therenalunit.com

I came across an interesting article at EurekAlert.org today.
Apparently, most altruistic kidney donors end up out of pocket by their generous act.
Generally, the medical costs are covered by private or public insurance, but there are other costs involved, such as travel and convalescence.
This seems crazy, and would act as a major disincentive to potential […]

In the never ending quest to turn a profit from my misery, NephroCare Asia (Fresenius) have decided that it’s too expensive to provide a blanket to keep me warm at dialysis.
Now this wouldn’t be an issue if they didn’t insist on running my machine at 36 degrees C, but that’s a story for another day.
I’ve […]

Apparently, the potassium meter does exist.
It’s called the Cardy Potassium Ion Meter, and you can read about it here.
Whilst not specifically designed for dialysis patient, this piece of kit looks like it would do the job.
The unit is available here
At a price of around $US239, it might be out of the reach of the […]

*not really
But how good would it be?
Since my freaky high potassium at Christmas, I’ve been really paranoid about killing myself by having a high potassium level. I’ve become so damned careful what I eat, and so hyper-aware of any symptoms of high potassium that I’m just about driving myself crazy.
Wouldn’t it be great if we, […]

Like most dialysis patients, I have low calcium and high phosphate levels.
Basically, this is because I’m crap at taking my phosphate binders. I take Caltrate and Alu-tabs to try to keep my phosphate levels down.
I hate the damned things, they taste like crap, they wreck the taste of the food I eat, and they’re like […]

There’s been a little bit of talk here where I live (Australia) about whether people should be able to sell their organs to those in need.
Now we have a (very) right wing conservative government here in Australia, and a frustrating thing about conservative governments is that they’re really good at forcing their religious views on […]