Dialysis & CKD Blog Report for 1/7

By Bill Peckham

There is a lot of new content among the tracked blogs. These are the tracked CKD blogs updated since Anna's last report on 1/3/09.

• Dialysis from the sharp end of the needle  engrossed in the Nephrology Oral History Project
• Kamal Shah's Blog sorting out doctor's conflicting advice, the trade off between cutting edge and conservatism
• Kaply, Inc. solicited reader's questions and is now working through the an eclectic mix of queries
• As The Pump Turns  it snowed again (but this time the plan worked - wait, it'll melt); is happy but seems to have no neck
• Jack's Kidney Adventure  changes font color; reaches 33 month limit on MSP period - benefits are uncoordinated
• Stayin' alive  remembering dialysis friend who decides to opt out (touching post)
• Hasten down the wire trying to make sense of the economic mess
  
• The Life of a 20-Something With Lupus  loses her voice; poor customer service at a big box store; orientation day at school
• The Adventures of Stacy Without An E victory! The sound of silence, blessed silence
• The Ballad of Billy The Kidney the story of Kiwi rugby player who received kidney transplant
• Life on dialysis: waiting for the call!  good post transplant labs, advocates for increasing the ranks of organ donors/10 Downing Street responds; reviews the day she received "the call"
• DailyHemo - Home Dialysis Advocates total blog revamp into a video blog/portal (wish entries were dated and original content was sequestered from embedded content)
• Let us Consider One Another update
• On the Road to a Cure  spotlights a lupus blog; the power of laughter
• Toastiest  email contact protocol suboptimal; remembering 2008 favorite blolgs/topics
• Really, I'm as Old as I Feel? Christmas holiday recap
• I Am. Are you? more first person Donate Float reporting videos and text
• PKD World reposting of news of interests to people with PKD
• Bud's Ramblings is grateful for small kindnesses; raining buckets
• Charlottesville Prejudice And Civil Rights Watch alarming Google search triggers post; community gives her pneumonia, she keeps her humor
• Precious Bodily Fluids more news from ASN - kidney stones and CKD; Renal Artery Lesion news
• Renal Fellow Network  new Lupus classifications; unpleasant calciphylaxis photos (why I couldn't be a doctor); urinary tract infection complications
• Renal tsar's blog  measuring patient care and respect; the difficulty in identifying the millions of people with early stages of CKD
• Bondservant Diary  stuck in the hospital, salon care should help
• My Damn Kidneys hockey humor; snow
• pkdmom2five  amazing store values (I'm not clear on the acronyms); doctors appointment, get's pulled over
• Kidney Community Emergency Response Innohep recall
• Renal BizBlog NKF offers to explain CfCs to patients (now you're suppose to know all your treatment options)
• Kidney Postings news of interest to those with CKD

Comments

[jack nowicki]

Bill ~ related to your comment on my blog, I say in response:

Bill ~ thanks for the clarification. You are right about the 80/20 thing. The difficulty in my case was that when the social worker and I worked to finally apply, months after I knew I was able to apply, she didn't clearly state that my date would be connected to my being billed by the dialysis center. I naively thought that the whole switchover was up to me and dependent upon when I wanted to start paying the Medicare premiums: I didn't realize that on some date the facility would bill ME for dialysis... so, when I got a 900 bill I was motivated to select a medicare date that would cover that bill. So, then I got my Medicare letter saying I could start 12/07 and pay the premiums for the last year, or start 12/08 and start paying now. I want to start 9/08 and pay their premium instead of the bill from El Milagro. Does this make sense to you?

So, when I talked to the lady at SS she indicated that if I want to do anything different than what they offered in their original letter, I must "appeal". JN