Kidney transplant recipients forced back on dialysis
A flawed Medicare policy has contributed to the suffering of American kidney patients for decades. While the federal entitlement program covers a lifetime of costly dialysis treatments, it provides only 36 months of anti-rejection medications that kidney transplant recipients need the rest of their lives. Without the drugs, the kidney fails and recipients return to the dialysis regimen, sometimes waiting years for the next kidney transplant. The counter-intuitive policy keeps patients in a U.S. dialysis system with some of the worst mortality rates in the world, and wastes the precious resource of donated kidneys. It can cost taxpayers millions more in the long run. Yet, attempts by lawmakers to remedy the problem have been defeated by lobbying from a multi-billion dollar dialysis industry that wants to ensure that monies for the transplant drugs do not come from the government's dialysis budget. Among the key lobbyists is dialysis drug maker Amgen of Thousand Oaks.
A flawed Medicare policy has contributed to the suffering of American kidney patients for decades. While the federal entitlement program covers a lifetime of costly dialysis treatments, it provides only 36 months of anti-rejection medications that kidney transplant recipients need the rest of their lives. Without the drugs, the kidney fails and recipients return to the dialysis regimen, sometimes waiting years for the next kidney transplant. The counter-intuitive policy keeps patients in a U.S. dialysis system with some of the worst mortality rates in the world, and wastes the precious resource of donated kidneys. It can cost taxpayers millions more in the long run.
Without nine capsules daily, the 19-year-old man will lose his transplanted kidney. He'll spend three days a week in dialysis treatments that on average will cut the life span of a white male his age by 23 years.
The Center partnered with the Ventura County Star on this project.
Ventura County's largest private employer built its empire on a miracle: a drug that reduced the need for blood transfusions among legions of American dialysis patients and their suffering counterparts worldwide.
The astounding product, Epogen, even countered the anesthetizing fatigue that accompanies each dialysis session, Amgen of Thousand Oaks pronounced for 18 years after the drug's 1989 debut.
Sheryl Glatt lay with 40 surgical staples climbing her withered thigh, and a lower leg undergoing a battery of attempts to save it from amputation. She is 50 years old, 97 pounds, and a second-generation kidney disease patient.
The Center partnered with the Ventura County Star on this project.
An hour before sunrise, Jeannette Castaneda unfurled a bed sheet over a reclining chair to keep pale green vinyl from clinging to her arms. She huddled under a blanket as a technician jabbed her with a needle, leashing her to the machine that does what her kidneys cannot. Because she needs a miracle. Again.
The situation is illogical, shocking and infuriating — but somehow, it's not totally surprising in the world of health care.
Sheryl Glatt, 50, received 15 surgeries to restore feeling in her left foot. She suffers from advanced diabetes, neuropathy and kidney failure. She undergoes dialysis four times a week.
Sheryl Glatt, a kidney disease patient whose moving story was featured in the Ventura County Star special series over the summer, died on Dec. 18 after doctors tried to prevent her second amputation in five months.
This story was originally published in Ventura County Star.
I didn’t know Sheryl when she wasn’t sick.
I didn’t know her as a preschool teacher, a mother, a churchgoer or dialysis support group leader. Every time I saw her, she was in a hospital bed, tethered to a dialysis machine or in a wheelchair en route to a doctor’s appointment.
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