What's the Deal with Dialysis?
A conversation about the kidneys and what happens when they fail.
What's the Deal with Dialysis?
Choosing The Right Dialysis Center
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Feeling stuck with the dialysis clinic you were assigned after the ER? We break down a clear, humane way to take your power back—starting with the data, then moving through practical steps you can use this week. Together we map the landscape: why so many patients feel ready to “sign off,” how small harms like repeated cramping compound into fear, and what measurable signals separate safer, kinder units from places that drain your spirit.
We walk through Medicare.gov’s hidden-in-plain-sight tools to find and compare dialysis facilities by zip code, then open up what those five-star ratings really mean. Quality outcomes, patient survey scores, mortality and hospitalization trends, catheter and fistula use, and transplant activity each tell part of the story. You’ll learn how to read the details behind the stars, spot red flags, and identify centers that actually support your goals, including getting on a transplant list sooner.
Knowledge only matters if it leads to action, so we get tactical. Visit potential clinics, meet the medical director and social worker, and observe how staff respond to cramps and concerns. If you decide to switch, we outline how to confirm insurance, secure acceptance, and request your chart—plus a few street‑smart tips to avoid friction while you move. We also discuss regions dominated by big chains, why oversight can feel toothless, and how to protect yourself anyway with documentation, clear requests, and an ally at appointments.
Care is more than machines. We share realistic, evidence‑informed lifestyle levers: plant‑forward eating mindful of potassium and phosphorus, intermittent fasting for those who can safely try it, and daily breathwork or tai chi to steady blood pressure and ease sessions. For those early in kidney disease, we stress timing—start transplant planning at 30 eGFR and keep healthy habits after a graft to protect it long term.
If you or someone you love is on dialysis, you’re not powerless. Use the data, trust your body, ask better questions, and bring your community with you. If this helped, follow, share with someone who needs it, and leave a review so more people can find their way to safer, smarter kidney care.
Hosts Maurice Carlisle and Ira McAliley welcome recurring guest Paul Terry.
What's up, beautiful people? What's up? We're back with What's the Deal with Dialysis? This is Ira McAlilly and Maurice Carlisle. And we're going to get into it. We're evolving, we're growing, we're we're digging deeper. And what are we going to do today, Mo?
SPEAKER_01Well, we're going to talk about a really important issue to follow up the 10 critical steps that you need to take once you find out that you may be having kidney disorder. We want to go into how to select a center. Most cases, patients are just given a center because they're NER or they're given the doctor this phone call and we discuss that. Now we want to take it a step further and talk about how you can find out what center in your area could best serve you.
SPEAKER_00So if you need to take out a notepad to take some notes or whatever, like you can always go back and look at this later. And today we have Mr. Paul Terry with us again. So stay tuned. So it's good to be back. It's good to see folks. I feel like we're into twenty twenty six, already flying by. But I feel good. Like I feel good. I feel like just even the three of us in our outside conversations, I think we're all growing and evolving, and that's what we want to push on to our friends and audience and family and all that because we all got to rise together. So absolutely, absolutely. And we're doing that, right? We're doing that. So stuff. In the intro, Maurice talked about trying to find a center. What brought that on this week, Maurice?
SPEAKER_01Well, I I I think the last man, about the last couple weeks, I'm I'm a part of a couple uh communities on Facebook uh to do. One is I hate dialysis. The other one is living with dialysis. These two groups often post about their experiences and sinners or experiences with their accesses. I mean, you name it, they pretty much discuss it. In the last couple weeks, I've seen more people come online and talk about signing off. About, you know, how signing off isn't suicide, how signing off is what they're gonna do because they can't take it anymore. And it it dawned on me that usually the when that happens, it's because they're having very bad experiences in their centers.
SPEAKER_02So you mean just terminating dialysis altogether?
SPEAKER_01That's that's the post I've seen. I've seen at least seven of those posts in two weeks.
SPEAKER_00That's crazy. And now do people have an alternative or they're just giving up?
