It is your right for the clinic to teach you how to self cannulate.
PD, please choose your words carefully. I is possible that it could be interpretted by Administration as an attack on GLM which could be responded to by sanction or locking of this thread.Charlie B53Moderator
What I see by your posting as you are actually attempting to prod GLM into improvement, challenging her to action. It doesn't matter what your perceived intent is/was. If it results in favorable action then it can be construed as a good thing.Some may call it constructive criticism.If you really didn't care about GLM you never would have posted at all.'Nuff said.Charlie B53Moderator
Pat - GLM made a very critical statement - she would do self cannulate if allowed.If she is anywhere near the pain in the butt I am, she can take that as a goal and not stop until she gets it. The key is not taking no for an answer unless there is a medical indication why it is inappropriate.It does not matter if you give up on her - as long as she does not give up on herself.
PatDowns,No, not 'nuff said. I wasnt going to jump in until you made the "others more deserving" remark. Seriously? Who the hell are you, anyway to judge who is deserving? Admins, if you want to sanction me, go ahead. People like this and the general downhill course of this forum are the reasons I rarely log on anymore, and I am really sad for it. Was this the intention when this forum was created? I think not. Easy to be nasty when you have keyboard muscles.
Let's see....GLM has been complaining about her clinic for YEARS now- everything from no staff members, including her nephrologist, ever listening to her, to rude treatment and inadequate/dangerous care.. Yet, she stays there! Is this normal behavior for someone who has a good sense of self to stay in a bad medical situation?
Let's see....GLM has been complaining about her clinic for YEARS now- everything from no staff members, including her nephrologist, ever listening to her, to rude treatment and inadequate/dangerous care.. Yet, she stays there!
Maybe we are here to advise, encourage or kick each others butts, but I think most importantly we are here to listen and bear witness to each others journey.
When I read all the posts on this thread I am thinking, "Wow. Aside from obvious health issues, it's awful how kidney disease takes it's toll on people". I wish everyone a brighter and happy day!
About my "more deserving" comment. Maybe "more appreciative" would have better represented my feelings. I probably would have backed off some if GLM had responded at some point with something of this nature, "thanks to all who have shown an interest in my situation by taking the time to give me really good advice. Although my goal is to better take care of myself, I'm just not at a place yet to move forward." If she would just take responsibility for her situation as opposed to always blaming others. A true sign victimhood mentality. Please continue posting! - PatDowns
Maybe Pat Downs lashes out at GLM because he sees something in her that causes him to relive his own pain.
It sounds like you're saying "I could do it, she can, too." It seems like you're comparing yourself to her. Here's what I see:You talk a lot about how other people helped you. They were there in-person to be an extra hand for you. You're 60 years old and it sounds like you're well-educated and probably highly intelligent, maybe indicating that you had good family support, and possibly lived most of your life with a good job or another source of regular income. You don't mention other medical or psychological / psychiatric issues. You don't mention extreme financial struggles. You don't mention having been a young single parent to a special needs child. From what I've read of GLM's posts, these are parts of her life. I don't know her and as I said in my earlier message, all we know of people is what we read here, so I am acknowledge making assumptions. It just doesn't make sense to me that you'd waste the time and energy it requires to come back to repeatedly bash someone, especially someone who has absolutely nothing in common with you. It's nothing to you if she lives for another five years, so what's your agenda? Mine is that I sometimes have a lot of fun figuring people out and arguing with them. I try not to argue too much with my friends. They become un-friends if I do that too often! So here I am, arguing here instead!One of the things you said is that you've offered GLM advice before and it was disregarded. I had a friend ask me for advice many times in the past and I ended up frustrated and angry because I thought I was giving him great advice and he didn't once do as I suggested. I finally realized that an offer of advice does not equal "ownership" of the problem. Maybe the advice I gave was fine... for someone else. I wasn't walking in his shoes. I only saw a tiny part of his picture. I bit my tongue when I talked to him and we're still friends. Over time, I came to see that he's a highly anxious person and probably couldn't leave his comfort zone to do anything that I suggested. It's the old adage "You can lead a horse to water, but no matter how much you berate and beat that horse, it doesn't mean it's going to take a drink." If you get upset because that horse doesn't want that water, it's your problem, not the horse's problem. GLM has a choice to do as you tell her to do or not. You have the choice to keep trying to tell her what to do even though it should be obvious by now that she won't or CAN'T do what you're suggesting. She isn't you. I choose to believe that she, and everyone else here, does the best she can with the resources she has available to her, both physical resources and emotional/psychological resources. If we (any of us here) can't provide the resources to go along with the advice, then it's possible that the most we can do is listen so she doesn't feel quite so alone in her battles. I can't relate very well to many people here because I've always been one of the lucky ones. I have a great job that offers financial security and insurance benefits. People tell me I'm bright. I have local friends. I'm physically fit. I have good health overall and no psychological issues (don't ask my friends or they might say differently about that!), etc. I think many here struggle with each of these things every day. I'm not going to pretend I know what their lives are like, so I can't usually offer advice about how to deal with their struggles. I don't have the experience needed. What I *can* offer is kindness. I'm just trying to do my part - someday I might need the same from someone else.
