Author Description

Dialysis patient and author Jurgen Hesse says, Poignant Moments...A Caregiver's Perspective is "A powerful memoir... it is the kind of moving story that cannot be told enough times." Many people unfortunately do not understand dialysis, but all know that we have kidneys. However, author John Francis Wissler will wager that almost everyone knows someone who gives care for a friend, mother, or father; a grandfather; a grandmother...a son, daughter...or a spouse and home hemodialysis patient. In the United States alone, caregiver value accounts for $265 billion per year. In this book a story is told of the skills, patience and stresses of one out of fifty million caregivers. Wissler takes the reader on a tortuous journey of him as caregiver, and his significant other, Lois, as care receiver, with all the bumps and laughs in the road along the way. No less important is the bureaucratic wrangling as the author relentlessly seeks the appropriate level of medical care for a woman in increasingly dire straits. It is a compelling human-interest, educational, nonfiction novel that NHHD caregiver Martha Washburn articulates is "... a required reading for everyone in government and the healthcare industry."