Help me in my journey overcoming kidney failure.

Hello friends and family. I want to update you all on my situation and humbly ask for your help. I apologize for being mostly absent on here for the last 3 years. Roughly since I moved from Spokane to Leavenworth. Shortly after I moved here my transplanted kidney rejected or just ran out of juice. It was a good 11-12 year run but came to an end. I was born with Alports Syndrome which usually ends with males in end stage renal disease. I was biopsied at 6 and diagnosed to need a kidney transplant by the time I turned 18. I made it to mid 30’s before my first transplant so I was lucky there.

As a result of my failed kidneys I have been on dialysis the last 3 years. While going thru this I can not explain how crappy one feels every day. It interferes with your work, your personal activities, your overall well being is compromised. I lost alot of strength and athleticism and mentally everything is foggy. Dialysis may keep one alive but it is no replacement for 1 or 2 healthy kidneys.

When my transplant kidney failed in 2020, I spent over a month in the hospital attempting to save it. Since then I have been on dialysis. Then about 5 or 6 weeks ago I ended up with a peritoneal infection that turned septic. Another 2 weeks in the hospital trying to find the correct antibiotic to heal me and then suffering from antibiotic poisoning. The last two months, I have just been in recovery and not able to do much more than let my body heal.

The challenging part of this, is just when all of this happened I was looking forward to starting a new job and new chapter in my life so had resigned from S&J Engines. I lost the ability to take another job because of the peritoneal infection and hospitalization. Suffice it to say, the medical and household bills are mounting and Karen and I do not know what to do other than to appeal to our friends and family for assistance. This has been a very difficult decision to make, as you may guess.

Once I moved to Leavenworth, my Kaiser insurance was null and void as they do not cover in this area. I was granted Medicare but it is now secondary when you have work insurance. We have been able to keep up with the medical (for the most part), initially insurance did cover my dialysis treatments then after a year or so something changed and they stopped covering it pending authorization from the hospital authorizing the dialysis. For some reason they never got it and ended up billing me for about 2 years of dialysis treatments.

I have disputed it with all parties to no avail. They sent over 20K to collections and I have no recourse but to pay it. Just before I found out about the new charges in collections I had cashed in my retirement to pay off many thousands in medical bills. Then I went to look at my credit and saw the 20K more in debt owed. Needless to say I was crushed.

Humbly I ask you to contribute to my GoFundMe. If you can not donate then please just share with your friends and family. Anyone who knows me knows this is not something I am proud to do but I find myself in need of help and rather than let it go unchecked I have decided to ask for your help. Any help no matter how small is much appreciated.