I'm Anne-Maree, mother of Ben. Ben was born with only one kidney and bladder reflux which meant that his kidney obtained a fair amount of damage due to infection. He had a few operations when he was very young which fixed the reflux and therefore stopped the infection but not before his kidney was only working at 20%. We were told he would struggle when he was about 8 years old and possibly need a kidney transplant but he flew through that as well as through puberty which was the next critical age. Well Ben is now 34 and his kidney is now failing. He's been told he has to go on dialysis asap. He's hoping the dialysis will solve some of his recent health issues like the gout that has caused some damage to his feet. He has to have an operation to remove some debris in the ball of his foot so he can walk without pain. As the dialysis is due to start asap, he needs to take a break before then. He hasn't holidayed in many years and so he's planned a quick trip to Port Douglas so he can go swimming and snorkelling. Once the dialysis starts he will not be able to swim again. Imagine that ! Also one of his favourite hobbies is going prospecting in the rivers, he's not going to be able to do that either. All of that is hard on him mentally as well as physically so why I've started this is to make sure of a couple of things. Firstly to make sure he has the best possible holiday and secondly to help cover some of the costs of transitioning to dialysis. The specialist appointments, blood tests, ultrasounds, MRI's etc are terribly expensive and our wonderful Medicare system does very little to cover these costs. The dialysis costs and surgery both for the dialysis and his foot will be stretching his funds to the limit. All his medical costs alone will exceed my target of $5000 but even a little amount will help with the financial burden and hopefully take some stress out of this situation.