Heart Healthy

What a weekend.
This past weekend was the county wide health fair. A heart fair for all citizens to come get free blood tests, checking LDL, HDL, Cholesterol, Glucose, as well as height, weight, and BMI among other things. A sixty dollar doctor visit that not many could afford to do, was all available for free. We were also able to get cardiologists, physicians, and a pharmacist from Denver to come and consult with each person after they received their test results.
A leadership team has been meeting for the past few months to pull this all together. About a month ago I was added to this team.

For the heath fair the nursing center had its own booth featuring the quit smoking line and my new walking program. For the past two months I'd been working on setting up a local walking program, a simple program based around people's daily life and focused on small, gradual increases in physical activity. The result, an easy program to make people consciously aware of how much they walk each day and an encouragement of making small changing to increase their daily step total.

Valentines day began at 5:30am. There were over 300 people who came and had the blood tests done. My booth was often visited. The walk program was able to provide 250 free pedometers to those interested. Many were grateful for the simplicity and availability of the program.

Overall the day was full of elderly folks rubbed up along side of me while I repetitively explained the steps to the walking program. And even though my personal boundaries felt broken, it was great to have so many people sincerely interested in the program and giving positive feedback.
Seven hours, one cup of coffee, two bottles of water, no lunch, no sitting, no bathroom breaks... the fair was finished.

What a valentines day. Right?