(Missing) The Comforts of Home

My, my. I had two pretty craptastic days here in New Zealand.  One small wrong/bad thing after another kept happening.  Yesterday, I woke up for a 5 a.m. webinar featuring James Prochaska, PhD and William Miller, PhD discussing the transtheoretical model and motivational interviewing as they relate to health promotion.  As soon as it was over I went back to sleep and this messed up my alertness for the rest of the day.  In fact, I ended up walking back and forth from Abbey College to various points on campus four times because I kept forgetting things.  I was not a happy camper.

The real icing on the cake was when I was at MInT booking appointments.  It was my first time calling families to set up 12- and 24-month appointments.  There's a lot of detail to remember when calling the families: parent's name, child's name, which appointment I'm calling for, checking if a DXA scan needs to be booked, asking if the child would be okay wearing an accelerometer for a week, setting up mailing an online questionnaire, double-checking mailing addresses, asking if they'd like a text reminder the day before...the list goes on and on.  Well, my first call was to book a DXA scan for a child in the study and the sibling who was "green" but we still needed a DXA scan.  To do this, I have to have the MInT calendar open to view my available time slots and I have to have a Google calendar to view the available DXA scan time slots.  I didn't juggle the calendars, the information, and trying to personify a super friendly research assistant very well when I was talking to the father.  So, I apologized and handed the phone over to Bonnie to finish booking the appointment.  Oh dear.

When I read that paragraph back to myself it doesn't sound like a big deal, but finding ways to cope with stress can be a challenge.  Now, I understand why graduate students drink! J 


For the most part, a few deep breaths is all it takes for me to simmer down.  But, what I crave most on stressful days is the comfort of what was familiar.  Sometimes, I just want to sit in a comfy pair of sweatpants on my own couch with my family/friends/dog from home (maybe with a big bowl of macaroni and cheese, too).  I've been fortunate enough that a handful of these people are on Skype or Facebook at the same time that I am, so I can chit chat and whatnot.  But, these moments are too few and too far between.

So, to family and friends out there - shoot me an email, message me on Facebook or set up a Skype date!  I'd certainly appreciate it.

~~~

The only thing constant in life is change. - Rochefoucauld

Christmas Comes Early - Survey Style

Thursday is replacement questionnaire mail out day.

Uuuuugh!

Today, our team spent hours writing in women's names and signing our own (it's strange how my signature changes after writing it 700 times!) on cover letters, blu tacking pens to the cover letters, and matching cover letter ID numbers to replacement surveys.  This way, anyone who hasn't returned a survey gets a second chance.  For some reason, this was mind numbing work today - usually it doesn't bother me much.

Eventually, we decided to take a break to check the mail and see if we had any returned surveys.  There were 42. Yay!  So, just to give you an idea of what it's like to be a graduate student collecting returned surveys... there's the initial excitement that we received them and then we get to open them.  I'm pretty sure our eyes light up when we open them, just like it's Christmas day.

Today we had one survey that a woman stuck a Post-it note to.  It said, "Sorry about the delay with returning this questionnaire, have been on holiday." It's sort of sweet that she wrote the note!

I have decided that opening returned surveys is like opening a box of chocolates - you never know what you're going to get.  Sometimes everything is complete.  Sometimes answers are missing.  Sometimes people answer questions and put an asterisk next to their response with an explanation at the bottom of the page.

My favorite part about checking surveys is looking for comments on the last page.  We've read all sorts of interesting comments.  For example, one woman who received a $5 note explained that it should be a higher denomination.  Some women simply thank us for including them in the sample.  Others write paragraphs about their own weight-related struggles.

Here's what one woman wrote to us today:

Since last time (the previous survey) I was challenged to reflect on my health and weight and realised I'd definitely done the "middle-age spread."  Joined WeightWatchers online (no time to go to meetings!) and lost 10kg in 7 months.  Have managed to keep it off for 6 months by upping the "walking" exercise.  Would now like to try to budge the last 5kg.  Thanks to this survey, I've taken some positive steps to improve my health outcomes.  Yay!

It's moments like this where I am so happy and thankful that I've found a field that I love!  Weight management research is definitely going to keep me busy for a long, long time.

Penny for Your Thoughts

1,300+ surveys out. Just over 400 surveys back. Folks, we're in the midst of collecting data here!

Yesterday (Saturday, mind you), Heidi and I met to make phone calls to women who sent back incomplete surveys.  Basically, a lot of women accidentally missed a question here or there, but the biggie was unreported weight.  This is kind of a big deal for our research!  I played detective and used our database to call home numbers, cell phone numbers, and alternate contact numbers.  Every woman I talked to was super nice!

Since we're following these women over several years, I feel like there's some sort of "connection" with them.  So, when I was on the phone with one woman yesterday I was sad to hear the reason why we didn't have her correct mailing address is because she had to move after the Christ Church earthquake.  Another woman's sister explained that the participant we were trying to reach could not participate in the survey because she has terminal cancer.  I felt so terrible for the participant and her family.

On the bright side, we hear from women that they enjoy our survey and are happy to participate. Yay!  They even write us notes of encouragement on the survey or the return envelope, like this one here:

Needless to say, I'm just thrilled that I am here doing this research.  I get a warm and fuzzy feeling opening each and every returned envelope with a completed survey inside - it gets me one step closer to having data to analyze to get us one step closer to a kick a$$ weight gain prevention intervention.