SPEAKER_01I think they're giving up, man. These people are talking about discontinuing dialysis. They didn't talk about going to PD. They're talking about discontinuing the treatment altogether. And it was shocking to hear because I, you know, there's an uptick. And I know we have some social issues here in America that, you know, can make people's moods change and make us feel down. But I've not seen anything like this in my whole career.
SPEAKER_00So what I've noticed just in general, and it might be my algorithm, but there's just a lot more people that are leaning towards more natural, like we've talked about this too, like people going back to natural ways of healing, like understanding that we can heal ourselves, like you know, through meditation, through just getting right mind, body, and spirit, and just distrust of a whole lot of society because we get lied to so much, right? And so I know for me, I've had this conversation with several people, you know, on a side note, my mother being in the hospital and just kind of going through whatever, and my sister, who you know, got a kidney transplant twice, is there with her, thankfully, because you know, she's an advocate, she's gonna do the research and she's gonna make sure people are treated right. The point being is that like we are raised to think that got doctors know everything, right? And that you know, that you know, it's I just saw it the other day, the white coat syndrome, right? And so it comes in a white coat coat, like they know all, and the truth is they don't. And Maurice, you've talked about this forever. And like your patients, you knew more about your patients than the doctor did, the nephrologist did when they came in, but you were hushed because you don't have the you know, the letters after your name and all that. So my question, I guess, is what do we do? Like, what do we do in terms of people like not wanting people to give up, give up, but understand why they're trying to leave the center.
unknownYeah.
Care Quality, Cramping, And Mortality
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm I mean, I think, you know, I've like you said, there's many stories that I've been told by patients. The last one in particular, the lady, you know, she kept cramping when this particular nurse would walk by her machine, and she was actually uh identifying that when this lady came and left, that not long after that, she, you know, experienced discomfort. So she, you know, she correlated this lady with her discomfort. Happened to be a nurse, and this nurse was, you know, uh trying to pull more fluid off her than she could tolerate. She began to skip a treatment every week. It starts there. And we see that. And then she's hospitalized. You know, she's got too much fluid on, she can't breathe, she's gotta go in the hospital. That happens a couple times, and then that person passes away, man. And we know that. We've seen it. We know that if they are uncomfortable and it's on a consistent basis, that it can be grueling, and people don't want to tolerate that. They don't want to come. You know, they don't know that they can ask that person not to take care of them. They don't know that they can pick their nephrologists, and we talked about that. And so I thought that maybe I need to show them how they can look at these centers and determine whether these centers can support where they want to go or that it doesn't support what they want. If you have a lot of deaths in a center, it can be correlated with one, you know, with some of the treatment and care they're getting. Uh, we just have to face that fact. I know that, you know, there's all these other factors. Yeah, you know, their mortality rates and their verbity and all that. Yeah, that comes into play. But at the end of the day, people are living on dialysis for 30 plus years. There has to be something good about that center they're in or something that's, you know, really strong about their character that allows them to tolerate dialysis that long. And if they're cramping every day for 30 years, I don't think they'd make it 30 plus years.
SPEAKER_02They're not gonna make 30 years.
Understanding CMS Five-Star Ratings
SPEAKER_01Right. Yeah, yeah. What have you seen, Pete, you know, and chiming in on that?
SPEAKER_02Well, you know, when I first got in dialysis again, that was 30 plus years ago. We had people that would come from the East Coast and they did they were not used to high flux dialysis. We know what that is. That's a bigger dialysis that has a higher clearance rate, meaning they could pull more toxins off at a faster rate and a higher blood flow rate, meaning that blood was pulled off and returned at a at a faster rate, which increases the amount of pressure put on the heart. So we had a lady that came from, I'm you know, I've dialysis people from Japan, from Germany, from the East Coast, the West Coast. So, in terms of patient care, I've seen quite a bit, even done pediatric dialysis, as you already know. But that being said, what you're what you're indicating, what you're basically alluding to is there is a scorecard type of system that people can reference that will give them an idea about the quality of care at that particular unit. What is what is that in what is what's involved with that?
SPEAKER_01Well, I think there's there's two matrix. The federal government, the centers of Medicare services do rate clinics based on their performance. And those are numbers that are called quality ratings.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01And then you're gonna have another set of ratings that are the inpatient ratings that the patients fill out a survey to tell you and tell you what kind of service they're getting at the center. Both of these indicators are based on a five-star rating. And, you know, of course, you want to get five if you can. If if a clinic is has five stars, that means that, you know, the the patients in that center are happy with the care that they get. If that center gets a two, then patients are saying they are not happy with the care they're getting.
SPEAKER_02With quality of care, there's no quality of care. Is that a cool reason?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, not at all. But the problem is patients don't see these ratings. So the centers don't care. They don't care. How can they see the ratings, King? Well, they're hidden. How do we get them? They're hidden within the Medicare overall Medicare site. They used to be that they were their own standalone website called the Dialysis Center Tracker. You can go there, put in your zip code of where you're from, and it would bring up all the centers in your zip code. And then give you the ratings. And it will give you the ratings. It would tell you how many deaths they have per capita in that center, how many people have catheters, how many people have fish lists, how many people are on the transplant list, how many transplants they did that year, how many people in that center.
SPEAKER_02No, this is information in their family and supports this of the.
SPEAKER_01You can use that. If you if you want a transplant and the center you look up in your zip code, you look up your center, and you're going to a center that had one transplant last year, or two transplants in the last three years, are are your chances of getting a transplant greater there? Or are they greater if you go to a place that did 10 transplants last year? I think your chances are better if you go to the place that the doctor is actively having people, you know, get on a transplant list and they are receiving transplants.
SPEAKER_02Like other centers. Like research hospitals.
SPEAKER_00Yes. So did this used to be public inform public information that's gone away from being public?
SPEAKER_01It's it's still public. It's just integrated into the Medicare site. So you wouldn't think that, oh, I'm gonna go to the Medicare site to find out, you know, what sent, you know, how well my center is doing in the ratings, but that's exactly where you gotta go. And we will put up the link to this. We will show you this link. Um, our original recording does not have the link, but it will.
Finding Data On Medicare.gov
SPEAKER_00So just in terms of if you could like right now, like I know you have it on your phone, right? If you were to go into your phone and pull it up, like what's what's the site? And then like what do you see when you go in there and what are the different parts of it so that we can we'll we'll put in an insert so people can see exactly what it is.
SPEAKER_01Right. The site is called Medicare.gov. And when you go to the Medicare.gov site, it will say find and compare providers near you. And below that is a provider type, and there's a drop-down box. And when you click on that drop-down box, it's gonna give you a list of provider types: doctors and clinicians, hospitals, nursing homes. But what we're looking for is dialysis facilities. And so you want to click on the dialysis facilities, and then when that comes up, you'll go below there and it'll ask you for your location, and you just simply put in your zip code. If you do know the name of the facility, you can put the name of the facility in. And then when you hit search below that, you'll get a list of all the centers in that zip code.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01So I put in California 92122, which is San Diego, and I've got a Fersinia Center at Balboa Hospital. I've got the Fersinia Center in La Jolla, which they they must have now. I don't remember them having that center pee. Children's Hospital has a center, which only people under 18 can can dialyze in. So I need to make let people know that. Yeah, pediatric dialysis is 18 or below. Once kids are 18 years old, then they have to dialyze in adult centers after that. There's the home therapy dialysis center there. There's Davita Carmel Mountain Dialysis, and it has one of the highest ratings actually. But when you go into these places, you're gonna click in there, and it's still gonna be a little bit confusing because they're gonna show you the ratings, but you want to see the details to these ratings. And you're able to see for the quality rating, you see their details, and for the patient survey rating, you can see the details. These are the places where you want to go to get a feel for what your center's doing, how well they're doing, how well they're not doing. And then you can determine from that, well, you know, this center doesn't look like they're getting very good ratings, and I'm here and I'm not happy with my care. Now I could look at other centers in the in the zip code and maybe choose to go somewhere else.
