Fundraisers planned for Florida man who needs second kidney transplant

I'm always happy to promote fundraisers for transplant patients because I know about the financial hardships that are placed on recipients and their loved ones in addition to the worries about the transplant itself. As the story notes, a kidney transplant costs approximately $250,000. Even with health insurance, this Florida man faces significant medical expenses. He will need follow-up care and daily anti-rejection medications for the rest of his life. The cost of post-transplant medications can range from $2,000 to $5,000 per month, and they are as critical to his survival as the transplant itself. Thanks to the National Foundation for Transplants (NFT) for helping David Kendrick in his time of need just as they've done for other patients during their transplant journey, assisting more than 1,000 patients.

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Volunteers, friends and family are conducting various fundraisers for Cape Coral resident David Kendrick, 30, who is waiting for a lifesaving kidney transplant.

There will be yard sales from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, June 26, at 9350 Camelot Drive in Fort Myers and 1261 Viscaya Parkway in Cape Coral. Furniture, electronics, clothing, toys and much more will be available.

Friends and family are also planning a dinner from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday, July 10, at the Masonic lodge, 244 Santa Barbara Blvd. in Cape Coral. Tickets are $10, and the event includes dinner, an auction and drawings for various prizes. Tickets should be purchased by July 1.

A kidney transplant costs approximately $250,000. Even with health insurance, Kendrick faces significant medical expenses. He will need follow-up care and daily anti-rejection medications for the rest of his life. The cost of post-transplant medications can range from $2,000 to $5,000 per month, and they are as critical to his survival as the transplant itself.

When Kendrick receives his transplant, he and his wife, Christy, and their daughter must temporarily relocate more than 250 miles to be closer to the transplant center in Gainesville, incurring substantial travel expenses.

To help offset these expenses, Kendrick turned to the National Foundation for Transplants for assistance. NFT is a nonprofit organization that helps patients raise funds to pay for transplant-related expenses.

For more information about the yard sales or the dinner, contact Christy Kendrick at dakendrickjr@aol.com or 239-645-9810.

To make a tax-deductible gift in honor of Kendrick, please send a contribution to the NFT Florida Kidney Fund, 5350 Poplar Ave., Suite 430, Memphis, TN 38119. Please be sure to write “in honor of David Kendrick” on the memo line. Secure donations also can be made online at www.transplants.org. Donors should click on “Patients We Help” to locate Kendrick.

For more information about NFT, call 800-489-3863 or visit National Foundation for Transplants

“You Have the Power to Save Lives – Register to be an organ and tissue donor & Tell Your Loved Ones of Your Decision”

Register to be a donor in Ontario or Download Donor Cards from Trillium Gift of Life Network. NEW for Ontario: recycleMe.org - Learn The Ins & Outs Of Organ And Tissue Donation. Register Today! For other Canadian provinces click here

In the United States, be sure to find out how to register in your state at ShareYourLife.org or Download Donor Cards from OrganDonor.Gov

In Great Britain, register at NHS Organ Donor Register

In Australia, register at Australian Organ Donor Register

Your generosity can save up to eight lives with heart, kidneys, liver, lungs, pancreas and small intestine transplants (see allotransplantation). One tissue donor can help 75 to 100 other people by donating skin, corneas, bone, tendon, ligaments and heart valves

Has your life been saved by an organ transplant? "Pay it forward" and help spread the word about the need for organ donation - In the U.S. another person is added to the national transplant waiting list every 11 minutes and 18 people die each day waiting for an organ or tissue transplant. Organs can save lives, corneas renew vision, and tissue may help to restore someone's ability to walk, run or move freely without pain. Life Begins with You

Organ Transplant costs & financial assistance in the U.S.

I receive many requests from the U.S. asking for help in finding financial assistance with costs associated with organ and tissue transplants. These requests are usually not from the patient but from their loved ones who feel a need to help. I refer them to the National Foundation for Transplants whose mandate is to help transplant patients overcome the financial obstacles to a second chance at life.

