Help Johanna Elizabeth Get Medical Care to Save Her Life

A dear friend, Johanna Elizabeth Rodriguez, has a genetic disorder, chronic cystic kidney disease. She has been on dialysis for several years. An amazing woman, she has helped start an organization for kidney disease patients, and provided many people with emotional support and education, including nutritional education. She runs the House of the Traveler Restaurant and Mayan Flavors Cooking School in San Pedro La Laguna on Lake Atitlán in the highlands of Guatemala. Elizabeth is also a wonderful writer and journalist. In the face of her health struggles, she manages to be inspiring, positive, and helpful.

We have helped her with obtaining donations of dialysis catheters. When we met her, she had a pediatric catheter because the appropriate size was not available in Guatemala. She has now lost all catheter access, likely due to medical incompetence, and has not had dialysis for a couple of weeks. This week we are traveling with her to a private hospital in Guatemala City, about 5 hours away. Tomorrow morning, we will get an urgent appointment with the pre-eminent transplant and vascular surgeon in Guatemala. We hope to find out what can be done in Guatemala to save her life. Some possibilities might be (1) fluoroscopy to determine if and where another dialysis catheter could be placed; (2) placement of a fistula (though she has been told her veins are too small for this option); (3) surgery to drain or remove the kidney cysts, which might then permit peritoneal dialysis; and/or (4) a kidney transplant.

Her two children have the same genetic condition.

Please donate to this GoFundMe to support Johanna Elizabeth's medical care, including transportation, labs, consults, and follow-up on whatever treatment plan the specialist recommends. Medical care in Guatemala is quite inexpensive compared to in the United States but is still beyond the reach of most people.

Please let us know if you have any questions. We will be sure to update this page as we know more. Thank you so much!