Arrange2Live Introduces New Blog: Arrange2LiveWhenEverythingGoes2Health

When Interior Designer Jane C. McClure and I wrote Arranging Your Life When Dialysis Comes Home: The Underwear Factor, we could envision broadening our scope to other issues in addition to kidney disease.

Certainly, Arrange2Live grew out of a critical need: Steve and my need to have some peace and order in the midst of our Home Dialysis experience. While Steve and I eagerly embraced the technology of Home Dialysis, nothing could have prepared us for the onslaught of medical equipment and supplies that landed on our doorstep!

The NxStage Machine (upper left) was nearly swallowed up by
boxes of supplies, and those ubiquitous blue underpads changed the ambience!
 

Steve, Jane, and I made some important observations about bringing health care into the home. It was clearly needed and welcomed - and no doubt, it improved the quality of our lives immensely.

But just as when we welcome a new baby into a home, planning helps! Why don't we have Dialysis Showers?

Thus far, Jane and I have adapted our concepts to provide:

• Hemo and/or Peritoneal Dialysis for Steve in 5 different living spaces
• A functional "dorm" environment for Steve and me when Steve was completely disabled before he died in April 2011
• A welcoming bedroom for a couple after one of them developed a terminal brain tumor
• A move to Assisted Living for my 95-year-old Mom, using the furniture and furnishings from her home of 50 years.

Now, granted, it's been a mixed blessing to have provided the "lab" for many of these experiences. But Jane and I have gathered hundreds of tricks from our combined medical and design experience.

We welcome opportunities to speak to groups - particularly the Dialysis Community, and other health care providers - about bringing health care home. We are also pleased to provide consultation to those on the front lines of home care.

Follow us on our new blog:
www.Arrange2LiveWhenEverythingGoes2Health.blogspot.com.

Take care,
Linda Gromko, MD

ANNA Conference Felt Like Preaching to the Choir!

If anyone would have predicted ten years ago that I'd be talking to the Pacific Northwest Chapter of the American Nephrology Nurses' Association, I'd have thought them completely mad!

For me, nephrology was something I would learn "later." It seemed overwhelming in medical school. And when I would cover the Swedish ICU/CCU as a resident physician, I'd pray we didn't get called to a CODE in the NW Kidney Centers - those people were sick!

But, now, having traveled with my late husband Steve Williams through the precipitous tumble into Acute-on-Chronic Renal Failure, the home hemodialysis, peritoneal dialysis, and his litany of other medical adventures, I feel oddly at home. The kidney nurses are my colleagues, and I will be forever grateful for the hours of assistance they gave me and my husband.

A home dialysis treatment comes to a close.

Linda responds to a dialysis machine alarm - while
Steve watches cooking shows on TV.



Should you be attending the International Dialysis Conference in Seattle in March 2013, join me for my remarks on 1) Caring for the Home Dialysis CarePartner, and 2) "What My Husband's Kidney Failure Taught Me About My Own Profession."

Take care,
Linda Gromko, MD

You are invited....


Please join me for a reading

 

from

 

"Let Me Go When the Banter Stops:

A Doctor's Fight for the Love of Her Life"

 

 

Eagle Harbor Books

 

Winslow Way

 

Bainbridge Island, WA

 

Sunday, February 3, 2013

 

3-4 pm

 

Celebrate Valentine's Day with a True Love Story!

Arranging Your Life When Dialysis Comes Home Wins Global eBook Award

Arranging Your Life When Dialysis Comes Home: "The Underwear Factor" has won a 2012 Global eBook Award.

Published in 11/2009, the book was written by Interior Designer Jane McClure, and me. Born out of sheer practicality, this manual is intended to assist folks on Home Dialysis organize their living space - and their lives - as they provide life-saving medical care at home.

Early in the Home Hemodialyis process, Steve and I were forced to put our home on the market to sell. The boxes of dialysis equipment and medical supplies - let alone the dialysis machine - were not considered enhancements! Can you imagine our "open house?"

