But What a Face

I cannot stop chuckling over the unbelievable irony of the past few months. Thanks almost entirely to the unseen exposure of this blog, I have been offered some amazing opportunities that never would have occurred were it not for my crappy kidneys. Who knew that another small burst of quasi-celebrity would come my way in the midst of my midlife crisis, all because of Stage IV kidney failure?

In a few weeks, I will be testifying before the Michigan Legislature at the state capital in Lansing, putting a personal face on the topic of "Chronic Diseases in High-Risk African American Populations" for the National Kidney Foundation of Michigan's annual Diabetes and Kidney Day. I've pretty much polished the outline of what I'm going to say.

"I'm sick! Support us sick people with greater funding!"

The irony here is not so much that I don't live in Michigan any longer, although that is pretty funny; this speaking engagement was offered and agreed to some time before my move to central Illinois. The irony to me is that I could not have a kidney transplant performed in the state of Michigan now even if I wanted to. My current health insurance won't cover it. That's a point I'll be certain to mention during my little chat.

Then in early May, I have been asked by the folks at Baxter Healthcare Corp., the company that manufactures and delivers my dialysis supplies, to be the guest speaker at their quarterly employee meetings in northern Illinois, read a few entries from this blog and leave 'em with a little snappy patter. Guess campaigning for an invitation really works sometimes, eh? (See the "Cancel the Tour Guide" entry of Feb. 10.)

Baxter is really doing this first class. They offered to pick me and my Karen up in a company car and drive us to the meeting, put us up in a hotel the night before and pick up the tab for dinner after the event. Pretty snazzy. Originally, when they extended the invitation, I thought it was going to be sitting around with a handful of workers in the Baxter coffee room and engaging in some clever small talk. "Oh, no," explained Trisha, the Baxter senior marketing manager. "This is the quarterly employee meeting. There'll be hundreds of people there, the corporate executives, teleconferencing...."

Oh.

My patter had better be snappier than I thought.

But the real kicker of late is my selection as the "Male Face of Kidney Disease" for DaVita, owners of the dialysis centers that coordinate my care. DaVita launched a new Web site a month or so ago on behalf of their awareness-raising Kidney Run/Walk events across the country. They wanted to humanize the affair and selected three women with kidney disease to tell their stories in the online forum. Apparently, they were having trouble finding a man to help balance the presentation.

"Would you mind if we told your story on the site?' the DaVita marketing people asked me. Again, they never would have known that I, my crumbling kidneys, YouTube or my Little Home on the Prairie even existed if it were not for someone turning someone at DaVita headquarters onto "Just Kidneying." What a world, this Internet!

So I'm on the site, putting my manly face and personal story on the cause and effect of kidney failure. You can see the page here. When I informed my Facebook friends, always a supportive bunch, some suggested it was way better than being the Male Face of Incontinence, or Erectile Dysfunction. Jimmy Doom, a Detroit actor, writer and one of my favorite people, opined that as long as the role didn't involve wearing a mascot's costume, how bad could it be?

Others have suggested that maybe I should find a mascot's uniform. Hey, what are they saying about my face? If I can find a getup in the shape of a kidney, I'll let you know.