No psyche issues? I lost my father at age 8 from a heart attack, while my mother was in the hospital dealing with breast cancer. She comes home with a mastectomy and no husband. My mother died from bone cancer 5 years later - on Valentine's Day - when I was 13. Now orphaned, my sister, 14 years my senior, divorced with a young child of her own, became my guardian. While I was appreciative, our relationship was hardly ideal. She sold the only home I knew and moved us to the other side of town. A year later, she shipped me off to boarding school. Six months after that, we moved to Atlanta. And then after waiting a dozen years or so for the inevitable, I lost my kidney function. Talk about abandonment issues! I started therapy at 16 after trying to commit suicide on a new years eve, then stayed with the therapist for good for 27 years - from age 18 until his retirement when I was 45. Group therapy was my saving grace from 1993 until about a year ago"One of the things you said is that you've offered GLM advice before and it was disregarded. " - Not just me, many others from the boards as well. It's not my position to say who, but I personally know of 4 (women) IHDers who contacted GLM through PMs and offered their help/support. It didn't take too long for them to become frustrated with her."You don't mention extreme financial struggles." - In 2000 my business started heading south and it became a burden to even pay for my transplant meds. I was living off credit cards, but couldn't get any financial help because I was considered too wealthy if having credit cards to rely on! At the time I went on home hospice in 2004, I had lost condo and had to declare bankruptcy. Since then, my lifestyle has changed, but with hard work, while on dialysis, I've built my FICO score back to respectability. And, BTW, I don't blame our medical system. It was MY CHOICE to leave a decent job to start my own business. I knew the rules of the game."It sounds like you're saying "I could do it, she can, too." It seems like you're comparing yourself to her. " - not in the least. Nowhere in my posts over the last couple of days have I stated that. You are once again projecting. Read my posts with a little less anger."One of the things you said is that you've offered GLM advice before and it was disregarded. I had a friend ask me for advice many times in the past and I ended up frustrated and angry because I thought I was giving him great advice and he didn't once do as I suggested. I finally realized that an offer of advice does not equal "ownership" of the problem. Maybe the advice I gave was fine... for someone else. I wasn't walking in his shoes. I only saw a tiny part of his picture. I bit my tongue when I talked to him and we're still friends. Over time, I came to see that he's a highly anxious person and probably couldn't leave his comfort zone to do anything that I suggested. It's the old adage "You can lead a horse to water, but no matter how much you berate and beat that horse, it doesn't mean it's going to take a drink." If you get upset because that horse doesn't want that water, it's your problem, not the horse's problem. " - I wrote this in response to Frankswife: I probably would have backed off some if GLM had responded at some point with something of this nature, "thanks to all who have shown an interest in my situation by taking the time to give me really good advice. Although my goal is to better take care of myself, I'm just not at a place yet to move forward." If she would just take responsibility for her situation as opposed to always blaming others. When I was president of the Atlanta AAKP chapter, one of the first things I did was move the meeting location from the "rich and lily white"north side of town, to a well-respected hospital in mid-town Atlanta. With 65% of esrd patients being black and financially challenged, I wanted to make it easier for them to come to the meetings. I learned from an older black gentleman who was on the ESRD Network and a transplant recipient, how to "hear with my eyes" when going into majority black Southern clinics in the 1980s. He taught this well intentioned, but experience lacking young white boy why black folk address each other as Mr. and Mrs./Miss (not Ms.). He explained to me the reason why black women, especially those 50+, wore "fancy" hats. But his greatest lesson was teaching me to understand the concept of "hearing with my eyes."EDIT: Forgot to mention, I worked in an addiction treatment center for 5 yers before leaving and starting my own business. I worked with alcoholics, drug addicts, and both female and male (very under publicized, even to this day) anorexics/bulimics. And, my only agenda was to call out GLM. Obviously it's not something easy to do, but....someone had to do it. Folks can disagree with me and call me mean spirited. I'm fine with that. I'm not running for president. Now, I'm off to dialysis.
If you decide to rage quit IHD please don't delete all your posts
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