Dear Editor: Starting dialysis at a young age was hard. I had only recently finished high school, and adjusting to life on dialysis when I was still a teenager was overwhelming. It was even more difficult because I didn’t have reliable access to affordable Medigap coverage for the costs Medicare didn’t pay. Not every state requires Medigap plans to be available to patients under 65, so unless you qualify for disability or another form of coverage, patients are on the hook for what Medicare doesn’t cover. Even when I was able to work before my transplant kidney failed, the premiums [...]

My life with kidney disease has been one filled with battles. In 2010, I had a double transplant surgery and received a new kidney and liver. Unfortunately, the transplant kidney failed three years ago, and I needed dialysis treatment. These life-saving treatments can be time-consuming, and patients often find themselves unable to work. Working and being on dialysis can be very hard on someone. I’m lucky that I have Medicare covering the majority of the costs and additional insurance paying for what Medicare didn’t before I turned 65. However, many don’t have the benefit of extra insurance picking up where [...]

Finding out my kidneys were failing was shocking. During a surgery to remove a portion of one kidney affected by cancer, things took an unexpected turn. Rather than losing a small portion of function in one kidney, I was left with one kidney only functioning at 20 percent. Thanks to an excellent nephrologist, though, I was able to put off starting dialysis for a decade. Since then, two things that have helped a great deal are the flexibility of my home treatments and the access I’ve had to coverage for dialysis. While I received coverage for the portion of treatment [...]

My husband’s journey with kidney disease forever changed my life. Over the past five years, we have seen countless doctors, traveled many miles for medical appointments, and both of us had lifechanging surgeries. At age 39, my husband began dialysis treatments for his failing kidneys, a side effect of his lifelong battle with diabetes. We knew he would eventually need a kidney transplant but needed to get other health matters in order before that would be possible. Finally, my husband was ready for a kidney transplant, and we were fortunate enough that I was a match for him. On October [...]

I have fought an uphill battle with kidney disease for almost half my life. At 24, I started receiving dialysis treatment and three years later received a kidney transplant that kept me off dialysis for about five years. But unfortunately, I needed potent anti-rejection drugs that ultimately gave me cancer and weakened my immune system. Thankfully, I recovered from cancer but ended up back on dialysis, which I still receive. Part of the problem stems from the fact that my treatments haven't always been tailored to what I need, putting a lot of burden on me to research what I [...]

Editor, Being diagnosed with kidney disease when I was just 16 turned my life on its head overnight. Kidney failure can cause multiple medical complications. Partial loss of my vision and hearing, more than 17 years of dialysis treatments, infections, an enlarged heart, and eventually a kidney transplant have been just part of the journey. For all of these challenges, though, one hurdle I thankfully didn’t have to face was access to coverage. Since I was so young when I started treatment, my parents’ insurance helped pay for any costs that Medicare didn’t. For other dialysis patients under 65 that [...]

Fo­cal seg­men­tal glomeru­loscle­ro­sis (FSGS) caused my kid­neys to fail nearly 30 years ago. Since then, I’ve been on and off dial­y­sis as FSGS and the treat­ments it re­quires have taken their toll on my health and sev­eral trans­plant kid­neys. The treat­ment process and the costs as­so­ci­ated with it have been egre­gious. The high cost of med­ica­tions to keep trans­plant kid­neys healthy makes them fi­nan­cially un­ten­able for many pa­tients, and dial­y­sis comes with a heavy cost, too. That’s with­out fac­tor­ing in the med­ical ex­penses due to the skin can­cer and bone dis­ease caused by the FSGS treat­ments I’ve re­ceived. As­sis­tance from Medicare and Med­ic­aid saved [...]