Come Monday, August 20th, schools all over Pinellas County will be back in session. Summer time will
officially be over for parents and just when you think it’s safe to take a breather… it happens: your child
goes into the first sneezing fit of the 2012-2013 school year. It will be the first of many and before you
know, the whole family must be quarantined.

Good grief! Why is it that every year your child heads back to class, there seems to be an outbreak of
cataclysmic proportions of the Back to School Bug?!

According to the 2011 Fireworks Annual Report conducted by the U.S. Consumer Product
Safety Commission, roughly 9600 patients were treated in U.S. hospital E.R.s for firework
related injuries in 2011.

So what should you do if you find yourself this Fourth of July with a couple singed fingers from a
sparkler or rocket…and at what point do you seek professional help?

Flu season is quickly approaching. Some years the season kicks off as early as October, lasting for many
months…at times well into May. The CDC recommends that all individuals over the age of 6 months be
vaccinated and as people start making preparations, the question these days for most individuals will
not be “should I or should I not be vaccinated?”, but rather “HOW will I be vaccinated?”. In 2003, the
FDA approved FluMist, the first intranasal flu vaccine. Both the flu shot and the flu nasal spray protect
individuals from various strains of the flu virus so when in the case of receiving one over the other…it truly
is matter of a patient’s eligibility. So which one is right for YOU? Here’s a short rundown: