What You Need To Know To Become A Kidney Transplant Donor

If you are a person who is suffering from kidney disease, your situation might get to the point where you and your doctor decide that it is time to seek kidney transplant surgery. At that time, finding a kidney transplant donor will take on utmost importance. You may already know that finding a donor is not as simple as many people think. Chances are very strong that you will start by checking for a possible family member to help with the donation. Beyond that, a good friend or someone willing to offer one of their kidney's to you will be the next best thing. Collectively, all these people are considered living donors.

There are also cases in which people have died as a result of an accident. They may have previously agreed to donate their organs upon their demise. Such acts of kindness and charity are of the highest order as the kidney transplant donor will now be able to keep someone else alive.

Before any surgery can commence, there are a few tests that will need to be performed. There are many components of the blood and usually, these individual components do not match exactly from the donor to the recipient. One of the keys to a successful surgery is to have a perfect match between as many of the components as possible.

The three major tests include blood type, HLA typing, and cross-match testing in the case of a living donor. Blood types consist of O, A, B, and AB. O is considered the universal donor while AB is known as the universal recipient. Human leukocyte antigen typing, or HLA for short, is the matching of six critical antigens found in the blood. The more that match, the better are the chances for a successful surgery. Finally, cross-match testing involves the mixing of donor blood with blood from the recipient. A negative result means the blood is compatible while a positive result means the recipient's blood contains antibodies that will fight off the cells from the donor... no good.

After the kidney transplant surgery has been successfully made, the patient will have to be supervised by a physician very carefully. That person will usually have to take medications for the rest of their life. This is in order to ensure that the new kidney will not be rejected by the body. On average, in the United States, there are over fifteen thousand kidney transplant surgeries performed each year with approximately one-third supplied by a living donor and the balance coming from a deceased donor.

Since the vast majority of kidney transplant surgeries are successful, it is possible for you to get back to a normal life, free from the dialysis machine. Having a positive outlook, a good measure of patience, and a little bit of luck are that is needed to get the right kidney transplant donor.

First Aid Training Is Necessary For All People

Currently employers of different professions are required to undertake first aid training, which may vary depending on the different workplaces they work in. There are different types of courses that offer first aid training for staff. You might be interested to learn more about them, knowing that this could save someone's life.

There is a basic or so called standard first aid course that is also known as Emergency First Aid, which is suitable for all interested people - pupils and students, parents and elderly people, as no special education is required to take this course. The general public may be enrolled in it to learn the basics of first aid training, as it is not meant for places with higher percent of accidents.

These special places are required to be handled by professionals who have undergone more advanced courses. Such is the advanced life support course, which trains how to make use of automated external defibrillators and oxygen in critical situations to help the victims. This course is not for general public, but for professional first aid employees, as well as all staff that works in a facility that has oxygen masks and tanks.

On the other hand, people who are professional rescue divers, lifeguards, sailors, divers or other different professions related to saving people's life in the water, will benefit from taking marine first aid training. They need to learn how to pull the drown victims out of the water and what first aid can be provided while waiting for the ambulance. They can also help people, which cannot reach the clinic fast.

There is another kind of first aid course aimed to teach how to offer people first aid in remote places. It is called Wilderness or Remote First Aid and trains professional hikers and mountain rescues to help people while they wait for professional medical help and for specialized equipment that could be delayed.

However, there are special first aid courses, which offer first aid not only for physical ailments, but for mental diseases or for people who are going through a very stressful situation too. This mental health course will allow participants to learn the initial symptoms of a mental disorder and will know how to adequately help suffers. School counselors and physiologists can take advantage of such course to gain an advanced specialized knowledge.

There are many more first aid courses available that are in the fields of babysitting, pet care, battlefield, etc. Practically every person depending on his/her profession is able to find a suitable first aid training to know how to offer help in cases of emergency. Taking a specialized course will help also people who would like to apply for certain positions to be considered before others.

It is important to know what to do during an emergency, if you are a parent too, since your children should get adequate help in time. Knowledge of what to do when an accident occurs will give you a confidence that you will react in the best possible way under the stress and pressure.

Some Useful Natural Treatments To Combat Signs Of Menopause

Every normal female will go through the period known as menopause. This is an unavoidable reality. It comes with being a member of the female species. It's a stage that one will come to eventually at the end of her reproductive life span. However, not all women can go through it without too many problems. There are those that experience ordinary symptoms, but there are also those that go through more severe situations. It's best to note that there are two main categories as far as these symptoms are concerned: the physical and the psychological ones. Sometimes, the latter can prove to be more difficult.

