Dear Triad Pediatrics Families,
We hope this e-newsletter finds you well amidst the unique season we have been in over the past few months. I know the cooler air the past few days has been a nice change and I look forward to moving into the fall season.
We appreciate your patience and flexibility over the past few months. We continue to separate our clinic utilizing only certain rooms for wellness and newborn visits and other rooms for sick visits. We also have been able to continue bypassing the waiting room and bringing you immediately back to your nurse with texting features and phone calls. It has not been completely seamless, some hiccups here and there along the way, but we really appreciate you working with us as we seek to provide the best, competent, and safe care for your family members.
We are really excited that Dr. Janie Ogle has joined the team of providers here. You can read more about her in this newsletter and on our website. She has quickly adapted and is available for wellness visits and also for those experiencing sports related concerns and injuries with her sports medicine background as well. She is now board certified in both pediatrics and sports medicine! She wholeheartedly embraces the values and vision of Triad Pediatrics and we are so grateful that the Lord led her here to serve during this season of her life.
Finally, we are excited to share plans to open an additional building/location on Monday, November 30, 2020. We are grateful for this additional space, which is extremely close to our current location. The address for the new location is 4012 Mendenhall Oaks Pkwy, right beside Truliant Federal Credit Union. We will communicate more details as this date gets closer to help you know which building you will be in for your appointments.
Sincerely,
Chad Cooke, PhD, LCMHC
Practice Administrator
Dr. Ogle joined the team of providers in August of 2020. She completed medical school at the Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine in Blacksburg, Virginia. She completed her pediatric residency at the University of Kentucky and most recently a sports medicine fellowship at the University of Tennessee. Dr. Ogle is a board-certified pediatrician and has also obtained her board certification in pediatric sports medicine. Dr. Ogle has served on numerous short term mission trips and looks forward to further opportunities providing medical care overseas. We are grateful that she is joining the team at Triad Pediatrics and look forward to welcoming her to the High Point and Greensboro community.
We have asked Dr. Ogle a few questions to help you get to know her a little more!
1.) What is your favorite food or restaurant? -Pizza Hut pizza or Memphis BBQ 🙂
2.) What is your favorite sport to play? Favorite sport to watch? -Currently ultimate frisbee, but really anything with a ball. Favorite to watch would be basketball although football and soccer are close behind.
3.) Do you prefer the mountains or the beach for vacation?-Hard choice but mountains. I was born in Gatlinburg, Tennessee and my grandfather grew up in Smokey Mt. National Park so the mountains are home.
4.) What is your favorite book? -Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers
5.) What is your favorite Bible verse? -Philippians 1:20, 1 Corinthians 15:58, and 1 Corinthians 15:10
6.) What will you miss most from Tennessee? -Definitely my family, but also the mountains and Tennessee sports 🙂
Fall is a great time for soups. Although tasty, soups can sometimes carry a lot of calories depending on the type of ingredients. There are, however, quite a few healthy and also delicious soups the whole family can enjoy!
White chicken and bean chili https://pin.it/5vj0Vnx
Chicken Lime soup https://pin.it/2deSg5O
Influenza season is just around the corner. Influenza is a group of viruses that can cause high fever, body aches, cough, sore throat and nasal congestion. Influenza has the potential to be very serious in some and can occasionally result in death. Millions of people will get the flu this year. Of those, hundreds of thousands will be hospitalized because of their symptoms or because of complications from the infection. According to the CDC, last year 30,000 - 60,000 people died from influenza.
One way you can protect yourself and your loved ones from the flu is by opting to get the flu vaccine. Our flu vaccines cannot prevent infection from all strains of the flu, but it does protect against the 4 most common strains found in the US. Vaccination has been shown to reduce the risk of getting the flu, reduce hospitalizations and reduce the risk of flu related deaths.
Triad Pediatrics is now offering flu vaccines to all children ages 6 months and older. We have both the attenuated (inactivated), quadrivalent flu shot, as well as, the flu mist (nasal spray). We encourage our parents to consider protecting their children this year with one of these options. As a reminder, it takes about 2 weeks for antibodies to develop in the body and provide protection after the vaccine, so the best time to vaccinate for the flu is now! Contact our office to set up an appointment for your child.
Hello TP Family. Wow, March 2020 through now has been a whirlwind of information and learning about COVID 19. We are still in a time of increased Covid 19 activity in NC, but we at least have a little bit more understanding of the disease. We have continued to note that children are typically not affected as severely as adults. We are learning that in younger children, their robust innate immune system does a good job of mitigating the effects of the Coronavirus. As children age, the innate immune response is replaced by a more sophisticated antigen specific immune response which unfortunately, can take a little longer to start fighting the illness. For children, continue to monitor for fevers, cough, muscle aches, chills, loss of taste or smell, new onset headache, new onset diarrhea or rashes. We also are keeping a close look out for MIS-C, which is a multi-system inflammatory condition that typically presents a few weeks after initial Covid infection. If you notice your child having new fevers, peeling rashes of the lips/eyes or hands, headaches or rashes, please make sure you receive prompt medical care.
Covid symptoms mimic and overlap many other common pediatric illnesses such as cold viruses, influenza and gastrointestinal viruses. One tool that we are excited to roll out this fall will be our rapid point of care COVID antigen test. This 15 minute test will allow us to quickly give your child a presumptive positive or negative result- helping us know if your child's symptoms could be Covid related. The rapid tests are not quite as sensitive as the send off tests, so a second swab may also be required for confirmation. Remember that if you have been exposed to Covid, the current CDC guidance suggests self isolation at home for 14 days. If you test positive for Covid, you are to isolate at home for at least 10 days AND show improvement in symptoms and not have fever for at least 24 hours. Risk reduction strategies continue to include frequent hand washing, social distancing and wearing a mask in public when distancing is unavoidable. As more and more children return to school, continue to stress to your kids the importance of keeping good hand hygiene, and please keep your child home if they have any symptoms of Covid 19. Although Covid 19 has unfortunately been a hot button divisive issue in our country that we are all tired of, I encourage you to continue to work hard to reduce the risk to yourself, your children and those in our society who are most vulnerable.
Mark Cummings, MD
SEE YOU IN A FEW MONTHS!
Credits:
Created with images by Evgeni Evgeniev - "Autumn colors" • Jon Tyson - "untitled image" • Steve Richey - "untitled image"