pwndcake

Imagine you are stuck in a chair for 3-4 hours. Just imagine that much. I won't try and get you to imagine the whole dialysis experience. It really sucks, and will never be a ride at Universal Studios. But I think any of us who have survived elementary school education can imagine being stuck in a chair for several hours. Only there is no recess, you can't get up to go to the bathroom, and everyone around you is old.

Got all that in your head? Good. Now imagine you have to do that every other day for... ever, I guess. Week after week, year after year. You could take up reading, but that would become an expensive hobby. Not to mention detrimental to our vanishing rain forests, and we all want to do our best to save the planet. So books are out. You could strike up conversations with your fellow chair bound neighbors. Unfortunately they are old, and probably sleeping. Also, they smell funny, and really all they are thinking about is how much it sucks to be on dialysis. They aren't good for much conversation. Even if they were, they'll run out of things to say to some guy that sits next to them every other day for 4 hours. Sooner or later you're going to have a building full of bored, angry sick people on your hands. You can't dope them all up with Benadryl (it's illegal, but I'm sure the nurses think about it). So the companies that own the dialysis units did a very smart thing - they gave the patients televisions.

When I first started on dialysis televisions were still a bit of a luxury at dialysis units. Although almost all units had them, a lot of them had ceiling mounted televisions which two or three patients had to "share." I put share in quotes because often one person would get the remote and the others would just have to deal with the other person frantically changing channels looking for something that kinda sorta interested them, or watch hours and hours of golf. Fucking golf. Seriously, can't you watch something better than golf? I know you're old, but for fuck's sake. Even the news is better than golf!

I digress.

Nowadays most units have small lcd screens for each chair at a dialysis unit. Most have cable television, and some that I've seen in Southern California have well over 100 channels. That much television easily offers 3+ hours of entertainment. Even in the middle of the day, and doing nothing more than changing channels wondering why nothing you like is on. It is one of the most beneficial and helpful things offered to patients on dialysis that isn't directly saving our lives.

Now along comes the conversion to digital television. Mandated by the government, the warnings of the inevitable switch have been flying for months and months. It was not unexpected. In fact, in the last 6 weeks the televisions at dialysis units had scrolling text from Comcast announcing that the conversion was coming up, and that if the tv we were watching had not been upgraded with hardware that could convert a digital signal we would not be able to watch television. The patients around my unit all ignored it. I think they assumed that the company, DaVita, wouldn't be dumb enough to not prepare for this government mandated switch.

Surprise! About a week ago all the televisions stopped airing anything. Static screens everywhere. The techs and nurses seemed more upset than the patients at first. Then I started looking around and I realized something - more of the patients are getting benadryl now. Some bring books, but a good number are basically being doped up and knocked out because there is nothing else to do. Now I have nothing against this strategy. Personally, I prefer being doped up and knocked out to television, so this changes nothing for me. However my drug addiction is not a path I would recommend to everyone, and certainly not to a room full of people unprepared for the fun and excitement of mild narcotics on a regular basis.

So I asked the primary tech, Lyndsey, about what was going on. Apparently DaVita did know the conversion was coming when they built the unit but didn't bother to pay for the digital hardware. I'm guessing it had something to do with having one or two newer units with the hardware, and many older units without. There is a kind of corporate logic there I can almost understand, even if I think it's crazy and stupid. So now all the units are stuck with no working televisions, and Comcast demanding $11,000 for each unit for the hardware to make them work again.

And DaVita doesn't want to pay it. You know, what with the recession and all.

The nurses don't know what to do about it since none of them are even remotely technologically inclined. I don't know enough about cable technology to suggest any kind of hack or work around. So in the meantime the nurses are suggesting books if you like to read, laptops if you've got 'em, or learn to love the 'dryl. It looks like the days of easy living at the dialysis unit are over.

Update: I've been told that this has nothing to with the government's digital conversion. In fact it is Comcast ripping people off in the name of greed. Considering their plans to also implement bandwidth caps I find this particularly revolting. Tomorrow I'll let the people at dialysis know. Hopefully they can switch to DirecTv or FIOS or something.