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My Kidney Life: A New Direction
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My Kidney Life: A New Direction

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If your kidneys—or a loved ones’—don’t work well, you may be angry, sad, scared. Or, you may feel all three ways at the same time. This is 100% normal! When you can move past fear to HOPE, you can make the rest of your life as good as it can be. At the non-profit Medical Education Institute (MEl), we are here to help you. We’ve learned from tens of thousands of people with kidney disease and their loved ones. We use that knowledge to help YOU live as well as you can for as long as you can.

In this book, we teach you your job with a chronic disease. We help you sort out what matters to you. And, we tell you about each of the treatments, so you can make a choice that fits the way you want to live. We even have a free tool, My Kidney Life Plan, to help you match a treatment to your life. We hope you try it.

Contents

  • Coping with Crisis
  • Become Your Own Expert
  • What Your Kidneys Do For You
  • When Kidneys Fail-Symptoms from the Loss of Balance
  • Kidney Transplant
  • Living Kidney Donation
  • How Dialysis Works
  • All About Peritoneal Dialysis (PD)
  • Hemodialysis Access and Treatment Time
  • Standard In-Center Hemodialysis (HD)
  • Daily Home Hemodialysis
  • Nocturnal Hemodialysis
  • Comfort Care: Quality of Life Without Dialysis
  • Switching from One Treatment Option to Another
  • A Chapter for Care Partners
  • How to Choose Where to Get Care
  • Planning for Disasters, Dialysis Problems and Hospital Stays
  • Resources

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Dori Schatell, MS - Executive Director of the non-profit Medical Education Institute. Ms. Schatell has 35 years of experience specializing in evidence-based and empowering patient education. She has written hundreds of educational pieces, conducted research and published peer-reviewed articles in nephrology, and launched several award-winning websites including Kidney School, Home Dialysis Central, and My Kidney Life Plan.

John Agar, OAM, MBBS, FRACP, FRCP [Lond] - Retired Consultant Nephrologist and Director of Nephrology at Barwon Health and Professor of Medicine at Deakin University, Geelong, Australia. As a widely published and passionate advocate for both extended hour and higher frequency “optimal” haemodialysis in the home, he is internationally recognised as the founder of the emerging field of green nephrology and environmentally sustainable “green dialysis.”

George Coritsidis, MD - Board certified in nephrology and critical care, and currently the Program Director of the newly established Nephrology Critical Care program at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, NY, and Professor of Medicine at the New York Medical College. Dr. Coritsidis enjoys educating his patients, discussing their treatment with them, and witnessing the “lightbulb moment” when they get it.

Eric Weinhandl, PhD, MS - Vice President of Epidemiology at DaVita Clinical Research and Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota. Eric is passionate about home dialysis and uses his expertise in epidemiology to deepen our understanding of home therapies. He believes in using data and stories to share the benefits of home dialysis with nephrologists and patients to promote better outcomes.

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