Author: Joel Topf

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When Joel met Edgar. How we got to #NephSecrets.

In late 2002, I was a second year nephrology fellow spending as much time as possible at The John Crerar Medical Library writing chapters for medical textbooks. It was an awesome year. During that time I got an e-mail from another nephrology fellow, who was also in Chicago. He was writing to say what a fan he was of the Fluid, Electrolyte and Acid-Base Companion. He also said he wanted to help write the next edition of the book. (Any day now I’ll get started on that second edition. Any day now.) That e-mail came from Edgar Lerma. Nothing ever came of that collaboration but we became Facebook friends and continued on our parallel journeys. We both went to academic university fellowships but then pursued private practice. But despite  going into private practice, we both kept our toes in medical education. Me through this blog and social media, him by writing book after book after book.

Over the past fifteen years, Edgar has repeatedly provided me with some of the most interesting opportunities of my career. Edgar is a mentor disguised as a peer. In 2013, he invited me to write about KDIGO for ASN KidneyNews. This was my first national exposure, and that article has lead to subsequent opportunities.

He helped get me on the KDIGO App Workgroup.

But the biggest opportunity was a few years ago when he invited me to help him edit Nephrology Secrets. When he asked, I said, “yes” without hesitation. I said yes without thinking of the avalanche of work I just unleashed. The book is 656 pages long. I have read every one of those page 4 or 5 times. At times, my Secrets-to-do list stretched over the horizon. It was hard, exhausting, and for awhile, never ending. But it was also rewarding.

Thank-you Edgar.

It has been an honor to know you and delightful to work with you and Matt on Nephrology Secrets.

And speaking of Nephrology Secrets, the fourth edition is now available on Kindle with the dead-tree version available (fingers crossed) at the end of March. If you have Nephrology Secrets third edition, understand this is a complete rewrite with many new authors.  It reflects a decade of nephrology advances. As we prepared for editing the fourth edition we reviewed every chapter in the third edition. Nothing reinforces how far nephrology has come quite like reviewing a decade old textbook.  From the introduction:

So take a look at the sample pages on Amazon and if inclined buy the book I don’t think you will be disappointed.

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Moving Mountains for Multiple Myeloma fundraising goal increased

Last fall I crossed the $10,000 finish line that was established for every participant on the MM4MM trip to Everest Basecamp. To everyone who donated thank you! 🙏🏽

Now I want to squeeze the last bit of generosity 💵 from everyone in my network.

I’m raising the roof. The new goal is $14,000.

So once again I come to you with hat in hand.

I’m asking you.

I’m begging you.

If you have ever:

  • downloaded a lecture or
  • laughed at a tweet or
  • Looked smart from a nephrology factoid you learned here or
  • Played NephMadness or
  • Learned about a new article at NephJC

Then consider throwing a few bucks toward multiple myeloma research. I’d love $100 donations. But what I’m really asking for is a mountain of small donations. Can you spare 25 tax-deductible dollars? What about 10?

Part of me feels that if I can’t engage my network to raise money for something as good as the MMRF then what good is this whole social media thing?

If you are the suspicious type, take a look at what I wrote about the MMRF here. This charity is doing medical research right. They take steps to keep doctors in the drivers seat of study design and that strategy is paying off with new drugs and breakthroughs.

Lets make a great fund push in the last week before I ship out to Nepal!

Help me get to the bottom of Everest!

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Thoughts as the Countdown to Everest ticks toward “go”

The trek to Everest base camp is a once in a lifetime experience. I should be bouncing with excitement but that is not what I feel. I feel unease. I feel unsettled. I read about the side effects of high altitude trekking: weakness, confusion, headaches, insomnia, nausea. This makes me nervous.

I look at the weather and see temperatures in the low teens. And that is at Lukla, elevation 9,300 feet, only half as high as Kalapatthar, our ultimate goal. I think of the previous times that I have been to high altitude. The top of Breckenridge at a hair under 13,000 feet, the top of Mount Democrat at 14,154. When you are on these peaks it is cold and windy and the plan is always to quick snap some pictures and get down. In a couple of weeks, we’ll be at those altitudes and the plan will be to go further up the mountain. We will go nearly a mile higher than anything in the continental United States. This is unsettling.

