I recently was honored by being elected to the Board of Directors of Home Dialyzors United, formerly NxStage Users Inc. and had the privilege of attending the American Dialysis Conference in New Orleans.
This was my first opportunity to travel with the NxStage System One, and I admit to being a bit anxious. The thought of being saddled with a 100 lb. albatross while travelling was pretty daunting. Armed with plenty of five and ten dollar bills, I managed to load everything in my van, unload it at the hotel where I parked, load it into the shuttle, grab a skycap at the airport, wait an hour at the ticket counter while United Airlines tried to deny me a ticket due to the weight of my “medically assistive device” (which is allowed by law, and which law I provided them a copy of, to no avail). I then proceeded the process all over again on arrival. This is what travelling dialyzers looks like:

Meeting up in New Orleans

Now what, you might ask, does this have to do with being enabled to be disabled? Remember in one of my earlier posts when I described first seeing a dialysis center, and a sea of comatose bodies hooked up to machines, blaring out alarms? Now that I have ventured out into the world, as a dialyzer, I feel compelled to comment on the dependent culture that most of these clinics encourage. Continue reading →