For help with prescription drugs I refer people to Partnership for Prescription Assistance. Partnership for Prescription Assistance has helped millions of patients get financial assistance with their drugs.

The following data is taken from the National Foundation for Transplants home page and will give you some idea of what to expect in the way of organ transplant expenses.

How much does an organ transplant cost?

The cost of organ transplants varies greatly, not only with the type of transplant, but with the hospital where the procedure occurs. In addition, costs will climb greatly if the patient develops complications resulting in longer hospital stays. The costs below are broad averages for costs of various types of transplants, based on NFT’s experiences of working with patients all over the country. These costs are only for typical hospital and physician fees. They do not include any pre-transplant or follow-up treatments.

• Heart: $650,000


• Lung: $400,000


• Double Lung: $550,000


• Heart/Lung: $875,000


• Liver: $520,000


• Kidney: $250,000


• Pancreas: $300,000


• Kidney/Pancreas: $370,000


• Kidney/Heart: $760,000


• Liver/Kidney: $660,000


• Intestine: $900,000


• Bone Marrow (autologous): $270,000


• Bone Marrow (allogeneic related): $480,000


• Bone Marrow (allogeneic unrelated): $600,000


• Cornea: $23,300

What are some of the other major costs faced by transplant candidates and recipients?

Some of the other major costs include pre-transplant evaluations, dental work required before transplant, treatment of the underlying disease while waiting to be transplanted, donor matching (particularly for bone marrow transplants), travel, food and lodging costs for the patient and a care-giver leading up to and following the transplant (when the transplant takes place in another city), post transplant follow-up and treatment, the essential anti-rejections medications which organ recipients must take every day for the rest of their lives, and treatment for problems caused as a result of side effects from these medications.

Source: National Foundation for Transplants

“You Have the Power to Save Lives – Sign Your Donor Card & Tell Your Loved Ones of Your Decision”

Register to be a donor in Ontario or Download Donor Cards from Trillium Gift of Life Network
For other Canadian provinces click here

In the United States, be sure to find out how to register in your state at ShareYourLife.org or Download Donor Cards from OrganDonor.Gov

In Great Britain, register at NHS Organ Donor Register

In Australia, register at Australian Organ Donor Register

Your generosity can save up to eight lives with heart, kidneys, liver, lungs, pancreas and small intestine transplants. One tissue donor can help up to 100 other people by donating skin, corneas, bone, tendon, ligaments and heart valves

A teen girl's broken heart

Her life, dreams will fade without a heart & lung transplant

Adriana, 14, laughs as her sister Mariana, 2, tells her to be quiet while her mother Mirna and other sister Jessica, 10, stand behind her at the family’s home in La Victoria on Dec. 2. Photo: Nathan Lambrecht

By Sara Perkins The Monitor McAllen,TX,USA

LA VICTORIA - Adriana Garcia will not live to see 20 without a significant amount of money her family does not have.

She will never become the lawyer she wants to be, nor will her cheeks fill out to make the pretty, serious teenager look even more like her pretty, round-faced mother.

Instead, the 14-year-old with bright, appraising eyes and a broken heart will deteriorate, sleeping more and rising less, requiring more canned oxygen. She will waste away and she will die.

ADRIANA

The Garcias - Adriana, her sisters, Jessica and Mariana, her mother, Mirna, and father, Jorge - moved to a rented trailer east of Rio Grande City two years ago from Ciudad Mier, Tamps. They left behind a stable life for poverty, with a slim hope that in the United States their daughter could get a new heart and lungs, and with them, a future.

In Mexico, doctors told them, there was simply no hope she would receive an organ transplant to replace the damaged heart with which she was born.

It's a Friday afternoon and at the table in the family's tidy kitchen, Adriana is struggling through a series of pre-algebra problems under the watchful eye of teacher Paul Cho. Her mother struggles to keep Mariana, 2, quiet while her sister studies.

When Cho asks her a question she cannot answer easily or punch into her calculator, Adriana's hand strays to the raised scar on her chest.

