Brothers... I need your help desperately

[beauanderos]

This is the letter I'm sending out to all the nephrologists in California:

Dear Doctors:
All of us are busy; I frequently find myself working sixteen hour days and travel weekly to Bakersfield, commuting a total of 240 miles, to assist those clinics that find themselves experiencing a critical shortage of RN's.

I'd like to discuss SB349, if you can spare a moment. That legislation, introduced by Senator Lara - and coauthored by Senators Bradford, Hertzberg, and Newman - has the potential to adversely impact our careers and, more importantly, threaten the health and well-being of our patients.

We cannot afford the luxury of complacency. When my mother contracted pneumonia in her eighty-fifth year, she was placed on a ventilator as she only had one fully functional lung due to childhood tuberculosis. I spent time with her prior to this event, listening to her wishes, rapt to every word, as she lay bedridden and deteriorating.

She gazed at me with loving eyes and told me that she was tired, and that she was ready to go. She was actually eager to discover what lay beyond this plane of earthly existence. When she was no longer lucid she was intubated and the question of continuing life support was faced by my sister and I.

Her physician explained that he could fight the pneumonia, but even if he proved victorious, she would need to remain on the ventilator the remainder of her life.
We knew she wouldn't have wanted this. She had divulged that she was actually eager to meet the Lord. We contacted relatives who were each able to spend some time with her. The penultimate moments of her life were spent in privacy; only her immediate family was present.

We then suffered the indignity of her decline. My sister, with forlorn eyes moist from grief and I, holding her hand as phosphor green traced it's slowing path across the tiny monitor screen until resting at it's final destination; asystole.

Mom was gone.

We can't let this happen to our patients. SB349 threatens the health of our patients and the quality of their lifestyles. I am in the process of crafting a rebuttal that, upon completion, will be delivered to each of the solons accountable for its outcome as to the supreme folly of this bill.

I welcome the perspective of health practitioners at all levels, but particularly the viewpoint of nephrology doctors.

Soldiers can't fight all the battles, sometimes Generals need to jump into the fray.

Would you be willing to contribute a few moments of your time to share your thoughts? If so, contact is simplest by email. My address is silvertothemoon2012@hotmail.com


Regards,

Ray Long, RN

Friends... I'm asking for help. I can't do this alone, and I'm certain one among you will know how to assist. What I need to know is how to upload a video to Youtube.
You all know I'm an idiot. Please post step by step instructions as to what is involved. As I'm typing this it just struck me that surely there is such info on ehow.com I will
check there. If you, as well, learn that this info is already online, I would still welcome little tips of your own experiences uploading... and, certainly, encouragement is
welcome.

[Rodebaugh]

Ray I need to google SB349.....you have peeked my curiosity.

Check youtube for a video about uploading. There has to be a dozen or more tutorials available. Start there for now.

[beauanderos]

Ray I need to google SB349.....you have peeked my curiosity.

Check youtube for a video about uploading. There has to be a dozen or more tutorials available. Start there for now.

Thanks, Chris. There's a faster means available... and time is of the essence. I am making an appeal to some of the doctors online with the widest
Youtube video, asking them to read the bill and consider posting a Youtube rebuttal. I will learn how to post myself; for now my time is best spent
directly contacting individuals with the most influence in California and social media. That means I have to establish a facebook account and tweeter, as well
as pick up a smart phone.

God willing, I believe I can accomplish this task of defeating the bill

[IdahoCopper]

What is the "Too Long; Didn't Read" synopses of the bill?

Ray, you said absolutely nothing about what exactly the bill will do if passed.

[68Camaro]

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/face ... 20180SB349

I skimmed it but the real impact to patients is lost on me. Hopefully Ray can elaborate. There seems to be an intent to improve care but I couldn't be sure that the end result is a lessening of care. (That's the problem with the government getting into everything. Collect the data and make it available so that the free market can choose, but don't impose new regulations and penalties. Let the free market decide.)

Sorry Ray, I can't help you with YouTube - have never uploaded anything.

[beauanderos]

been very busy on this. here's a short explanation which, combined with portions of my earlier post I pieced together and sent to the legislation tonight.
I'm gonna let it rest now for a few days and focus on the book I'm writing on dialysis.

The proposed regulatory changes of SB349, on the surface, would ostensibly represent an improvement in safety standards thus purportedly increasing the quality of health care. Yet just below the veneer of this plausible justification lurks a sophistic guise. SB349 would, in actuality, likely result in the loss of 15,000 chairs provided in treatment centers, impacting the current health status of the approximately 60,000 existing patients in deleterious fashion. How? Those patients would then have to be dialyzed in hospital units, overloading the capacity of those therapeutic treatment sites. They have neither adequacy of staff nor chairs. A chair is considered one machine, one chair... and a treatment is generally three to four hours. Most in- hospital dialysis rooms have only two or - at most - three or four chairs. Often, they have only one. Providing the opportunity to obtain dialysis treatments for an additional three to twelve patients would do little to stem the torrent of patients expected to swell in number and stream en masse into such facilities. When - at some future date - that flood ensues, it will inundate those facilities and adversely impact their ability to administer quality health care.

Patients would be inconvenienced by inability to reschedule treatments for any reason. They would be immobilized by their lack of freedom to travel and, ultimately, their health status likely be irrevocably and irretrievably incapacitated. Jeopardizing the quality of life for these hapless innocents in such fashion will succeed only in hastening their deterioration and, in turn, decimate their number. An early demise will become their destiny, all because of an infelicitously considered bill whose ulterior motive is simply to swell union coffers.

[knibloe]

Ray,

I'm late to the fray on this one and at a loss for time this week due to work. Has this been voted on? what can I do? My wife is on dialysis and I know first hand the importance of having enough chairs for patients.

Chris

[beauanderos]

Ray,

I'm late to the fray on this one and at a loss for time this week due to work. Has this been voted on? what can I do? My wife is on dialysis and I know first hand the importance of having enough chairs for patients.

Chris

Chris,

I haven't been around much for the last three weeks (or more) for a very good reason. I suppose you could say that I had a nervous breakdown
(worked about 45 days in a row with little or no sleep)... and I've been as crazed as Jack Nicholson lately . Needed to be medicated so I could sleep.
End synapse neuronal dopamine receptor sites were blocked by norepinephrine... little difference between that and using cocaine. Natural high induced
by sleep deficit and fasting... still losing weight, about 80 pounds since March 1st. Slowing down now and leveling off to maybe a pound a week.

Guess Thogey has been right all along. Bunch of fruit-cakes out here in California. But... just to show that I still have my wits about me... you know all those
blonde jokes? Wanna hear a red-headed joke? ........................ wait for it...............................................................wait for it

Donald Trump... and I voted for the idget. Still better than Hillary, but really, we didn't have much of a choice, did we? Here's another one. Trump's greatest
fear? Walking on the rotunda while a Mexican with a McCullock leaf-blower is in the vicinity. Visual... Trump unraveling that nest of his like a Pakistani who has
lost his turban. I'm going to set up a website called "Buy My Jokes.com (that's a laugh! ) Writing about 200 jokes a day, will save up 20,000 and then submit
multiple books to various publisher's. I modestly expect them each to be best sellers. Probably Trump won't think so... and I probably shouldn't even joke about this
kind of stuff... Edward Snowden was right.

Got myself fired. Wrongful termination and I will get the most prestigious West Coast legal experts to represent me to the tune of $20 million,.
$100 million if we go class action, which could very well happen. My own personal Auschwitz (or Treblinka, if Jewish folk are offended). I lost my
entire support network of over 700 patients and 150 staff, who I liked/loved as dearly as family members. They were right to suspend me, but did
not inform me or offer me a Skelly hearing. Just unilaterally fired my fluffy and now I'm down to a brother-in-law (who can be snarky at times) an
older sister whose patience is rapidly wearing thin, and my ex-wife (we're still friends).

Thank God (literally) that I still have a few online friends that burgeoned initially and that I pray will continue to flourish. Rodebaugh, Chaboo, christostock. I will get you paid this evening. Let me know if you'd like a penalty bonus for my misfortune and your less than serendipitous delay in my funding
the purchase. Unfortunately, matters progressed beyond my control. I was too arrogant to admit that even I have a breaking point (I only had eight days
off last year, usually 16 hrs or more)... and I both reached and exceeded it.

Gonna write a best-selling, Academy award winning screenplay and call it "The Pooh hit the Fan when they all Flu Out of the Cuckoo's Nest.

Going to go check BS email now. Just got released today. Almost back to old previous self, but as you guys may have sensed... very forgetful.

I apologize and if neg fb is warranted, go ahead. I will be liquidating a goodly portion of my stash to help the homeless, hungry, and needy as the Lord sees
fit. I'm 66+ and you can't take it with you. I'm hardly what you would call wealthy, but I can certainly afford to dole out $30 or $40 to street
people each day. Only one buck each... not up to me to judge them and they aren't gonna get high on a single dollar.

The neat thing is... you don't even have to witness. The back of the buck says "In God We Trust" and beneath that is a capitalized ONE. Creative minds
can think of many ways to send a message just with those words.

LMK what else I can do to compensate you for your Lost Wages ( ) still, Thank God, have my sense of humor. It's been a rough month.

Talk to you as soon as you want, if you want to shoot the breeze. Dude... brother, some REAL freekin' nut-jobs in that place. I wasn't one of them, but I
had good insurance which makes it almost impossible to get released.

Thanks Guys (and Gals),

Ray

you can refer to me as Sparky if you want... my new nickname.