Hope Street (NKF comic)

[MyssAnne]

I just read this. Has anyone seen this? I was offended, quite frankly!  Especially when it talked about the dietician who gives gold stars to
those who are 'good.' Give me a break!!!  I guess I can understand the motivation, but couldn't they have made it a bit more realistic?
Ah well. Any comments? Thoughts?

[okarol]

I found this - not sure what you were looking at http://www.kidney.org/professionals/kls/hopestreet/about.html

[thegrammalady]

there are posters in the lobby of my center. so far there have been two of a series of ?. i'm waiting with bated breath      for the next in the series.

we have a substitute dietitian at my center, the regular one is on maternity leave. to her credit she got the lab results to everyone faster than any other dietition ever has last month. however there were stars on my copy. i told her i wasn't 5 and didn't appreciate her "art" work. i think she made a note in her file, we'll see what happens this month. by the time they get the watered down patient version to everyone i have had full results for a week or more. i get the same version the doctor gets. 5 years old i'm not.

[angela515]

I agree... I hated the stickers and so forth on my labs and crap. I think they do it more for the older people who can't totally understand it all and take care of themselves, least that's what one dietitian told me... my response was she should find out if patients who do know whats going on want them or not before just doing them. She said she understood and wouldn't want them herself, but those patients who don't know whats going on enjoy them..  So, i think they should ask everyone and so forth before adding them... I also didn't like the "comments" posted by high or low lab results... I was like "If it's high I know what I need to do, and same if it's low..I don't need to be  talked down to or given notes every damn week"

And what did I do with the "High Phosphorus/Low Phosphorus" and "High Potassium/Low Potassium" food posters? Threw them in the garbage right at their desk.. I said, I still have the first copies you gave me, do you think I threw them away and that's why my labs are high? No, it's because I DID eat that strawberry and I DID drink that milk and I DID eat that cheese. 

[Redbomb]

I just got my first labs from my Center on Wednesday.  Yup.  I had a sticker, no stars, just a sticker.  A nice un-obtrusive one hat was a Fall scene with falling leaves and had the word "FALL" on it.  I didn't think anything about it.  Not sure how I would have reacted to stars.  Well, with my Calcium (11.2) Phosphors (6.6) and PTH (546) Level they wouldn't have been stars, they would have been "Red Devils >:"

So, they switched me off of Tums to Fosrenol and my Zemplar to Sensipal.  I hear Sensipal is real expensive.  Hope my Insurance coveres it!  The "comments" on the page that I got (from Satellite Laboratory Services out of Redwood City, CA) look like they are some standard Computer Generated stuff that the Dietitian at the Center doesn't have any control over (of course, I could be very wrong on that too!)

[glitter]

I went and looked at the hope street thingy- I didn't like the cartoon format, to me that is 'dumbing down' the issue. I dislike all these upbeat stories, they just do not relate to my reality. I am sure there are people who enjoy motivationals,  I just want the facts, Make my own motivation. And when they are presented by a social workers/neph nurses, I think its kind of like a man telling me how easy childbirth is....they can observe....but they do not really 'get' it. I saw that patients also contributed, that was the only good part, but why a cartoon format?

[MyssAnne]

OKarol, yes, that is it, I apologize for not including the link, there are some things I am just not comfortable doing yet, that's one of them!
I am especially aggravated by the 'good job' stickers, as I work 40 hours a week to support myself, I own a home, live by myself, and take care of myself (and two kittens). I just wanna know the results and get outta there. I do NOT wanna talk about how 'good' I am being. I know what to do. I can't always do it, but I try. How about offering to clean my house for me? THAT would be a help!!

[stauffenberg]

I remember reading a pamphlet published by the local hospital for endstage renal disease patients which described PD, and every time it referred to the abdomen -- the correct medical term -- it said "the stomach (belly}" as though there were patients out there for whom 'stomach' was too sophisticated a term, even though that was itself incorrect!

Looking at all of this from a general perspective, every time there is a group in society enduring enormous suffering which the society cannot or will not correct -- whether because of poverty, racism, disease, or natural disasters -- there is a potential for radical, revolutionary protest against the entire social order, since it is not answering the profound needs people have.  To deal with this, the forces of order 1) condescend to the suffering population, treating them like children in the hopes they will become infantilized unto utter passivity; 2) try to control the reality the suffering people are experiencing to keep them from becoming too revolutionary by pretending, as far as possible, that everything is better than it really is; 3) create a competition among patients to be 'good' rather than 'bad' in terms of their compliance with the system, so that they patients internalize their subordination to the structure against which they should in fact rebel.  The problem with dialysis patients is that our plight is so extreme that we can see through both of these mechanisms of control and protest nonetheless, insofar as we have enough energy to do so.

[Zach]

To deal with this, the forces of order 1) condescend to the suffering population, treating them like children in the hopes they will become infantilized unto utter passivity; 2) try to control the reality the suffering people are experiencing to keep them from becoming too revolutionary by pretending, as far as possible, that everything is better than it really is; 3) create a competition among patients to be 'good' rather than 'bad' in terms of their compliance with the system, so that they patients internalize their subordination to the structure against which they should in fact rebel.

Viva La Revolución!