In January, doctors at Driscoll Children's Hospital operated on her heart. She has another scar at the base of her rib cage, evidence of a stopgap attempt to keep the organ working for a while longer, an emergency measure that sent her through three different hospitals and produced a stack of still-unpaid bills.

Only two cardiologists would agree to the surgery, which repaired the hole in her heart but left it weaker than before, Mirna said. The rest thought Adriana would not be able to survive the trauma.

Cho and another teacher see Adriana in her tiny home because she cannot easily attend school. The Rio Grande City school district's special education department nominated the Garcias for the "12 Days of Christmas" project.

The series, sponsored by the United Way and The Monitor, highlights local families in need and asks Rio Grande Valley residents to make their holidays a little better.

Adriana takes 10 pills every day, and she tires more and more easily since the surgery earlier this year. Teachers at Rio Grande City High School scheduled her classes so they were close together, so she wouldn't have to walk too far between them, but three days into the school year, she broke her foot. Hobbling on crutches made the school day all the more exhausting and eventually she was told to stay home.

"This young lady wants to go back to school, incredible as it may sound," said Silvestre Reyna Jr., a teacher for homebound students, who visits the Garcia home twice a week to bring assignments and provide a few hours of instruction. "The first meeting I had with her, she said, ‘As soon as this cast is off, I'm back in school.'"

NUMBERS

Compared to the wrenching choices hospital administrators have to make every day, the choice not to refer Adriana to a transplant center relatively easy. The numbers came nowhere close to adding up.

She's ineligible for Medicaid and wouldn't be able to get private insurance even if her family could afford it - a congenital heart defect is a pre-existing condition. Without either avenue, she cannot pay for the medical testing required to certify her for the transplant waiting list, much less the expensive surgery or a lifetime of medications to keep her body from rejecting the new organs.

Cathy Camp, a registered nurse at Driscoll's cardiology center, could not speak specifically about the Garcias because of medical privacy laws, but said in a similar situation the hospital would call transplant-ready hospitals to see if they had any programs to pay for indigent patients.

"I believe there really wasn't anything," she said.

Without that referral, Adriana is not even on a waiting list for the organs she needs.

According to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation network, nine other people in Texas are waiting for a heart-lung transplant. There are 84 others across the country - as well as 2,705 people waiting for just hearts, and 2,019 needing only new lungs.

HOPE

Jorge, Adriana's lanky father, is a mechanic who gets work through friends.

Her mother, Mirna, spends her days caring for Adriana and for little Mariana while 10-year-old Jessica is in school. Their house is neat as a pin and decorated for Christmas, but Mirna has to make careful choices about what to light for the season: Even much-needed heaters or in-window air conditioners routinely blow the fuses on the house's inadequate wiring.

Mirna's aunt, Silvia Martinez, lives nearby and often comes to visit. She helped place an advertisement in Starr County's weekly newspaper asking for donations to aid in Adriana's care. She also helps to organize the bingo games in the neighborhood that raise money to buy medication.

A bill in Mirna's growing stack, from Dr. Juan Aguilera's office, shows that some giving is indirect: It asks the Garcias to pay $195; $1,140 in additional costs are listed under "insurance pending," despite the family's lack thereof.

Starr County Memorial Hospital hasn't been as forgiving. A collection agency is squeezing Mirna and Jorge for $1,030.75: the cost of several ambulance rides.

It would be easy to give up hope, were the alternative not so unthinkable. Their lovely, wide-eyed daughter deserves to grow up.

"We're waiting," Mirna said in Spanish, her hand resting on Adriana's squared shoulder. "We have faith in God that somebody will be able to help us."

“You Have the Power to Save Lives – Sign Your Donor Card & Tell Your Loved Ones of Your Decision”

Register to be a donor in Ontario or Download Donor Cards from Trillium Gift of Life Network
For other Canadian provinces click here

In the United States, be sure to find out how to register in your state at ShareYourLife.org or Download Donor Cards from OrganDonor.Gov

Your generosity can save up to eight lives with heart, kidneys, liver, lungs, pancreas and small intestine transplants. One tissue donor can help up to 100 other people by donating skin, corneas, bone, tendon, ligaments and heart valves

California woman waits for heart transplant - fundraiser will help with costs

Teeing off helps La Quinta woman's heart

"First-year costs, from start to finish — which includes medical evaluations, the donor organ, surgery and post-operation expenses including medication — can run from $500,000 to $800,000..."

