The loneliness of young kidney patients Even as they fight for their lives, many teens with renal failure have to grapple with not having their loved ones around them.
As he sits on a bench in the Children’s Hospital No. 2, Nguyen Van Manh, 15, is the picture of loneliness.
His ailment requires that he undergoes dialysis three times a week, an expensive procedure that his poor family cannot afford. They are also so busy making ends meet and earning money for his treatment that they have no time to tend to him.
Manh is by himself as he eats, drinks, washes his clothes and buys medicines. He has to depend on charity often for his meals, with benefactors occasionally giving him some money to buy food. He has been in the hospital alone for several years.
As the feelings of missing home, parents and brothers rise up, he can do nothing but cry.
“Poor him! He just stays in the hospital alone. His parents come to visit him only when his illness becomes serious or when he is given emergency treatment,” say the relatives of other patients.
Manh’s struggle is reflected in different ways at the hospital where many teenagers and younger children with kidney diseases are locked in a frequently hopeless fight against their fates.
There are 30 young patients with kidney diseases in the final stages at the hospital who are being provided kidney dialysis. Most of them belong to families with financial difficulties in other provinces.
For many patients there, the VND900,000 (US$52) needed to pay the monthly bill for food is too steep, and like Manh, they have to rely on charity meals.
Kidney failure also means that the patients have to accept to live with kidney support machines, another giant expense beyond most families.
The fee for one kidney dialysis is about VND300,000 ($17). A patient has to take the treatment three times a week. The expense is estimated about VND3.6 million ($206) a month and near $2,472 a year.
Many families are rendered destitute as they try to earn as much money as possible for the treatment of their children.
There are quite a few instances where a family has broken up under the strain.
The father of 11-year-old Nguyen Hoang Bi, diagnosed with chronic kidney failure in southern Kien Giang Province, left home without a word.
His mother had to borrow money and mortgage her land and house to get VND20 million ($1,144) to pay for hospital fees. Short of money for food, she asks for charity meals often.
Like Manh, Dang Viet Trieu from southern Kien Giang Province, can get no care from his parents because they must work to earn money for his treatment. They’ve even had to borrow over VND40 million ($2,288) to pay his hospital fees.
The illness is at the final stage for 14-year-old Tran Thi Men from southern Ben Tre Province. She has a bloated stomach like a heavily pregnant woman. She needs help from relatives for the simplest of tasks like lying down and moving. Her mother works hard to pay the hospital fees, and her stepfather has mortgaged his motorbike. He has also had to sell the “gratitude house” given by the government for war veterans.
Pham Quoc Canh, 12, from Long An Province shares the same fate with his peers in the hospital.
Canh’s father died years ago while his mother has to work as a home maid or temporary laborer to afford living expenses and his treatment. There are weeks that he has to undergo dialysis four times and now his heart suffers failures too. The hospital has been his home for more than two years.
According to the Ministry of Health, Vietnam has 5,000-6,000 people suffering chronic kidney failures in the final stage who are in critical need of kidney transplants.
Silver lining
Amidst the pall of gloom, caring staff of the hospital do their best to provide some cheer and encouragement.
“The nursing staff here are very interested in babies and teenagers. They teach children to write letters and draw pictures and give them marks,” says one parent.
Their interest greatly helps the patients.
Knowing patients have to stay in the hospital during the coming Tet holidays, the staff have prepared gifts for them. Each gift is a warm coat and a handbag.
Phan Thi Cam Linh, a staff of the hospital, says, “I chose to give those things to children because many of them just wore thin coats when they arrived and had lost all their belongings.”
For patients with serious kidney diseases, a day alive means a day of hope.
Manh says, “I have a wish that patients with kidney failure get over their illness. I think about the blue sky and beams of sunshine in the morning. A morning is a hope.”
Source: Tuoi Tre
Story from Thanh Nien News
Published: 20 January, 2009, 02:11:19 (GMT+7)
Copyright Thanh Nien News
http://www.thanhniennews.com/features/?catid=10&newsid=45558
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