Living with End Stage Renal Disease, or Kidney Disease, is not easy. Your body retains almost all the fluid you drink, you have to avoid certain foods to prevent deadly chemicals from building up in your blood, and to top it off you spend 12 hours a week connected to a dialysis machine which removes, cleans, and puts back your entire blood volume as many as 17 times in one session. Then, if you’re like me, you walk out of the dialysis center and go to work for eight hours. The routine never changes, and you’re pretty much stuck with it until you die or get a transplant. I’ve been waiting for a transplant for over five years. Some of the other patients at my dialysis center have been waiting longer than that.

Now you understand why this article from the Chicago Tribune has enraged me:

As he pushes his cart around the Southwest Side selling steamed ears of corn, sliced cucumbers and other street food, Omar Castillo embodies a potential life-and-death issue that has become the third rail in the debate over health-care reform.

Peddling snacks — doused with lime and chili powder and priced at $1.50 each — is how Castillo, 19, is trying to pay for expensive medication he needs to stay healthy after receiving a kidney transplant last year.

Because he is in the U.S. illegally, he has no ready access to aid for such long-term medical expenses. To cover such needs for an estimated 6.8 million undocumented and uninsured immigrants in the country, some health-care advocates have proposed broadening the health-care proposals before Congress. But fierce opposition has kept the idea off the table.

Boo freaking who! Cry me a river. While Americans like me, who have been waiting for years, have not received transplants, illegal aliens who can not pay for medical care and who pay little or no taxes are being escorted to the front of the line. There is no excuse for bypassing law-abiding sick Americans to give a donated American kidney to an illegal alien.

None whatsoever.

You know what, let this guy go back to Mexico and get his transplant there. Oh, wait…

Asked about returning to Mexico or other homelands to receive more comprehensive care, the group broke into laughter.

“Over there, it’s a thousand times worse,” said Juan Zavala, a legal immigrant from Mexico and a transplant recipient who started the informal network. “Here, you may get treated poorly by some nurse or doctor. There? They’ll give you a kick and tell you you’re out of luck.”

Of course they laughed! Why should they get their medical care in Mexico when they can get it for free here?

Oh yeah, I almost forgot about the liberal bleeding hearts, always ready ready to spend everyone else’s money on charity:

Concerns over the financial burden have led other hospitals to make similar decisions denying treatment, said Julie Contreras, an organizer in Chicago for the League of United Latin American Citizens.

“These people, some of them are going to die,” Contreras said. “When a hospital denies treatment to any human being … this is flat-out immoral.”

Actually, what’s immoral is letting those of us who play by the rules, suffer the pain, uncertainty and financial strain wait for years to even be considered for a transplant, while people who are here illegally are sent to the front of the line and treated at the taxpayers’ expense. It’s not only immoral, it’s disgusting!

“I just want a normal life,” said Cruz, during a recent round of kidney dialysis paid for by the state. “Right now, this machine is my life.”

Gee, what do you think the rest of us want? You’re not special lady, you’re simply one of hundreds of thousands of people with ESRD on dialysis. Hell, you’re not even working when you’re not being dialyzed. Try working a full 40 hour work-week while on dialysis. When you start falling asleep in your chair half an hour after getting home from work each night, and then sleeping until noon on the weekends to catch up, then come and talk to me.

“I just want a normal life.” Call the wahmbulance, will ya?

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This entry was posted on Thursday, August 13th, 2009 at 9:31 pm by Nick, and is filed under Health Stuff, Immigration, Quackery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.