Reading Center Metrics That Matter
SPEAKER_00So I got a question. So say you already have, you know, you went into ER, you're given a center, and you're not happy with that, right? Like, you know, it's like you get to the hotel and you find out they got cockroaches and and you're like out of my switch hotel, right? Right. And so what do you do? Like, what do you do? You say to your doctor, like, because a lot of people are afraid to like say something to their doctor. Yeah, so what what's the pro what's process would you guys or encouragement would you give people to actually go to that list, figure out, all right, I found some place else to go. What's the next step? How do you get to that?
SPEAKER_01I would visit that place. You know, it's great to see the ratings, but it's better to see the place. I think that these ratings can give you like a roadmap, and you can use it like a roadmap to go to the next step of the process is to go over there, meet the people there, you know, meet the medical director, meet their doctor, you know, they're gonna want to meet you because you're a potential patient, your potential client. And so they're gonna be open to meeting you. Everybody's gonna roll out the carpet for you, they're gonna want to talk to you because, you know, you're a potential person that they can take care of. And so that's what I would do first. And I talk to the social worker as well. Might be hard to talk to the patients. Maybe sometimes if you're sitting in the waiting room waiting for the doctor to come get you. Yeah, then you want to have some conversation with people in the lobby and ask them about that.
SPEAKER_02And some interesting conversations are held in the lobby. I'm gonna be asking if I were a patient and I wanted to switch units, I would lie. I would tell them straight up, listen, for I'm gonna be temporarily living with my eyes. Moving somewhere else, yeah. They're not gonna just totally dismiss me and I will not have to suffer any potential repercussions from staff and or the doctor. You know what I mean? Yeah, that and I so I I'm gonna just just based off of my personal experience, I would not tell them I'm gonna leave you guys because you suck, because you get a two out of five or one out of five, which we have seen, which we have seen a lot lately. Yeah. So I I would tell somebody I'm gonna go live with, visit, you know, stay with somebody, a family member temporarily, but I'm I would tell them that I would be back. That way they don't they don't put it in their mind that that I'm leaving them, you know, for ill reasons. And that way you're gonna avoid a whole lot of negative, you know, repercussions.
How To Switch Clinics Safely
SPEAKER_01That's what I mean. I think that you shouldn't tell them anything. Actually, I I mean, once you figure out if you want to move and go somewhere else, then that's when you had a conversation about, well, you know, I'm gonna move in with my daughter, and you know, we're gonna move over here, and they've already accepted me. Could you go ahead and send my paperwork over?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, because they're gonna send your, they have to send your files in your church. They have to send your chart record anyway. Because I don't I don't think you could just you can't just transform.
SPEAKER_01The social workers gotta have some kind of communication. Right. Find out if your insurance is accepted at this place and all of that, if the doctor's gonna accept you and blah, blah, blah. Now, I will say that most nephrologists practice in more than one center. So just because I'm the medical director at DeVito over here, don't mean I don't see patients at Frasinius six blocks away. I'm still gonna have privileges over there in most cases to see patients over there. So it may be that you might like your doctor, but you don't care for the facility.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01That doctor will then see you at the new facility that you choose if they have, you know, if they do business with that.
SPEAKER_02If that doctor is employed andor contracted at that facility, four ratings as opposed to two ratings.
SPEAKER_01Right, right. And chances are they are. I mean, I can tell you that the doctor that I worked for, he probably, let's see, he had privileges in about four or five different centers.
SPEAKER_02He must have been around.
SPEAKER_01So he had his own center, then he had three or four other centers that and I think he had like two centers of his own.
SPEAKER_02I know they for Cineus and Davida, man.
SPEAKER_01We don't have no freestanding centers in in this general area. Now, there's a freestanding set of clinics up in the Cleveland area, which is about two and a half hours north of me. But in this radius right here, I I do not believe that there is any freestanding Dallas centers in my in a hundred-mile radius of my my clinic. So it's all Davido or Fircinius, and in my particular town, it's only Davida.
SPEAKER_00So they got a monopoly. So they have a monopoly.
