Medical journals

[MooseMom]

Do any of you subscribe to any medical journals, specifically to ones about renal disease?  I visit RenalWEB most days, which is sort of a clearinghouse for press articles about all things kidney.  Quite a few of those articles find their way to IHD, thanks to Okarol.   But there are quite a few articles that you have to pay $30 for access.  I would really like to read more articles from the American Journal of Kidney Disease and its "companion" journals, Journal of Renal Nutrition and Advances in Chronic Kidney Disease, but to get a personal subscription is over $200 (I'm assuming per journal).  It sorta makes me mad that patients should have to pay for information about their own illness.  I'm no doctor, but I'm not stupid, either, and I think I could get some useful information out of those journals that I won't get from a 10 minute appt with the neph.

Anyway, do any of you subscribe to any of these types of journals, and if so, are they useful?  (I suspect that some medicos are just so obsessed with getting an article published that they do all manner of weird studies, like "Meta-analysis of Toenail Strength in Chronic Hemodialysis Patients.")

[kristina]

I once signed-up to receive the kidney-association-journal,
but what they were writing about diet and life-style
did not accord with what I had found out elsewhere,
and when they sent a wonderful glossy brochure
about different meals, I finally knew,
they were not on the side of the renal patient.

So I stopped subscribing.

They were also giving a much too unrealistic view
of life as a kidney-patient.
They never seemed to want to go into the many problematic aspects
associated with kidney-problems (such as one comes across in IHD).

It was like the Lupus-magazines (which I also stopped subscribing to)
suggesting that you can live a normal life,
eat normally and climb mountains if you want.

Why these journals portray such an economy of the true picture,
I do not know.

I also went to medical libraries in medical Institutions,
and I obtained Journals only sent to doctors,
and in this literature, which the general public
does not see, I found articles associated with
the unpleasant aspects of medical problems.

So, the doctors do know about the problems patients have,
and the patients themselves know of the problems,
so why do these Patient-Journals portray
such a glossy image?

[kyshiag]

Hi,

I'm a librarian.  Your local library should be able to get you most medical articles free or at a minimal cost.  Let me know if you find a particular article you are interested in.  I can try and get it to you.

Also, like the previous poster said, you can visit most academic libraries an view their materials even if you are not a student.

[kristina]

Thank you, kyshiag, for your kind offer.

I always appreciated Librarians and their great expertise at helping readers
locate books and articles they are looking for.

Dialysis and transplant would be enormously hazardous in my case
for many reasons (MCTD/Lupus, multiple drug-intolerance,
other allergic reactions, and photosensitivity).
 
Therefore, as I am without a doctor to help me,
I have been forced to make my own research on finding answers
to the many questions I have.

I have managed to sort my diet out,
but the deeper medical issues are much more difficult to resolve.

Sometimes this is only possible through a slow process
of translating medical terminology into layman's English
and understanding the problems associated with treatments and medicines/drugs,
which I try to do, when I come across articles which may be of value to my survival.

What I am trying to say is, that I am always looking for ideas to help save my kidneys
(chron. proliferative glomerulonephritis with 10-12 kidney function for over two years),
as I probably would not survive on Dialysis and perhaps would not even be offered
a transplant, as I have already suffered cerebral haemorrhages and a stroke in the past.

Thanks again from Kristina.