We asked Interior Designer Jane McClure to help us "stage" the home for sale. In the process, we learned volumes about the dynamics of homecare. We learned that:

• It's important to maintain one's bedroom as a place of refuge - even if dialysis is performed there
• Home Dialysis impacted our adolescent daughter and her friends; our whole family quickly learned that we'd have "dialysis friends" and "non-dialysis friends."
• Simple storage solutions and furniture arrangements can work wonders in providing efficiency and comfort
• Feeling in control of one's environment is especially important - when other things can feel so out of control!

The Global eBook competition draws worldwide entrants.  One of the judges weighing in on Arranging Your Life When Dialysis Comes Come was Dr. Rene Chang, the retired Director of a Transplant Program in London.

Arranging Your Life When Dialysis Comes Home: "The Underwear Factor" is available on Amazon.com as a paperback or Kindle book.

Oh, why "The Underwear Factor"? Coined by Steve's nephrologist, Dr. Smiley Thakur, this term refers to the fact Home Dialysis allows you the freedom to dialyze on your own terms - even in the comfort of your underwear!

Take care,
Linda Gromko, MD

"Help! I Need Dialysis!" - A Masterful Book Offering a Comprehensive Look at Kidney Failure and Dialysis

When kidney failure and the prospect of dialysis loom ahead, nothing beats a user-friendly, credible reference book. But such books have been few and far between. Dori Schatell and Dr. John Agar have just released the definitive reference, and it should be required reading for anyone even peripherally involved in Kidney World.

 

• It's clear and easy to read, distilling hard science into learnable content. You don't have to be a health care professional to read this book - but if you are, you'll find it helpful and non-condescending. This is a perfect reference for health care providers who don't have dialysis as part of daily practice.
• I liked the fact that you can pick this book up at any chapter where you need information - or you can read it cover-to-cover.
• Home dialysis (both hemodialyis and peritoneal dialysis) are included as viable, practical options. But nothing's "sugar-coated" here.
• The essentials of kidney function - in health and disease - are  succinctly covered.

 

None of this should come as a surprise, given the authors. Dr. John Agar is an internationally known nephrologist from Australia, and a staunch advocate for home dialysis. Dori Schatell, MS, is the Executive Director of The Medical Education Institute, Inc., a not-for-profit organization that focuses on helping people manage chronic illness. You'll recognize the organization as the one that brings us Home Dialysis Central. John Agar and Dori Schatell bring decades of credibility to this book.

 

Wouldn't it be wonderful if some benefactor simply provided this book for every family as they entered Stage 4 Chronic Kidney Disease, or began their dialysis training?

 

Thanks to Dr. Agar and Ms. Schatell for providing the best educational offering yet! It will help so many people.

 

Available on Amazon.com.

 

Take care,

Linda Gromko, MD

Come Hear Steve's Story at Third Place Books

You are invited to join me for a reading from

 Let Me Go When the Banter Stops:

A Doctor's Fight for the Love of Her Life

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

7:00 - 8:00 pm

Third Place Books

17171 Bothell Way Northest

Lake Forest Park

Hope to see you there for Steve's story,

plenty of humor and good memories...

and important lessons he taught us!

Take care,

Linda Gromko, MD

Here's the addendum: Linda speaking with Steve's photo on the powerpoint.

 

New Book is Now Available on Kindle

My latest book, Let Me Go When the Banter Stops: A Doctor's Fight for the Love of Her Life, has just been released on Kindle. Check it out on Amazon.com; $7.99.

Complications: A Doctor's Love Story is also available on Kindle for $6.99.

The third book in the "Kidney Trilogy" is Arranging Your Life When Dialysis Comes Home: 'The Underwear Factor,'" co-authored with Interior Designer Jane C. McClure. Again, available on Kindle for $6.99.

These books are among the only offerings about chronic kidney disease from a patient and family perspective available! Arranging Your Life When Dialysis Comes Home is truly unique in addressing the day-to-day needs of home dialysis patients and their CarePartners.

All three books are available in paperback as well, on Amazon.com, through my website at www.LindaGromkoMD.com, and at bookstores.

Take care,
Linda Gromko, MD