Support Robert Fleming's Dialysis Journey

This is a fundraiser for the award-winning writer, editor, professor, and journalist Robert Fleming. Robert is undergoing kidney dialysis and needs sustained treatment and support. Your generous donation will ensure that he continues to get the treatment and care that he needs to live. Circumstances are tenuous and any interruption in his treatment due to dwindling funds will be perilous.

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UPDATE

Robert Fleming, multi award-winning, author, journalist, editor, poet and professor has a half century of publications in a variety of genres for many audiences. His collections include Christian fiction, erotic fiction, horror, young adult, non-fiction, inspirational, and poetry.

Robert remains stalwart and focused, though his situation is deeply challenging and complex. In February of this year, Robert's left leg was amputated due to complications from his kidney treatment. He works to regain mobility and independence while undergoing dialysis, attending daily intensive physical therapy sessions.

Your assistance in helping Robert meet the expenses of his complex care and recovery is needed and greatly appreciated.

Robert's time and Insurance-supported, daily, supervised care is precious and limited. While he is making significant advances in learning the new skills to manage his changed body, the time available to him for expert medical attention is running out.

The particularities of our healthcare system mean that this sustained daily attention in a skilled nursing facility will not be maintained in the long-term.

Why

"Medicare will pay 100% of the covered costs of care in a skilled nursing facility for the first 20 days after a 3-day qualifying hospital stay. For the following 80 days (days 21-100), Medicare will cover part of the cost, and the patient will pay a daily coinsurance.

Days 1-20: Medicare pays 100% of covered costs.

Days 21-100: Medicare pays part of the cost, and the patient pays a daily coinsurance. The amount of the coinsurance for days 21-100 is $209.50 per day in 2025.

Days 101 and beyond: Medicare does not cover the costs of skilled nursing facility care beyond day 100 during a benefit period”

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Robert's World-Shaping Endeavors

"Interested in psychology and sociology, I came to writing as a fluke in the early 1970s when a friend, Willard Jenkins, allowed me to sub for him as a music writer at a local magazine in Cleveland. Reading had always been a favorite pastime for me, but writing was something I never imagined myself doing. While studying full-time for a degree in psychology at night at a local college, I worked full-time during the day as a welfare case worker, squeezing time in doing interviews with people like Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Sarah Vaughan, Minnie Riperton, Ray Charles, Bob Marley, and a host of other jazz and pop greats. Like many writers, my first love was poetry and I published two books of poems, Melons (1974) and Stars (1975).

It wasn’t until I came to New York as a young writer that a whole realm of possibilities opened for me in that area. I landed my first real writing job at Encore Magazine, a pioneering black newsmagazine, in 1977, working as an associate editor. My experience at the publication was extremely beneficial, giving me a chance to work with such talents as Nikki Giovanni, Ivan Webster, Paula Giddings, and Henry Jackson. I worked on hard news stories, such as the involuntary sterilization of young black women in several southern states, political corruption on a national level, the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, medical experiments conducted on black patients at several East Coast medical sites, and the spate of police brutality cases nationwide.

In 1979, I did one story which would change my life: a car tour of the Deep South, where I interviewed poor black families in rural Alabama and Mississippi, spoke with plantation owners in Georgia and Louisiana about their abuse of their black tenant farmers, and conducted a late-night talk with a group of hooded Klansmen outside of Anniston, Alabama. This series got me some notice and earned me a scholarship to Columbia University’s noted School of Journalism.

After my tour of duty at the “J-School,” I worked with former CBS News president, Fred Friendly (former boss of the legendary Edward R. Murrow), as a staff writer for the PBS TV show, "Media and Society." A chance meeting at one of the show’s tapings got me a job as a reporter at The New York Daily News, where I worked throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s.

While there, I learned the world of hard New York news from the street up, earning a New York Press Club award, a Revson Fellowship, and several other honors. I retired at the end of 1991 to write and teach. Since that time, I’ve published work in Essence, Black Enterprise, The Source, U.S. News and World Report, Omni, Black Issues Book Review, Bookpage, Quarterly Black Review, The New York Times, and Publishers Weekly.

If you have skills in a discipline, pass that along to those who want to acquire that talent. I taught writing and media studies at Marist College and The College of New Rochelle for a time. I taught courses in “Media And The Black Experience,” “Hard And Soft News Journalism for A New World,” and “African-American Film History before The Cold War” at the New School from 1999-2002. Recently, I instructed local college teachers in literacy educational strategies at CUNY.

In the early 1990s, I wrote two young adult books: Rescuing A Neighborhood: The Bedford-Stuyvesant Volunteer Ambulance Corps and The Success of Caroline Jones, Inc.: The Story Of An Advertising Agency. Two other books followed: The Wisdom of the Elders (1996) and The African American Writer’s Handbook (2000), both of which were selected by The Black Expressions Book Club.

My poetry, essays, and short stories have appeared in such books as UpSouth, Brotherman: The Odyssey of the Black Man in America, Sacred Fire, In Search of Color Everywhere, Dark Matter, Brown Sugar, Gumbo, and Proverbs For The People. In the works are a memoir and a book on prison reform.

Other books by Robert Fleming include: After Hours (2002), Intimacy (2004), Havoc After Dark (2004), Fever In The Blood (2006), Gift Of Faith (2012), Gift Of Truth (2014), Gift of Revelation (2015), Free Jazz (2016), Rasta, Babylon, Jamming (2017), and Evil Never Sleeps (2019).

About Robert’s Health

In 2004, he had two strokes and two heart attacks. He was hospitalized for a month. He recovered. In 2019, he had a major fall on the concrete, suffered a concussion, and injured his feet and knees. He has since had to fight for his health, suffering from bad treatments, bad medicines, and inadequate doctors.