MARIECAR MENDOZA • THE DESERT SUN

Sarah Bremner has been waiting for a special gift, and she doesn't know how much more her heart can take.

Bremner, 52, of La Quinta, has been on the heart transplant list for nearly three months.

Her doctors don't know how long she must wait for her new heart, but said she'll need to be ready at all times.

“It's almost like giving birth. You know you're going to give birth within a month, but you don't know the day,” said Bremner, a mother of two teens. “They could call this afternoon, and I'd have to go quick because hearts only last four to six hours outside of the body of a donor.”

Amid all the uncertainty, however, Bremner knows she has strong support from her family and her “other family” at Marriott's Shadow Ridge in Palm Desert, where she has worked for 10 years.

Coworkers and friends Camille Ibarra, Heather Lamb, Dave Dorohoy and Blain Graham have been planning a fundraiser to help with medical costs.

Bremner only found out last month when the group started publicizing the event.

“It's humbling,” Bremner said. “I'm just overwhelmed that they're doing this for me.”

Bremner was diagnosed last year with cardiomyopathy, a disease that can lead to heart failure.

Her friends have been working with the National Transplant Assistance Fund for months to organize a golf tournament at Terra Lago golf course in Indio on Dec. 6.

The event is limited to 128 participants.

The goal: $75,000.

All proceeds go to the NTAF Southwest Heart Transplant Fund in honor of Bremner. The money will then be used to pay Bremner's medical costs not covered by her health insurance, said Joni Henderson, patient services coordinator with NTAF.

First-year costs, from start to finish — which includes medical evaluations, the donor organ, surgery and post-operation expenses including medication — can run from $500,000 to $800,000, Henderson said.

Ibarra said Bremner has given to her community for years. The two met before working together through the National Charity League of the Coachella Valley, a mother-daughter volunteer organization.

“And this time, it's only right to give back to Sarah.”

Her Diagnosis

Cardiomyopathy can be caused by heart damage from a heart attack, high blood pressure or, as in Bremner's case, a viral infection, according to the American Heart Association.

As the disease progresses, the heart becomes weak and isn't able to pump a sufficient amount of blood through the body.

For Bremner, her heart pumps less than a quarter of the blood it needs, said Dr. Michele Hamilton, clinical professor of cardiology at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine and co-director of the UCLA Heart Failure Program.

Hamilton is Bremner's doctor at UCLA, where the heart transplant surgery will take place.

Bremner's heart has gotten so weak that in February she received an implanted defibrillator. If her heart begins to beat at a dangerous rhythm, the defibrillator can shock it back to normal.

“There are some patients, because of advanced medical therapy, that can live active lives with this disease,” Hamilton said. “But then there are some like Mrs. Bremner, whose heart is too weak that it really affects quality of life — and that's when you get considered for a transplant.”

Bremner will receive the heart from a brain-dead donor.

“It's bittersweet for me, because I know that someone has to die for me to live,” Bremner said. “But I guess it's just all part of a bigger plan.”

The one-year survival rate for heart transplants is between 90 to 95 percent at UCLA, Hamilton said. At 10 years, more than half of heart transplant patients are still alive and doing well.

“It's scary, but exciting,” Bremner said. “I just can't wait to get back to my life.”

“You Have the Power to Save Lives – Sign Your Donor Card & Tell Your Loved Ones of Your Decision”

Register to be a donor in Ontario or Download Donor Cards from Trillium Gift of Life Network
For other Canadian provinces click here

In the United States, be sure to find out how to register in your state at ShareYourLife.org or Download Donor Cards from OrganDonor.Gov

Your generosity can save up to eight lives with heart, kidneys, liver, lungs, pancreas and small intestine transplants. One tissue donor can help up to 100 other people by donating skin, corneas, bone, tendon, ligaments and heart valves