ALS Clinic in March…. (Part 1)

First – an apology.  I noticed that I wasn’t getting many comments on my blog, while on Facebook I’ve had lots.  I finally realized that I had not disable the CAPTCHA which makes you enter a ridiculous set of weird looking characters before you can post a comment.  I hate this.  So I disabled it.  It should be much easier to post comments now (although it won't post right away as I'll review them before posting - it cuts down spam).

Now about the ALS Clinic at Kaiser Permanente. 

In early March about 10 days after I got my diagnosis of ALS I attended the ALS Clinic at Kaiser.  Needless to say I was still in a bit of shock, not really knowing anything about ALS.  So I went to the clinic in a bit of a daze.  Wow.  What an amazing experience – in one three hour appointment I met with the Neurologist, Speech Therapist, Occupational Therapist, Physical Therapist, Respiratory Therapist and the Social Worker from the ALS Association.  Talk about efficiency!  That I could meet all of these folks in one place, in one afternoon sure made my life easier.

In fact, in April I made a film about it, which is on YouTube.  I’d like to set some context about the film – at the time of my diagnosis I was working with the Kaiser Permanente marketing department as the physician liaison with the employer groups that have Kaiser insurance (see About me).  This meant that I often worked with a number of Healthcare Insurance Brokers who advise the companies on their healthcare options.  I was scheduled to go to a broker conference in May – which clearly I was not going to attend.  So I made this video for two reasons; 1) to let people who I know well why I all of a sudden disappeared, and 2) I was truly amazed at the ALS clinic and the value it brought to Kaiser members like me. 

So please realize that the audience for my video was the brokers who potentially sell our health insurance.

Here’s the video: Broker Conference Video (word of warning, the video is about 5 minutes long).

In my next post I’ll outline what I learned at the ALS Clinic last March. 

Then after these two posts, I’ll post information about my 2nd visit, which was earlier this week.