The usual signs for menopause include hot flushes, weight gain, mood swings, and sleeping difficulties. Some luckier women experience only mild stages of these. Others are not that fortunate. They have to go through several months or even years suffering from such symptoms. But the thing is that this is not a disease, so there's no need to cure it with medication. That's why the better alternative to handling it is to seek for natural treatments and therapies. It's because menopause is a natural phase of life and it will come to an end eventually.

One of the most recommended strategies to overcoming these symptoms is to lead a more active and healthy lifestyle. It may sound so basic and clichd, but it's very effective. Women who exercise regularly and are conscious of their diets can deal much better with stress, anxiety and depression post-menopause. Studies also show that they experience these signs for a much shorter period of time. Yoga is one of the most recommended exercises, as well as Kegel exercises which help prevent urinary incontinence. You can also try taking up low-impact sports like golf, bowling, swimming, cycling, and long distance running.

Another effective natural therapy is acupuncture. There are researches showing that women receiving this therapy had less severe hot flashes and mood swings compared to those receiving placebo treatments. It's also time for you to get acquainted with herbal remedies if you're entering this phase. Supplements with ingredients such as gingko biloba, sage leaf extracts, and black cohosh have been shown to be very helpful in bringing relief. The last tip is to drink more water and increase your fiber intake. These can help increase your estrogen levels in order to avoid vaginal dryness and bladder problems. Of course, you should never forget to consult your doctor when the symptoms become really unbearable.

Charity Hospital Care

When I was an intern at Grady Memorial Hospital, Atlanta, Georgia, the charity patients needed only two things to see a doctor: a medical complaint and one dollar in cash.

In the emergency clinic, after the patients were signed in they were given a plastic card with a large red number that indicated their place in the queue. This number was written on their paperwork and placed in an inbox so that a doctor or nurse could locate them by calling out their number, like a butcher in a deli.
Then, they waited for hours on a wooden bench against the outer wall of a cavernous room.

We interns were instructed to take the case at the top of the inbox-we were told to resist the temptation to dig down into the box looking for something more interesting. One evening, I came on duty after being up all the previous night, and I was exhausted before I even started my shift. I looked around and none of the supervising staff was watching, so I ignored the patients waiting with complaints of "backache," "headache," and more "backache," and I searched for something more stimulating. About fourteen layers down in the inbox, I found what I was looking for: a complaint, "chitlins in hand."

The bench around the room was completely filled with slump-shouldered citizens of Atlanta. I called out, "Number fourteen." Far down at the end of the room, a gray-headed, elderly black man held up his little plastic card. As I approached him, I noticed that he was holding his other hand firmly against his stomach. I asked him, "This paper says, 'Chitlins in hand.' What does that mean?" He looked down and said, "Well, tonight I got stobbed and my chitlins is in my hand."

This said, he slowly let his hand move away from his belly. As he did this, a considerable length of his small bowel spilled out of a wound in his abdomen and came to rest in his open palm. He was now holding a large handful of his intestines-glistening white under the fluorescent lights of the emergency room-to show me what he meant by "chitlins in hand." There was no bleeding, but his intestines were no longer inside his abdomen where they belonged; they were outside his belly, in his hand.

Imagine the downtrodden mentality of that old black man in 1966. He had been holding them in as he traveled across town to the charity hospital, holding them in while he dealt with the admissions clerk. What he had been told about himself that would make him think it was reasonable to conceal his injury and just wait for his number to be called.

Of course, he was immediately taken to surgery where he was treated successfully by the teaching staff and later received several days of competent and caring hospitalization, all for one dollar. After this he was physically fine.

But after he was released, I'm sure he returned to the dark streets of Atlanta with the same broken spirit... and that was clearly not fine.

Flash a great smile with the help of incognito and invisible braces

Many people, who are suffering from teeth anomalies like crooked or crowded or disfigured teeth, often have low confidence. This is because they are always mindful of their appearance and shy away from meeting people and going to parties and gatherings. Braces can be used as a form of treatment but, teenagers and adults shun from using them, because they can look quite ugly. For this reason, most adults now prefer new form of orthodontic treatments like the use of incognito and invisible braces.