dialysis

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how to get on the kidney transplant wait list

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Mr. Garcia was one of the lucky ones.

Not in the born-in-poverty or kidney-failure-by-30 sense. But lucky in the sense that by the time his kidneys failed completely, he was in California where Medicaid pays for undocumented folks get the same dialysis as the US-born and not in one of the 38 states that wait until undocumented people show up to their ERs damn near dead before they will give them a dialysis treatment or three before they send them back out to start the process again five or six days later—even though it is far more expensive than standard care. Because racism.

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the medical distrust we've earned

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I believe there is a way for kidney function to return.

I believe the truth about that is held back from mainstream.

These are lines from a recent email asking about treatment options for their loved one who has been miserable on dialysis for two years. This email served as fodder for my latest Real Kidney Talk with The People’s Nephrologist YouTube video. I hope you’ll check it out, like, subscribe, share, and let me know what you think. 😉

the truth about dialysis

I recently learned that my piece, “When Dialysis Is the Wrong Approach to End-Stage Kidney Disease,” published on the CHCF blog nearly 4 years ago has proven to be evergreen, a story that lives on rather than dying on the vine of whatever is hot at the moment. Last year it was viewed more than 25,000 times, making it a top blog post.

In the piece I argued that not every old person approaching end-stage kidney disease should start dialysis. But judging by some of the folks who have reached out to me, many eyes don’t register phrases like “elderly patients over 75” and “who have dementia or ischemic heart disease.”