Liquid Courage, or The Rinse Cycle

Last month we celebrated the life and legacy of that immortal American and civil rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by purchasing a gleaming white new Speed Queen washer and dryer at a local appliance store in Champaign. Gotta love those MLK Day sales!

Because I have taken on the role of househusband during my two years of dialysis treatments and subsequent kidney transplant, Karen's excitement over our new acquisition made me feel a little like a character out of The Help: "Look, Jimmy, we bought you a brand-new washer and dryer so you can do more loads of wash for us than ev-ah!"

Oh, joy.

Truth to tell, I love doing laundry. There's a certain zen tranquility for me in making dirty things clean again and folding them with the precision of origami. What I didn't love even a tiny bit was schlepping pounds of clothes to the laundromat every couple of weeks, hoarding quarters and surrounded by strange smelly people.

But the laundromat was a necessity, because (and here's the tie-in to my kidneys, in case you were wondering) up until the transplant, we had to use the utility room in our apartment to hold all the cases of my dialysis solution.

In the way that life works, two days before we received "the call" that a donor kidney was available for me, the company that made my dialysis supplies dropped off its monthly shipment of 32 boxes of Peritoneal Dialysis fluid, about 2x2 feet each, with two five-liter bags of liquid in each box. I had used exactly one case before the transplant team called.

When we returned from Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis with my gleaming new kidney, we called the dialysis company and explained the situation.

"I'm sorry, sir, but we can't take the cases back."

"But they're unopened. Maybe someone else could use them."

"I'm sorry, but there's the possibility of contamination."

"Contamination? The boxes have the original factory tape on them! The bags of fluid are sealed in a second plastic bag to keep them secure! How on earth could they get contaminated?"

I'm sorry, sir, but that's our policy."

Somebody please, tell me again why the cost of health care in America is so high?

We called my dialysis nurses at DaVita Champaign. Same story. I never fashioned myself as the sadistic poisoner of Peritoneal Dialysis bags, but I must look that way to a sizable group of people. We're still looking for takers for the drainage bags, extension tubes and other paraphernalia that accompany the PD process. No questions asked. Just come get 'em! We'll even deliver!

So, discouraged by having no other option, Karen and I staged our own Seven Percent Solution at our kitchen sink: the Great Dialysis Juice Dump. Each of us armed with a tiny Olfa Touch-Knife (that I extolled in a December 2010 blog titled "Flashes From the Frontline"), we attacked the cases – slicing open the cardboard boxes, flattening them, cutting open the hard plastic coverings and piercing each five-liter bag, letting the dialysis liquid goosh into the sink. What emotional release!

It was a true team effort; even with both of us working shoulder-to-shoulder and focused on the task, the process took almost two hours to complete.

We ended up with a stack of cardboard boxes nearly three feet high and an overflowing pile of plastic bags. Being the dedicated recycler I am, I personally carried every box and bag outside to the nearest appropriate bin.

Karen applauded my effort.

We were both tremendously saddened to destroy so much lifesaving fluid in such a wasteful manner. However, in a very real way, our new washer and dryer represent far more than timesaving appliances that allow Jimmy to do more loads more often. They stand as constant reminders that the Peritoneal Dialysis that required their space and dominated so much of our daily lives is no more. Hallelujah!

All because of a new appliance of mine that's washing my blood every second. Oh, what a lucky man am I.

Flashes From the Frontline

The Wife says I write these blog entries way too long. They're not even blog posts anymore, she claims; they've become "blarticles," a term I hope she copyrights before it becomes all the rage in cyberland.

"They don't all have to be complete, touching essays," Karen says. "Some of them can be just paragraphs." You think she'd know me by now, wouldn't you? I gots a lot to say! And, unlike writing for other publications and their editors, here no one can tell me when to stop! Whoo-HOO!

Still, I believe Karen may have a point, possibly. Maybe. A little. So today I'm going to briefly (I hope) mention a few topics I think are worth sharing with you in bullet-point fashion.

• Happy(?) Anniversary: December marks one year since I started on PD, Peritoneal Dialysis. So far, I'm feeling fine. Hallelujah!

• It's Alive! Alive!: Baxter Healthcare, the Illinois-based colossus that manufactures and supplies my dialysis materials, has just launched a new consumer Web site called Live Now: Rethink Kidney Disease. According to its home page, Live Now is "a movement to start living on your terms, with hope, optimism and strength. Kidney disease doesn't define your life – you do. It's time to get up, get out and live for today."

I am proud to say I was asked to serve as a contributing editor on this breakthrough project. The marketing folks at Baxter knew I was a professional writer (in the sense I can actually find people willing to pay me money to write stuff) and that I travel quite a bit for work while maintaining my Peritoneal Dialysis (PD) routine on the road, so they recruited me to create the main articles for the site.

I wrote pieces on traveling with PD, working full-time while on PD and (heh, heh) maintaining intimacy while on PD. (I consulted with Karen for the last one. Thankfully, she agreed it was possible!) The theme of the articles, and the site itself, is, "Yes! Yes! Whatever you did before you contracted kidney disease you still can do while on dialysis!"

The funny part was, when I got the assignment I approached it very seriously. I did my research, compared other articles on the subjects and wrote my first drafts in a very straightforward, scholarly manner. I'd forgotten that the people at Baxter read this blog, too. "There's something wrong with this," they said upon receiving the first draft. "It's not...funny enough! It needs more Jim in it! Are you all right?"

"You mean, you want it goofier?" I asked, incredulous.

"YES! We want you to write it like you write Just Kidneying!"

And so I did. Or tried to, anyway. You can be the judge. I thought about reprinting the articles here, but I'm sure my new clients at Baxter would rather I send you to their site. It's www.livenow.info.

I'm on Board With This: The miracle of the Just Kidneying blog continues. I have been asked to volunteer to sit on PACt, the Patient Advisory Committee for Baxter Healthcare. (I have no idea what the little "t" stands for.)

That sentence construction is correct: "asked to volunteer." Apparently, the way it works is, Baxter can't reach out and solicit people to join their advisory group. Looks a bit suspicious, like they're stacking the deck in their favor. But if you express some interest and tell Baxter, "Hey, I've got some opinions (I am a critic, after all), and I want to join your board!" then they can extend an invitation to become a member.

As I understand it, representatives from the R&D (research and development) and marketing departments will give presentations on their newest endeavors, and we get to provide input about how far off base they are. As a living, breathing dialysis patient, I hope to provide some real-life insights about how practical their innovations really are. The next meeting is in March 2011.

If you're a dialysis patient (or even if you're not) and would like to add your voice, shoot me a message; I will try to let you know what the bigdomes at Baxter are thinking and solicit your feedback. Think of me as your union rep!

In Praise of the Olfa Touch-Knife: Several months before I started PD, Karen and I were shopping at a Michigan outlet mall and on a whim we bought two Olfa Touch-Knives at the checkout table. They are marvelous little devices, about an inch-and-a-half wide with a retractable blade as sharp as an editor's pen.

                      
They also provide the only real enjoyment I derive from this tedious dialysis process – slicing open the drainage bags after a fluid transfer and watching the liquid gush into the sink or toilet like a waterfall. It's exhilarating!

Sadly, during one of our recent road trips, I lost one of our knives. Crap! I went on the Olfa Web site, but they want you to buy like 100 or more to get an online discount. I only want one or two. So if you spot an Olfa Touch-Knife at any checkout counter or housewares store in the near future, buy a couple for me or let me know where you found them.

Cut me in, so to speak.