My life with dialysis and kidney disease
Archive for October, 2005
Who Subscribes?
Oct 24th
So I watch my stats on feedburner, and watch my readership growing. Who subscribes to this blog?
Please leave a comment if you dare, or at least send me an email to let me know who you are.
I’m just a weee bit curious.
I double-dog dare you.
Have You Ever….
Oct 24th
shoved medication down a little kitten’s throat?
I felt miserable after doing it, but the little punkin needed her morning dose. What you really have to watch though are those claws. Once you cram that tablet down there, you have to hold the mouth shut until it is swallowed.
I felt I should say "this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you" or something like that … the poor little thing just looked up at me like "what are you doing dad?"
Well, tomorrow morning maybe Mommie will have to do it! No … it will be me again, and I will be the evil parent in the child’s eyes dishing out the disgusting kitty-medication.
Kitty Cold!
Oct 22nd
Well, Punkin/Patches developed a nasty little sneeze last night, and went to the vet today. She has pneumonia!
Apparently this is very common with kittens/cats from the humane society, so know this if you ever rescue a kitty. It doesn’t transfer to humans, so no worries there.
A course of antibiotics is the answer, and hopefully our little furball will be her normal spunky self in 5-10 days. But for now, she has a miserable look on her face, and lots of eye-boogers.
New Addition to the Family!
Oct 21st
Well everyone, Anna and I are the proud new parents of a….
kitten!
We’ve been contemplating a kitten for awhile now, and yesterday on my lunch break Anna and I went up to the Longmont Humane Society to "look" at kittens. I’m sure some of you know how this goes. Well, we both fell in love with one –rather, it fell in love with us — and we adopted her. Her name so far is: Punkin, or Patches, or Punkin Patch. I will try to get a picture up of her soon, but she’s adorable. She loves to cuddle and play, and is just what we were looking for. We look forward to bonding with her and watching her grow up. Our plan is to have a dog as well, as soon as we’re into a house where we can have one.
Like I said I’ll try to get some pictures up of her, but until then you’ll just have to use your imaginations. She’s sort of a cream color with little peach colored patches.
PS.
Did you know cats go bonkers for laser pointers??? I had a suspicion she’d enjoy chasing a red point around, but I had no idea to what extent. She goes absolutely bonkers chasing it around, and if Anna’s not careful she is attacked by a kitten trying to catch the red dot on her leg. *snicker snicker*
More coming soon…
HHS Reimbursing for Kidney Donors?
Oct 18th
In an issue of the American Association of Kidney Patients’ E-Newsletter called "Renal Flash" (renal flash? that’s the best you folks could do?) there’s an article pertaining to reimbursement for living kidney donors.
That’s right, the Department of Health and Human Services is allocating federal funds to reimburse kidney donors’ medical expenses, and some non-medical expenses (travel, board, etc.).
Want to read the whole thing, and give your opinion about it? Check out the: Federal Register Announcement
This is awesome …
I’m sure I’ve gone over this before, but the feds encouraging people to donate could really change things. The next step is one centralized, hospital-affiliated national registry for potential donors (something like, but not matchingdonors.com).
Imagine it, a list of 80,000 dwindling down to nothing. The government has been picking up the tab on medical expenses for quite awhile. I’m sure all of you ESRD patients already know this, but I’m guessing few non-ESRD folks do … Kidney failure automatically qualifies you for Medicare assistance. Part of that coverage, or assistance, is that Medicare will cover the expenses of a living donor who decides to donate to you. The latest news though, that HHS is reimbursing people for travel expenses on top of medical expenses is huge. This means that people can search nationally for each other. If this were controlled and monitored by one central entity, this could potentially change the face of the current setup. Why doesn’t UNOS do this … or are they already doing this?
Are you an O blood type? Would you donate your kidney if you knew you’d not lose anything financially in the process (travel, time away from work, etc.)?
If your answer to those two questions was "yes", then please get in touch with me!
Seriously though. How many of you would donate if you knew it would completely and literally change someones life in every conceivable way? How many of you would do it for a nameless person?
Is it a good idea for the government to reward people for doing something for the "greater good"? Is federal reimbursement the right way to allocate this reward?
Please comment … I’d love to hear a few opinions on this.
Obviously as someone waiting for a kidney I’m excited at the prospect of getting a transplant. I’m even more excited to learn that my possible list of donors just grew by a couple hundred million. So what needs to happen? Does the media need to do a better job of reporting this to the public? Does the public know and still choose not to donate? (to be clear I’m fine with people choosing not to donate … I think nobody should be forced or pressured to do such a thing).
What do you think about this, and knowing that you would receive assistance for doing so, would you be more willing to donate if you could? Would you donate to a stranger?
Feel free to take this to the forum if you have a lot to say about this and would like to start a discussion … otherwise feel free to comment here.
