5 Simple Steps to doing PD Successfully

This powerful, uplifting pocket book is a simple and effective tool that is an easy read. It confronts so many of the problem areas faced by PD patients, including:

• Catheter Placement
• Organizing Monthly Supplies
• How to keep Your Pets While Doing Peritoneal Dialysis
• Myth Busters and Tips to Review with Your Medical Team

The tips will not only help you with coping with peritoneal dialysis, but also will enlighten your medical team, friends, nurses, family members, and caregivers in their efforts to make life more comfortable for you.

If you or your loved one is considering doing peritoneal dialysis or recently started peritoneal dialysis, this book is a must-read!

About the Author

Sheila Shaw has been living with chronic illnesses for the past 20 years. As the CEO of Patient’s Pride, Inc., a kidney transplant recipient, and a former peritoneal dialysis patient, and after speaking with thousands of PD patients and successfully helping them support their catheters and move forward with their lives, Sheila Shaw knows from personal and professional experience how to truly get through peritoneal dialysis successfully. Sheila has dedicated her life to inspire others to live their lives to their fullest despite living with chronic illness.

Arranging Your Life When Dialysis Comes Home

“Arranging Your Life When Dialysis Comes Home: ‘The Underwear Factor”
By Linda Gromko, MD, and Interior Designer Jane McClure.
Paperback Book. ISBN 978-0-615-32528-6.

When Steve Williams’ kidneys stopped working in September 2007, he and his wife Dr. Linda Gromko were presented with two choices: a kidney transplant or kidney dialysis. There was, of course, the option of no treatment—but that would mean certain death for this husband and father of a teenaged daughter. Steve and Linda eagerly embraced the technology of Home Dialysis—treatments that could be done on their own time and on their own terms. But nothing could have prepared them for the onslaught of medical supplies that descended upon their home, making it seem more like a medical clinic or an ICU! Home Dialysis—while life-saving—was taking over, consuming their lives and redefining their family as one tethered to illness. That’s where Interior Designer Jane McClure saved the day.

“Arranging Your Life When Dialysis Comes Home: ‘The Underwear Factor’” shows you how to:

• Create your Home Center for Hemodialysis or Peritoneal Dialysis
• Design a Home Dialysis space that is comfortable, safe, and easy to use
• Manage the storage or necessary medical supplies
• Use the tricks of the trade that expensive Interior Decorators use
• Save money through sure-fire choices and bargain decorator shopping
• Support the caregiver and prevent caregiver burnout

Reclaim as much as your “normal” life as you can.

“Arranging Your Life When Dialysis Comes Home: ‘The Underwear Factor’” is the first in a series of books from the Seattle non-profit Arrange2Live, dedicated to making life more livable for people dealing with Home Dialysis and other health conditions requiring health care in the home.

Order through www.Arrange2Live.org.

Complications: A Doctor’s Love Story

“Complications: A Doctor’s Love Story”
By Linda Gromko, MD.
Paperback Book. ISBN 978-0-9825143-0-6.

When Seattle family doctor Linda Gromko receives an implausible inheritence from a former patient, the windfall jolts her life—already out of balance from the demands of her profession. She reshuffles her life priorities and vows to find a life partner once and for all. Browsing on the Internet with “I’d like to meet a nice Democrat,” she finds Steve—a businessman who is “irreverently funny, gifted at banter, and loyal as a beagle.” But while Steve brings joy, he also brings complications to the doctor’s life. For one, there is Steve’s nine-year-old daughter Brita, who stares the doctor down with “I hate every centimeter of you—get used to it!” The more serious complication, however, is Steve’s health. Known to have diabetes and high blood pressure for years, Steve falls precipitously into the abyss of Acute Kidney Failure. Without a transplant or dialysis, Steve will certainly die within one to two weeks. “Complications” takes the reader on a tumultuous ride of medical and personal trials, as Dr. Gromko exerts the most powerful advocacy of her life. The book is “R” rated: “R” for language, and “R” for reality!

Order through www.LindaGromkoMD.com.

Handbook of Peritoneal Dialysis

This book by Dr. Steven Guest is a guide to the practice of peritoneal dialysis. Chapters provide a foundational understanding of PD therapy and address real-time challenges faced by providers. Contained in this guide:

• Peritoneal membrane physiology
• PET, modified PET, DATT
• Acute and chronic PD prescription
• Catheters and placement techniques
• PD solutions
• Infectious and non-infectious complications
• Fluid management in PD
• PD in the diabetic and morbidly obese patients
• Nutritional and metabolic issues in PD
• Survival in the PD population
• Setting up a PD program/infrastructure
• PD in special situations
• Key management strategies for successful PD

About the author

Steven Guest, MD, attended medical school at Vanderbilt and completed his nephrology fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital. For 12 years, Dr. Guest served as the PD program director at the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, which served as the primary PD training site for Stanford’s nephrology training program. Dr. Guest speaks on various PD topics throughout the U.S., and has many publications focused on the clinical aspects of PD therapy.

Help, I Need Dialysis! How to have a good future with kidney disease

Life-long kidney patient educator Dori Schatell, MS, and internationally-known nephrologist Dr. John Agar, MD, explain how dialysis works; each of the ways to do it; and how your treatment choice may affect your diet, energy level, work, travel, sexuality and fertility, sleep, and survival. Comprehensive and fully referenced, this book is a must-read if you face the life-changing choices that come with kidney failure. Paperback, 202 pages.

The ABC’s of Pee Dee

An excellent resource for helping a child go through the process personally or understand what another family member may be undergoing. This heartwarming story of a youngster’s journey through kidney failure, peritoneal dialysis (PD), and transplantation, was written and illustrated to help kids understand kidney disease and this form of treatment. Printed in Canada.

by Cathy and Jean Clermont
Illustrated by Brianna Thayer
36 pages; 7.5 x 7.5 inches, softcover, full color.

The Courage to Live

This inspirational book details author Carmen Buelvas Critchlow’s personal journey both as an immigrant from Panama and as a dialysis patient and transplant recipient. It details her physical and emotional battle against kidney disease and describes kidney failure and dialysis in clear, understandable terms. Special attention is paid to organ donation. Finally, it shares how in a powerful way this uninvited “battle” has been transformed into a spiritual journey with God.

The Reluctant Donor

Author Suzanne Ruff comes from a family that has been plagued by kidney disease for generations. In her lifetime, she has lost her mother, several aunts and uncles, and cousins to Polycystic Kidney Disease (PKD), the most common of all life-threatening genetic diseases. Both of her sisters inherited the disease. She did not. When her younger sister fell ill shortly after their mother’s death in 2003, Ruff decided to do something about it. She had always been afraid of doctors and needles, but says with God’s help she found the courage to save JoAnn’s life by donating a kidney. In the months leading up to the surgery, which took place on Oct. 19, 2004, Ruff spent a lot of time journaling, and published a book based on her notes and memories. Her hope is that The Reluctant Donor (Beaver’s Pond Press, April 2010, $14.95) will find its way into the hands of others who are facing a difficult life-and-death decision, and help them find the courage they need to get through it.