SPEAKER_01They've got a monopoly right now.
SPEAKER_00So what happens then? You know, is there a board, like a national board, that then can look like you know, that accredits different centers? Say if you consistently get a two from your clients, right? And then, you know, whatever that board is that goes and and and critiques a center and gives them a rating. Like, is there a point where they're like, all right, you're getting cut off because you're not doing the job, or is it just they just continue?
SPEAKER_01That's a great question, Ira. That's a great question. Me and Pete talked about this before. They're not closing no dialysis centers.
SPEAKER_02Even though they're surveyed, they're surveyed semi-regularly. Survey says like we always said they're not closing any centers, they're not closing no centers, Ira.
SPEAKER_00Right now, man, they're sucking money out of people.
SPEAKER_01Literally, we've I've heard of stories where clinics had what they call fire ants down in Mississippi coming in in the clinic. The peep the patients were complaining. It got to a point where the patient complained and the technician gave her some raid and walked away. That ain't right. That ain't not right. I'm not lying to you, man. Handed her a can of raid and walked away. Okay.
Monopolies, Surveys, And Accountability Gaps
SPEAKER_00That sounds like an in living color sketch with it does, man.
SPEAKER_01It does. And just gave her the can like like set it on the side table and walked out like I'm tired of you calling me over here. You know, so and it took them three years to post that clinic.
SPEAKER_02I was gonna say, there are certain situations where certain pests, certain like rodents, they're you're you're they will close you down, even if it's typically. Like that's supposed to come in and close you down.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but listen, man. Listen, I'm in the dialysis center, I see something wrong, and I'll make a phone call. And the state says, Well, we're gonna come in there. And they call them and tell them we're gonna come in there. Yeah. Okay. I mean, what so listen, man. I've seen them have surveys. Phoeni knows this. We have a survey in the clinic. They call every center that's a part of that company like like the call every Davida within a hundred mile radius. Come help us, man. The state's coming. Right. And they'll all shoot to that center. Wow. Start cleaning up stuff, man. Cleaning tables. Hey, where y'all doing with these floors?
SPEAKER_02They give you time to remedy whatever your bar your bad marks where you get time to remedy that, you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_00I mean, I guess that's good. I it just, you know, at a core, kind of shady.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but it's it's not easy to you know displace and or replace, you know, down the center three problems, especially if you have a center that has you know upwards of 150, 200.
SPEAKER_01Where are they gonna go?
SPEAKER_02Where they going?
SPEAKER_01Got it. Where they're going, man.
SPEAKER_00Let's go to the next, then, all right. So given all that, right? And as you're saying, there's people that are leaving altogether, right? So once those people go, what do we got for them? What do we like in terms of like let's switch to like the holistic side, let's switch to you know, bigger food juices. Like, what is it that like nutrition? Like, we know nutrition is an issue, like they don't get proper guidance on nutrition. Like, what is it that we because I think some people were like, you know what? Like, I saw one post, I think you guys sent it. It was a brother that was like, I haven't done this in years, I've changed my diet, I've blah blah blah. Like, I think he was the one who was talking about the white coat syndrome. Right. Right, right. He's he seems like he's doing all right, you know what I mean? And so he's found another way, right? And so what do we got for people? What can we give them to find?
Holistic Habits And Nutrition Realities
SPEAKER_01We really don't because by the time these people get that information, man, they can't do without dialysis for two days. You know, I mean, there's there's nothing really for them except that. That's why this system is so pervasive. It's like once I get you doing this, I know that you really don't have any other options. Now, he might have started early in his journey. He still has some kidney function. You can do some things to increase your kidney function. And then you, you know, but once I put you on a dialysis machine, the only thing that keeps going down is your kidney function and your blood pressure. So those are the two things that you, you know, you're gonna be fighting. So everything you eat is an impurity, man. Everything you eat creates waste, and you can't eliminate it.
