Mr. Smith – uh, McFarlin – Goes to Washing – er, Springfield...Maybe

Now that World Kidney Month is officially in high gear, I'm thinking it could be the most appropriate time to share my big news: I have been appointed (hear the drum roll in your head) patient advocate board member of the ESRD (End-Stage Renal Disease) Advisory Committee for the State of Illinois!

The whole freakin' state! Chicago included!

I would like to thank the academy, the committee, my parents – I know you're looking down on me, Mom and Dad – my incredible wife, Karen; my family, and all the other little people like me who are affected by some form of kidney disease yet strive to maintain healthy, productive, positive lives!

I serve for you! I will be proud to represent your interests at the state capitol! On to Springfield, and victory!

OK, that's quite enough of that. The truth is, I have no idea what all this means.

Back in November I received an email from a pleasant woman at the Illinois Department of Public Health. Apparently all of this – the Just Kidneying blog, the appearances on behalf of the National Kidney Foundation of Illinois, the work with my NKFI chapter in Champaign-Urbana – placed me on the radar of some kidney koordinators at the state capitol. (The fact that my name was misspelled in the email suggested I hadn't become the talk of Springfield just yet.)

She wrote to gauge my interest in serving a three-year term on the ESRD board and sent along an application form to fill out, just to make sure I'm not a convicted criminal, a Republican or some other undesirable in Illinois. After I was vetted and approved a few weeks later, I received another email from another pleasant female bureaucrat with a note of congratulations and a downloadable, 40-page booklet entitled, "2013 ETHICS TRAINING for Appointees to State of Illinois Boards." It is required reading for everyone appointed to a state board, the email instructed, and I was to sign and return the last page verifying I had done so.

As I studied the document detailing what would be considered prohibited activities or conflicts of interest, and knowing my adopted state's "colorful" political history, I couldn't stop thinking, "Wonder if Rod Blagojevich and George Ryan ever signed off on one of these? Or read one, for that matter?"

But I'm now signed, sealed and delivered to the ESRD Advisory Committee, and rarin' to go. One of the major issues I want to address with the board, one we talk about often at my Champaign NKFI chapter, is access to care.

Where I live now, out on the high prairie, a lot of people with kidney failure live in rural areas and dialysis centers are in larger cities. Many live outside the range of bus service, and the sheer cost of gas for friends or relatives to drive them to dialysis and back (which is essential, because hemodialysis often leaves patients too weak to drive home on their own) can be prohibitive. There has to be a way to ensure everybody who needs dialysis can receive it despite $4 a gallon at the pump.

Only thing is, I'm rarin' to go but have no set destination. The committee has yet to call its first meeting of 2013, and there's no indication one is being scheduled for the immediate future.

So at the moment, I have a very impressive and important-sounding title with not the faintest clue of what I can accomplish with it. Does that make me like an ambassador?

Or better yet these days, like a member of Congress?