Dialysis patient has hope

Out And About
Dialysis patient has hope

Originally posted on June 16, 2007

BACKGROUND
Out and About is an occasional editorial page feature in which we take up the cause we can support of one of our readers.
Last October, Out and About wrote about Dan T. Adams, who is forced to undergo agony three times a week driving himself from Cape Coral to Bonita to get dialysis he could receive five minutes from his home if it weren't that Associates in Nephrology refused to treat him in a five-year-old dispute.
The issue came to a head this week when Adams was admitted to Cape Coral Hospital in the throes of a medical crisis.

There are 58 tension-building traffic lights between where Dan T. Adams lives in Cape Coral and where he gets kidney dialysis treatments three times a week in Bonita.

And it is a long, long way from his home and either Nashville, Tenn., or Pittsburgh, where Adams and his wife will have to travel when he finally gets a kidney transplant that will end the need for dialysis.

Adams, 58, a Vietnam veteran, has been making the long trip each Monday, Wednesday and Friday and faces the long flight for a transplant because of a dispute between himself and Lee County's major group of kidney specialists.

The big problem is the drive to Bonita. Adams has to drive himself because his wife is ill.

"He is OK going down in the morning, but he is sick and tired coming home after the dialysis," said Adams' wife, Becky. "He is a danger to himself and everyone on the road then."

Now, after five years of the feuding, there appears to be some hope that Adams' long ordeal may be over. It is all because Adams had a medical crisis last Monday.

He was admitted to Cape Coral Hospital after having trouble breathing. The culprit was fluid around his heart, his family said, and it was solved on Tuesday when he was given a dialysis by a doctor from the same group that refused to perform dialysis on him as an outpatient at either Cape Coral or Fort Myers dialysis centers.

The group is Associates in Nephrology, which until recently was the only kidney group close by. The group has refused to care for Adams since he and one of his doctors exchanged sharp words in a hospital confrontation five years ago. Adams said he was feeling really bad and was under the influence of medication at the time. He admits he was out of line and has apologized profusely, but none of the doctors in the group will even talk with the family about effecting a reconciliation.

But when he was admitted to the hospital "It was professionally important" for the group to treat him there, said Dr. Chuck Krivenko, chief medical officer for Lee Memorial Health Systems, who brokered the arrangement between the group and the family. "There was never a question that he would be treated."

Hope that Adams may get some relief from his long trip comes on two fronts, both surfaced by his emergency hospital stay.

First, Dr. Krivenko suggested to the family that they contact Associates and try to negotiate peace. When pressed by Out and About, he said he would make the same request to the doctor's group. Hopefully, the group will take that initiative. Five years is a long time to hold a grudge.

Second, Dr. Krivenko put the family in touch with a Lehigh Acres nephrologist who, with the family's general practitioner, is negotiating to take Adams on, get him appointments at a closer dialysis center and arrange transportation so he won't have to drive.

If either plan works, a local surgeon has agreed to do Adams' transplant. All he needs is a local nephrologist to make the team complete.

Both Out and About and News-Press columnist Sam Cook have written about Adams' plight.

The family says those articles were thrown in their face when he was admitted to the hospital, suggesting that they were troublemakers for "going to The News-Press."

At least one of the physicians involved denies that he made such statements.

We hope that no medical professional would allow the family's use of their right to protest to get in the way of providing the best medical care. We will keep our readers informed.

http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070616/OPINION/706160413/1015