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By TERENCE BEGLEY - March 23, 2011 I was diagnosed with Type I diabetes on August of 1987. For about 12 years, I never had any complications. I did my best to eat the right foods, and take care of myself; but truthfully, I always had a sweet tooth. I found myself eating fast food when I was on the run. When I hit my thirties, I started developing eye problems associates with diabetes called retinopathy. After a surgical procedure in 2003, my general physician noticed that I seemed to have anemia in my kidneys. He suggested I see Dr. Stuart Homer, a nephrologist, in Avenel, New Jersey. I saw him every three months, and he was trying to give me medication to forestall the inevitable. |
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In May of 2004, Dr. Homer told me that my kidneys were failing. When I was finally about to graduate from Hofstra University, I received this news. I had no idea what would happen to me. He suggested I go to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital to be placed in a transplant list. That July, I enrolled myself for a kidney/pancreas transplant. Doctors asked if I knew anyone who would be willing to donate a kidney to me. I was never close enough to anyone to feel comfortable asking them that. I have a sister; but I knew she would be reluctant to do so. Nevertheless, I still asked her just to get the doctors off my back. At this point, I couldn’t do anything else but wait until a donor was available. In December of that year, my kidneys continued to fail to the point where I needed to receive dialysis treatment. |
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At first I tried peritoneal dialysis I was under the false impression that it would allow me to continue working while getting treatment. It turned out to be a mistake. I had a tube surgically connected to my peritoneum membrane. For nine hours daily, the machine would push saline into my membrane to collect the waste, and then flushed it out through a tube into my toilet, while I slept. It was loud and messy. Since it was every night, I had no social life. I felt tired, listless, and depressed over my condition. I needed to go on disability at work because I felt the hours were too long and draining. I was always hooked onto the machine. It needed to be kept neat and clean, but at times, I was too tired to sustain it. I wound up getting an infection twice called peritonitis. Therefore, it led me to having a hemo-dialysis treatment instead of a peritoneal which required me to have a fistula inserted into my arm. Honestly, it worked out much better, and I had more free time; it only took 4 hours a day, and 3 sessions a week. |
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I never missed those sessions. I sat on a cushy chair, and then doctors would insert a needle into my fistula to draw the blood out of my body onto a machine that would cleanse the waste and water out. Then from the machine to another tube, my blood would go back into my fistula. I did this week after week, for four years. |
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Meanwhile, I lost my health insurance benefits because I was no longer eligible for disability. I was able to get Medicare but it only covered 80% of the cost. Consequently, I was placed on hold for the transplant. Though, I kept my position in the list, I still would not get called for a transplant until I was able to find finance coverage for the other 20%. Because of my expense, I decided to go back to work to a new company in August of 2007. My new insurance wanted a series of tests done before they would agree to cover the procedure in conjunction with Medicare. After all the analyses were done, they agreed to pay the remaining portion of the cost. |
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