April Blog Post

                                                         April Community Service Hours: 6 hours

Total Spring Community Service Hours: 25 hours

For my service activity this month, I volunteered at the NOLA Crawfish Festival. The aim of the festival is to provide a genuinely enjoyable experience for both Jazz Fest visitors who are between weekends and locals who are looking for quality crawfish and amazing southern musicians. To be completely honest, of the five years I have lived here since moving from California, the crawfish I had there was the best I have ever had! At the festival, I worked the food station in the VIP area, and here is a photo below where I can be seen battling the harsh daylight sun and heat. Despite the potential heatstroke, this was an extremely rewarding experience - I got to connect with local musical artists and producers, who were extremely kind and friendly. The experience was so good, that I came back again the next day to help set up for the event in the artist loading area!

In terms of relating to the material we learned in our classes this past year, I thought most of tyramine-rich foods. When serving crawfish, I found myself thinking that they are a relatively low tyramine-containing food and that I should not be worried about the festival attendees coming to the table because it was unlikely that MAO inhibitor-users would have an adverse reaction, and I likely would not have to provide CPR. In med pharm, we learned that consuming tyramine-rich foods while on a MAO inhibitors is very detrimental to your health, which is why my first instinct was concern for the customers before I thought through the pharmacology of the ingredients.