But this nervousness is in the name of something much greater. Something bigger than my personal discomfort. This trek is not an adrenaline fix. It is not about putting a dent in the bucket list. This is more important than my uneasiness and general anxiety. This trek is about rewriting the medical textbooks. It is about changing the narrative of a disease that just a few years ago had a dismal and short disease course. Multiple myeloma has a new narrative, one that is filled with words like remission, and hope, and dare we say…cure.

The Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation is a new type of disease charity. One that is focused on real advances. The MMRF is bringing treatments to patients and lighting lanterns of hope for patients everywhere, because if the story of multiple myeloma can be rewritten, so can any disease.

And so we climb. We trek. We hike to altitudes found few places in the world. We do it to call attention to this disease and the patients that are beating it. We are a symbol of a better future and for that I will suppress my anxiety and ignore some discomfort. This is big.

 

Help me get to the bottom of Everest. Please use this link to donate to the MMRF through Moving Mountains for Multiple Myeloma

Other posts on my trip to Everest Base Camp

#NoRestTilEverest

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A mile squared, a love letter to RunKeeper

Ten years after starting to use RunKeeper I just crossed 5,280 miles.

5,280 feet in a mile.

5,280 miles.

A mile squared.

My adult running career began with this post by Mac Developer and personal hero, Cabel Sasser.

I was inspired and the following year I bought a pair of Nikes and the Nike+ system and started slogging miles. I ultimately logged over 1,000 miles with the Nike+ system. I loved the Nike+ system. The Nike+ system was tied to the iPod and so it was a late innovation for a technology that was an evolutionary dead-end.

In 2008, I bought my first iPhone, an iPhone 3g, and downloaded one of the first running apps, RunKeeper. It used GPS to log your distance. The early iPhones had lots of holes. RunKeeper couldn’t play music, burned the battery, and crashed my phone. But the program kept getting better. Features came. Features left. The scrappy Boston start-up behind RunKeeper was bought by Big Shoe (Asics). But the program kept getting better.

For awhile I was alternating between Nike+ and RunKeeper. That was until September 19th, 2009. It was my 40th birthday and I went out for my first 20 mile training run. At mile 8, Nike+ crashed my iPod Nano and stopped recording my run. That was the last time I used it. Since that run, RunKeeper has tracked every run. Here is my review of RunKeeper after 1,000 miles. And my review of RunKeeper 2.0. And my review of the first RunKeeper Pro.

Since then I ran a Marathon (a better post), a number of half marathons, I spent a year where I averaged 3 miles/day everyday. And though my running has decreased, as is clear from the nomogram, there are very few months where I failed to get out there and run. I have successfully kept fitness high on the priority list.

Miles per month

Items at the bottom of the to-do-list never get done. And because you never get to the bottom, things that are important can’t be put there. If you only exercise when everything else is complete you will never exercise. You need to take care of yourself before everything else is done. Not before anything else is done, but before everything else is done.

Run on.

#NoRestTilEverest

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Clay Shirky on publishing

Saw this on Twitter (thanks Brian):

I retweeted it, but sometimes a retweet is not enough.

 

Publishing is not evolving. Publishing is going away. Because the word “publishing” means a cadre of professionals who are taking on the incredible difficulty and complexity and expense of making something public. That’s not a job anymore. That’s a button. There’s a button that says “publish,” and when you press it, it’s done.

–Clay Shirky

It’s so good I think I will publish it, and by that I mean press a button:

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Two more NephTalk Podcasts

I was given the opportunity to work with Satellite Healthcare on their NephTalk podcast and hosted three episodes. The first one, on infection in dialysis units, was posted via RSS and picked up by iTunes. But the next two episodes I hosted were not posted to the RSS feed and so won’t show up in your podcast player of choice (by which I mean Overcast).

So you you’ll have to listen to them like your grand father did, as he walked to school bare foot, through the snow, uphill, both ways, via a web player. Sorry.

Joel Topf, M.D. interviews Steven D. Weisbord, M.D., lead researcher on a study recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Joel Topf, M.D. interviews Linda F. Fried, M.D., lead researcher on a study recently completed for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.