Dr. Plastic Picker is a “A Personal Plastic-Picking Blog: Fighting Ocean Plastic Pollution One Piece At a Time .” Staying true to this mission, I am here to work against the tide of plastic pollution. The day I found those 9 sunglasses and Humanized My Little Pony Plastic Toy Figure, was literally a wave of plastic washed onto the shores of the half mile of Pacific Ocean coast that I transverse. There were four local residents of our town who just happened to be on the beach that morning also, and we turned to each other. We knew each other because we see eachother on the beaches in the mornings usually in our own contemplative worlds. But that morning we held heavy clothing items together that were weighed down by seaweed, sand and ocean water. These items required two people to carry them the long stretch to the trash bins. Together we heaved those items into the bins. And those 9 sunglasses above we collected in the little pile together.

This journey has made me very philisophical. As of today, I have (17) posts in the Musings/Philosophy category and only (6) Reduce/Reuse category. Okay this is Dr. Plastic Picker getting back to work.

I also found the above glasses on my pollution fighting trip yesterday. I had already collected an additional 8 prescription glasses from various friends and in my own stash. I had vaguely known about eyeglass donation programs, but now I know more.

Lions Club has a Lions in Sight of California and Nevada will accept

• Eyeglasses. Please discard all eyeglass cases before sending or donating.
• Sunglasses. Prescription and non-prescription.
• Broken eyeglass parts. LIS recycles them as scrap.
• Clip on sunglasses with metal parts. Please discard clip ons that are all plastic. https://www.lionsinsight.net/how-to-donate-eyeglasses

I can mail them in with a preprinted out shipping label. I have said shipping label printed and ready on my desk.

Therefore between the ocean plastic pickings, our household and one friend’s household – we have 15 pairs of sunglasses and prescription lenses that I can donate.

Since I am sending them in anyway, I might as well send yours if I see you in the real physical world. If you are in the virtual/blog world than now you know how I did it, and you can replicate.

So Dr. Plastic Picker blog readers, please give me your old sunglasses and prescription glasses that you no longer need. Do not give me your back up pairs! It important to have a back up pair. But I had 2 pairs that I cannot wear anyway because the prescription is too weak and it gives me headaches. My goal is 30 pairs by December 20 at 5PM when I finish clinic.

Our department was briefly debating on the department group email list about dexamethasone versus predisone/prednisolone oral for asthma exacerbations. Dexamethasone is longer acting. The pediatricians about 7 years younger than me in our region tend to use dexamethasone for acute flares as a one time dose rather than the shorting acting predisone/prednisolone as a daily dose in a 3-5 day regimen. There were some ED based studies that touted it’s effectiveness. In my former life a decade ago, I did train in pediatric endocrinology. I moved cross country to settle back where I grew up and my husband was starting his career, and I decided to go into general pediatrics but treasured those two years in the rigorous world of calculating everything. Anyway, I don’t like Dexamethasone because it is easier for providers but it suppresses the adrenal gland and has more side effects.

I prefer prednisone or prednisolone as it gives me the level of anti-inflammatory effect I need and I can change the dosing regimen 3-5 days depending on the child. Dexamethasone is like slamming the system with that one dose. It works and obviously there is better adherence because there is nothing more for the parent to give. But I have found that those children as they have albuterol on board as well, are running around the house crazy and hyped up and eating their parents out of house and home! I sent a pithy reply to the youngsters reminding them (because we had done a literature review several years ago) that dexamethasone was acceptable but not superior. There were no subsequent emails from them.

But in all seriousness, when your patient is having an asthma attack – use whatever you have. Dexamethasone or prednisone, it’s academic. The ocean and earth is having an attack by our overcomsumption of plastic. It’s academic, whether we use the Surf Rake or drplasticpicker trying to mobilize indiviuals to pick up plastic without disrupting the seaweed/insect/shorebird ecosystem. When there is so much, everything works and every one is needed. Let’s not sit in rounds discussing on and on. We have to take action. Our patient, our earth, literally can’t breath. So send me your glasses!

Here is the follow-up post regarding our successful used eyeglass drive for Lions Club https://drplasticpicker.com/we-collected-37-glasses-to-deploy-back-into-circulation-via-lions-club/