Concerns about Your Body Image
These resources will help you learn more about coping with concerns about your body image:
Illustrated, 27 page module tells you what to look for when doing a daily fistula check and offers a list of symptoms to report to the care team. From Life Options' Kidney School (MEI).
Two page fact sheet suggests ways you can cope with how your fistula looks. From ESRD Network 12.
Three page fact sheet presents tips on coping with concerns about how your fistula looks and dealing with strangers' questions, with sample answers. From ESRD Network 12, with input from the 18 ESRD Networks across the nation.
Fifty six page book (pages 7-8), Diagnosis to Treatment Choice, talks about the feelings and emotions you might have due to physical changes that are part of having kidney failure. From the AAKP.
Forty five page book (pages 12-14), Stabilization, explains narrowing (stenosis), describes the most common sites where it occurs, and lists the problems it can lead to - like clotting. Also tells you what to expect if your fistula develops a clot. From the AAKP.
Please Note: Before printing any of these resources, we recommend that you check your printer settings to determine the correct page orientation for the document. Some tools may need to be printed in the 'Landscape' format to avoid cutting off any of the text.