Father promises kidney to save his 21-year-old son

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Father promises kidney to save his 21-year-old son
Recently reunited Garcias hope to have transplant done in Mexico.

By Amanda H. Miller, Jackson Hole, Wyo.
Date: July 15, 2009

Ramon Garcia didn’t have to think about it. He knew right away he would give a kidney to the son he’s just getting to know.

At 42, Ramon has a 21-year-old son, David Charbel Garcia, coping with kidney failure.

“He’s young,” Ramon said Friday in Spanish on the way to a hospital in Idaho Falls. “He has his whole life ahead of him.”

Ramon travels to the Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center in Idaho Falls, Idaho every Friday night to spend time with the son he’s only had in his life for the last five years.

Sixteen years ago, Ramon moved to Wyoming from San Simeon, a small village in Tlaxcala, Mexico, that most immigrants in Jackson Hole call home. David made the same move five years ago.

Ramon never married David’s mother. Her family didn’t like Ramon, so he wasn’t allowed to visit the baby. He worked and lived in Mexico City most of the time, he said.

David’s mother died when he was 6, and his grandparents raised him.

When David moved to Wyoming, the father and son began to build a relationship. Now kidney disease threatens to tear Ramon’s son away from him again.

They don’t know why David got sick. He woke up one morning in late May with a swollen face, swollen hands and swollen body. He was vomiting blood and eventually went to Urgent Care of Jackson Hole. He was admitted immediately at St. John’s Medical Center and later transported to Idaho, the Garcias said. His kidneys failed. He has spent almost three months in a hospital room.

“Kidney disease is a silent killer,” said David’s physician, Dr. Fahim Rahim of the Idaho Kidney Center.

David probably had kidney disease for 10 to 15 years and never knew it because he never had any blood tests, Rahim said. The malady is common in Hispanic populations.

There are no symptoms of kidney disease until the organs fail, he said.

“He probably had kidney disease a long time and it was slowly smoldering,” Rahim said. “By the time he came to the emergency room, his kidneys had completely failed.”

David gets dialysis three times a week at the hospital. If he’s going to live a normal life, he’ll need a kidney transplant.

A transplant in the United States could cost $200,000 to $250,000, and the required medication after the operation could cost $1,500 a month, Rahim said.

David doesn’t have medical insurance, and he’s not eligible for any financial help from the U.S. government or the transplant center because of his immigration status, Rahim said.

The Mexican consulate will fly him to Mexico today, where he will be able to afford the care he needs, the Garcias said.

Each dialysis treatment costs $3,200 in the U.S. It will cost about 250 pesos in Mexico – about $20, David said.

“The cost of his treatment in Mexico will be about a tenth of the cost here,” Rahim said.

“There are good doctors and good equipment in Mexico,” Ramon said.

Even though the cost will be less, it’s still a lot for a poor family of Mexican farmers, and they’ve been raising money in the Latino community in Jackson Hole. They created an account for donations at First Interstate Bank and are hoping for more help.

The Garcia family expects that David will need a donor in Mexico. Ramon has volunteered to be that donor.

He doesn’t know yet if he’s a match. There’s a lot of time-intensive and expensive testing to complete before he can give an organ to his son, he said. David wants to try acupuncture and other alternatives when he gets back to Mexico before resorting to transplant.

David’s aunts will meet him with an ambulance and take him from Mexico City to a big hospital in Apizaco, a small city about 20 minutes from San Simeon.

Ramon will not go with his son to Mexico. He will stay in Jackson and continue to work mornings cleaning houses and evenings cooking at Sidewinders. He’ll find out if he’s a match. If he is, he’ll go to Mexico for the operation, he said. It will be a hard process for him, too, he knows. It will take months to recover.

Ramon didn’t like Jackson when he moved here for work years ago. He wanted to live in a city with tall buildings. Now that he’s older, he loves the place and the people he’s come to know, including his son and only child.

David’s aunt invited him to Jackson five years ago. She paid his bus fare and gave him a place to live, he said.

“All these people were coming back to San Simeon from here with clothes and dollars,” David said in Spanish.

He moved when he was 17 and got jobs working in two =different restaurants.

“There’s not much work in San Simeon,” Ramon said. “It’s a poor place, just farms.”

David had to move thousands of miles from home to a foreign country to get to know his father.

After David moved to Jackson, Ramon learned his son was in the valley. They started off slowly, seeing each other every now and then. They had meals together. They talked some, but not about hard things.

Ramon doesn’t ask David about his mother or about growing up without her because he thinks it’s probably too sad for him, he said.

After a while, David asked Ramon why he left and why he wasn’t there for him as a boy. Ramon said he was sorry and that he stayed away because the family asked him to.

Now, they’re making up for lost time. Ramon sleeps in the chair next to his son’s hospital bed Friday nights so he can be there with him Saturdays. He takes a laptop so the two can watch movies and surf the Internet together.

David is like any other 21-year-old, Ramon said. He likes to stay up late and party with friends. He’s always getting together with family, and he wants a girlfriend. That’s how Ramon was, too.

Es normal, Ramon says of his son.

The kidney failure is a rude interruption in this normalcy.

After almost three months in the hospital, David gets bored. He always has family with him. His aunts and cousins take turns driving from Jackson to keep him company. They all do different things with him.

His cousin plays computer games with him. His aunt gets him up and walking.

He talks to his dad about a whole family he hardly knows. Ramon’s parents still live in San Simeon, where David grew up.

David has met them, but he doesn’t think of them as his grandparents. He’ll see them when he goes back to Mexico, he said.

This new relationship and all this time getting to know his dad is un poco raro, David admits. It’s a little weird.

But it’s nice to have the time, Ramon said. Even if the situation is a hard one, a scary one. He’s just gotten to know his son. It’s hard to think of losing him now, Ramon said.

That’s why he didn’t have to think about it when he said he would give David a kidney.

Es mi hijo, Ramon says. He’s my son.




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