SPEAKER_02And so you're just everything that you make that statement because you keep saying everything that you eat, everything that you eat. You know, because of like I alluded to, site made a site about earlier about algorithm. You know, whatever you frequent, that's whatever you look for, you're gonna start that's gonna be fed to you via your algorithm. And for whatever reason, I think it's because we're the nature of the material that we discuss on a regular basis. I keep I continue, I'm seeing an increase in doctors that are getting on social media and explain to their patients that they do have some semi-remedies that won't take you off diet, but will improve your your your function, yeah. Yeah, your live, your standard of living, right? That being said, me personally, I really do believe that creating an alkaline environment inside your body is going to assess you with you know with yeah, and and also intermittent fasting, me that's what that's my personal recommendation, which goes right back to Irahu's saying there's a holistic approaches to you know to improving your situation. The problem that I've found is that people do you generally do not possess the strength of character to miss a meal or two, they just don't have it, and that's very unfortunate. So if they could get a remedy, that would help them. But it once again, I've really I preach to people that you're gonna have to develop the strength of character to fast, bro. You're gonna have to stop putting it in your mouth. I don't see any I don't see otherwise because of the quality of food in this country. I hate to bash us, but it is what it is. And then I tell people another thing, you gotta get organic, you have to get organic fruits and vegetables because general, you know, the regular run-of-the-mill fruits and vegetables in your gross is basically the and you can look at the number that's you know, there's all there's a there's a rating system for your fruits and vegetables, also number nine being the best, all the way down to threes and fours, and threes and fours basically the quality, the nutritional value of threes and fours are in the gutter. No good, yeah. Yeah, no good. A lot of people will say that live eating organically is a is expensive, it costs a little more, but is it worth it or not to you?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's worth it. It's definitely worth it. I mean, and but we're short-sighted people, right? Our we're just like that's our culture handle.
Early Action, Transplant Pathways, Lifestyle
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. And it's changing, like you guys said. I mean, we see more people talking about holistic, you know, things and stuff like that. I'm just thinking about these folks, and they're already in the system. Right. You know, we intend to reach people that are not in the system, and that is our ultimate goal because we know that changing things from within is, you know, quite difficult. You know, and so we want, you know, the whole goal of what we're doing, I think, and we've discussed this guy, but we want to get ahead of the disease. We want to get with people when their GFR is 60, when their GFRs are 70, because then they have an opportunity to to you know write their future. But if you, you know, you you got 30% kidney function, you know, you should be thinking about a transplant right now. Because when you're at 20, you're gonna need it. And so, but nobody's even getting, you know, that's not the conversation we're having because I'm seeing doctors follow people in my community for eight years and they still end up on dialysis, and I don't understand why they weren't on the transplant list three years before that.
SPEAKER_02Or why they didn't change their lifestyle. Because to be honest, a handful of people, you know, get off of dialysis. I've seen people, like you said, they get the they get the heads up from their internal medicine, their nephritis when they're 50 or 50 or 60 percent, and they change their lifestyle. They incorporate, they incorporate a better, healthier diet, they incorporate some moderate exercises, and then they also they start again to to you know eliminate the amount of meat that they eat because we do know that the byproduct of meat is going to increase your creatinine levels. I mean, yes, yes. So I have seen people who have who have you know increased their their health and and avoided dialysis before they got to stage five.
SPEAKER_01Well, and then I could just say this, and I think this was the volumes too just on this, you know, to like cap the subject, but patient gets a transplant, right? Yes, sir. But the doctor says, you know, your transplant went well. We checked you out, you did your you came back for your six-month checkup, everything's good. You can eat what whatever you've been eating, you just continue to eat what you're eating. Just eat what you want. That's right, that's it. And that that new tool. Eight years, yeah, eight years or less, you're back in there, man. You know, I don't feel good. Oh, we're looking, you know, your kidney function's down to three. You you you know, you're you you're at stage three again. You know, we're gonna have to do this and that. I don't understand why you didn't say that when you gave them the transplant that hey, from this point on, your life is gonna be, you're gonna still eat the things you were eating before, like you were on dialysis, because you you're gonna go right back if you don't. And that's that's what's gonna happen. The industry's not even telling them that. They're spending all that money to do a transplant, and they're not even showing them how to protect it. New kidney, they're putting them right back into the mix.
