacted Jon at MyIdentityDoctor after seeing the prizes/contest page on his site, and I may earn some swag from this post. Regardless, I dealt with him as a customer prior to the possibility of free stuff, and my experience from ordering to receiving my bracelet was nothing but positive. He even sent me a separate e-mail because I said “Hi” to his dog Burton in the notes of my order via Etsy. How cool is that?

Here is another one of those iamtheworstbloggereveritsbeenforeverandileftyouallwithacliffhangerohmygod posts. Now that we have that over with . . .

Appointment update. I saw the doctor on Monday. My iron is way lower than it should be, so I am supplementing with essentially as much as my body can tolerate [which is essentially the nice way of saying: take as much as you can because this is not good, a nutritional re-vamp is not enough alone, lady. Fine then. At least chocolate milk has iron in it?]

As for the thyroid, my TSH [thyroid stimulating hormone] is borderline high. So when we go re-test the iron in August, we will re-test the thyroid. Essentially, and it is kind of confusing, high TSH = lower thyroid hormone production; low TSH = high thyroid hormone production. So there you go.] The short story is that while I do not fully have hypothyroidism yet, however, it could go either way: best case, it corrects itself [this is what the internet tells me might happen, so I am not overly optimistic], otherwise, my thyroid hormone production will keep dropping, therefore my TSH will keep going up, and I will have hypothyroidism. So it is the game of wait-and-see, which kind of sucks more than just getting the diagnosis over with.

School update. So alongside this, I am also failing anatomy. I’ve been doing twice-weekly tutoring sessions with my friend/now-coworker Danielle and making flash cards and filling out charts, and all that supposed goodness. There is just so much stuff to remember, and this class is hard. I have five days left, so fingers crossed I make it through this and don’t have to repeat come Fall. I filled out eight pages of muscle charts today, and there is more to come, plus a tutoring session tomorrow. I am so close, but so far from being close enough. I’ve had so many of these close calls with dumb classes this year, like Principles of Coaching, but this is by far the closest aside from Intro Kinesiology where I failed pretty hard early on and then pulled myself up to a B. So there is hope to pass, but I’m just riding it out and not holding my breath on anything. i’m working hard, but it’s just nerve-wracking to have 50% of my grade riding on a 27-hour span of time. Three. More. Days.

Also thanks to studying, I’ve eaten like a third of a pan of rice krispy cake today [my mom put chocolate chips in it. Who can resist chocolate chips?]. And likewise have gotten no exercise.

QUEBEC. The Asthma Society of Canada booked my flight to Quebec City for August. I am so amped. Except I need to probably learn some French beforehand. it’s going to be a whirlwind trip, as I will be in-and-out of Quebec City in 33 hours and back home in just over 40. Or something. [I’m bad at math at the best of times and it’s currently 12:10 AM.]

Race training. And, another exciting bit! As soon as this exam is over, I’m kicking up the training for the Canadian Diabetes Association 10K walk in September! Wanna support me in the race and support Canadians living with diabetes? Hit up my fundraising page! Live in my area and want to race with us? Shoot me an e-mail.  I’ve got hopes to get “team” shirts made, and hopes to rock a blue tutu on race day!  With props to Jay, we’re going to be called Good Things Run on Insulin, and it’s going to kick ass.

Speaking of kicking ass . . . This is me on Friday. Rocking my You Can Do This Project t-shirt, kids’ scarves [one of which happened to be blue for Blue Friday ;)] and my sweet new ID necklace from Lauren’s Hope! :] [To follow up on a previous entry, I am not continuing my MedicAlert membership after August. They offered to decrease my membership fee from $5 to $4 a month, but why should I when that doesn’t help anybody but me? i’ll be rocking my cool Lauren’s Hope ID, hunting down an epic interchangable bracelet, and sporting some Road IDs [I can get multiple Road IDs for the same price as a MedicAlert sportband. Boooom!]  Anyway, oh my goodness, look how kick ass this necklace is!

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