Memories of Dori Schatell

I absolutely hate writing this.

Dori hired me in 2022 after we had spent several years chatting on Facebook. Until she told me she was going to give me a job, I had no idea our relationship would ever become a professional one. I was "just" a clinical nurse, a natural educator, and a decent writer with an abundance of empathy and a strong sense of social justice. I knew home dialysis inside and out and loved solving challenging problems. I was frustrated by how little I could do about the bigger issues in the kidney community from my position in clinical nursing.

Dori told me I was a very special unicorn and that these were valuable skills. Then, on my very first day at MEI, she surprised everyone (including me, and not in a good way!) by announcing that I would lead the enormous project of creating the 7^th edition of the Core Curriculum for the Dialysis Technician. It was like throwing a baby into the ocean. The book was on a tight deadline, but we made it through, and we’re all proud of it. More importantly (the "bigger view," as Dori would say) is that I know how to do the 8^th edition without her because she made me work so hard on the 7^th.

This story only makes sense if you knew Dori. She said it would work out fine. She said I’d fit. She said I’d make a good Program Director because I intuitively liked to direct the program. It all sounds a little crazy, but what Dori says goes, because Dori is magic and everyone knows that. Most of my professional life since 2022 has followed a similar cadence.

I knew when Dori hired me that she had been living with cancer for a couple of years. She knew her runway was shorter than she wanted it to be. She told me so. And she lived accordingly.

We really did have so much fun working together. We once took the iconic Pacific Surfliner and Coast Starlight Amtrak trains from San Diego to San Francisco after a business trip and flew home from there. I had never seen the Pacific Ocean before, and she had never seen it by train. It was beautiful. I said at the time that I was glad we took that train before an earthquake put the tracks into the ocean, but what I really meant was that I got to do it with Dori while she was still here.

She taught me so much and made sure I paid attention to her lessons. She drilled the history of nephrology into my head and used every opportunity (and all of her considerable clout) to introduce me to the still-living pioneers who shaped the field. She wanted me to sit with them, listen to their stories, ask questions, and gain a broad understanding of how we got here.

Dori believed that history mattered because it informs everything we do next. She told me I needed to become a holder of that history so I could advocate for the present and the future. We have lost a lot of legends in recent years, both patients and professionals. We name them and talk about them often in this field because we are a niche group and we honor our heroes.

I did not fully appreciate then how much she was preparing me to move forward in a future without her. I do now. At least, I am starting to. I have no choice but to move forward because that’s why I’m here in the first place. She also threatened to haunt me if I didn’t. Our work matters and therefore, we have no choice but to keep going. If not us, then who?

I’m picking another Taylor Swift quote to close my tribute with, "Long live all the mountains we moved, I had the time of my life fighting dragons with you."