Mindset, Breathwork, And Self-Advocacy
SPEAKER_02Yeah, they're not it's not dialysis is not a cure. First of all, let's let's go ahead and and and and elaborate and give it a treatment, man. Yeah, diales is a treatment, it's not a cure. That being said, if you want a cure, you're gonna have to go look for that. And like Ira continues to reiterate, a cure is more than likely it's gonna have to be a holistic approach. That being said, I have seen people leave the country, you know, and get treatments that are not FDA approved in this country and and actually get off of diaspora, but those are good, those are gonna be far and few between. Because, like you said, people don't have that knowledge, then they're not getting that information. And then a lot of times they can't afford to travel like that, you know.
Blue Zones, Community, And Daily Practices
SPEAKER_00Well, and the other, I mean, and I'll keep going back to being me and where I come from and just the spirit side of things. Like the truth is, like, if you go back and you know, people are looking at this, and this is happening more and more across the board, but like we're not we're not given our own power, like our power has been sucked out of us because it's being powerless is is beneficial to somebody financially, right? That's right. So, like historically, like you don't see in like ancient history books like a bunch of people having cancer, no sir, right? Right, so we've created that, right? But it starts with belief, number one, that like plants, like the rest of nature, we can heal ourselves, right? But it starts with a belief and it starts with a practice, and it starts with it's all vibration, right? We're all vibration, we're all a frequency, right? And so disease is dis-ease. It's like we have not like we've taken ourselves, we've we've bought into the chaos so much that we don't even get that. If you you know just spend 15 minutes a day, just like showing the F out, right? Like literally just going internally to change our life, and just that's even just that breathing, right? Like, concentrate on your breathing, doing breath work, you know what I mean? But that's not a part of our medical system because it doesn't make money because to me, like that is where we can start is just like look, even if it just helps you in your dialysis to just be pay attention to that, right? Sit five minutes before you go in, go all right. I know this nurse gets on my nerves, but I'm not gonna let her today, right? Right, that's gonna take our power away. That's gonna affect just even how it flows through you, right? True story. I I just I think so. My answer to my own question is that's what we can do, right? Yes, and that's my practice, that's what I've been working on for me, and just like realizing the power of humanity, the power we have as human beings to be able to manifest, to heal, to live in abundance, to live in health, like to be able to affect that, and it and affect you know, growing food, like there's a big wave of people that are like having home gardens, and like like you said, like the organic, and even sometimes what they say is organic in the store isn't really organic, right? And so, you know, we've all felt fell for the oakie doke, right? We've all felt for like they said this, so that must be right, and the truth, you know, and we know like at the core, it ain't right, it's not right, right?
SPEAKER_02So I have a question. Have you guys heard of blue zones?
SPEAKER_00Yes, yeah, back Costa Rica, baby.
SPEAKER_02That like blue zones are certain places around the world where people live to be 100 plus years old, plus years, yeah. Exactly. Loma Linda, California is one of those places, and that's where I go to get a lot of my organic fruits and vegetables. And and it's it's a predominantly seven-day adventure uh city. There's no liquor stores, there's there's no bars there. And I I personally think that when you surround yourself by people that live these kind of lifestyles, it's yeah, it's it's yeah, you do. It's going to rub off, and you're gonna learn a lot of things from being in the presence of interacting with these type of people, you know what I mean? And so I urge people, I urge people to do like I said, research it, find out about a meditation, find out about Tai Chi, find out about you know, find out about fasting, find out yoga, find out about all of these things because it's going to increase your livelihood, it's going to increase your health, and you're gonna live longer, and you may very well be able to escape this, this, this, this bondage that is dialysis.
SPEAKER_00And there's people that are doing it all over the world, so take the best of like take what they you know, look at China, like like you go to the park and you see all these old you know, Asian people that are doing Tai Chi, Tai Chi, like their bodies are in good shape, all of it, right? And so, you know, look outside of and you know, in the world of AI, like you can go on chat and just ask, and it'll give you a list of things, it'll give you a menu, it'll give you all of it. So you know the tools.
SPEAKER_02So you have to advocate for yourself in short, dances people and dances support people, you're gonna have to advocate for your people. You're gonna you're gonna that's the you cannot just hand your life over to people and expect yourself to get better. Because, like he just said, this is a for-profit uh industry, bro. You're gonna have to advocate for yourself. You cannot expect people to take care of you, and you're gonna get better if it's not working.
SPEAKER_01And and what I realized was is that patients are telling me things they're not telling their family. So when they're having all these issues, they're their family members dropping them off and picking them up. I would do the day to day. It was all right, and get in the car and they leave.
SPEAKER_00That's two things. That's a little bit of like being shame-based and not wanting to admit that you've made a choice or whatever. And the other is just not wanting to be a burden, right? And not wanting to be a burden on your body.
Family Support And Speaking Up
SPEAKER_02You have become a burden. They're not getting paid to take you, they're not getting extra money to take you to pick you up. You become a burden, and your grumpy, you had like you say, had a bad day, had a bad day.
SPEAKER_01But I mean, we can't just drop our mothers and our fathers and our uncles off and our aunties off and walk away. We can't we can't do that no more. You know, it wasn't good back then, but we thought it was okay. It was a little bit more character involved in the people that was taking care of people. But at the end of the day, I mean, all nurses aren't great nurses, all techs aren't great techs. All people aren't great people.
SPEAKER_00But at the end of the day, family members aren't great family members.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, some people aren't great family members. But the thing is, you know, we expect people that are caring for people to care. And that's not the case. Those people are in there because they need a job, they need to take care of their families, they need to pay their bills, and you know, everybody's not like me and Pete. We did, you know, we knew we weren't gonna get rich working at the dialysis center. If we had wanted to do that, we would have gone into finance. We went into health care because we care for people. And, you know, we never got rich from the work that we did, but it was it was it enrich us in other ways, ways even more important than financially.
SPEAKER_00Wealth comes in different forms, it's not just financial spiritual, yeah. So experiential, all that. So, with that, I think that we can come back to another episode where we like give some examples of like way, like holistically, things that can be done outside of, or you know, if you're headed there, or if you're already there, like I think we can do a whole episode on that because I think it's time to like wrap it up. I think we gave some really good information here. I think we've hit it from a couple different places. At the end of the day, as we always say, you got to be an advocate for yourself, you gotta do it for myself.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's your choice, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And just know that you have the power. Like, I my thing is empower people to be powerful, right? Because we all have it's not like any of us are any spec more special than anybody else, right? It's just choices that are made, and it's a perspective that we have that we actually can make a choice, right? And so, yeah. What do you guys got to say to end this up?
SPEAKER_01Well, I think we just we want to provide tools for people, you know, that they can go in the toolkit and pull something out of there that they can find useful and use it that can make their lives better.
Tools, Community Help, And Closing
SPEAKER_02Come and get this information, come and get this information, and we will continue to expand and expound on all the little things and the big things that are important to keep you here and to so that you can enjoy a better quality of life.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, because you don't have to suffer with whatever center you've been given, whatever doctor you've been given. It's not it that's not the end, but you you're gonna have to fight for yourself. Thanks.
SPEAKER_00And I will say, in addition, reach out, you know what I mean? Like you answer questions if you got like you're stuck, you need just a pep talk, whatever. I think that's that's the community, right? That's what and and if you see somebody else who's like posted and you got an answer for them, answer. You know what I mean? Like that, I think we can do that. We we gotta advocate for each other because we're seeing that the people that we hoped would take care of us are not taking care of us. You know what you mean? That's right. Yeah, so with that, go well into your day, your week, your month. Love yourself, love your family, love your people. Love yourself because we're all blessed to be here, truthfully. Yes, we are. Yes, we are. And we'll come back again for some more what's the deal with dialysis. Absolutely. Peace and blessings, peace and blessings, y'all. Y'all be good.