Failing Health Does Not Derail an Indomitable Spirit

[okarol]

December 12, 2007

The Neediest Cases
Failing Health Does Not Derail an Indomitable Spirit

By JENNIFER MASCIA

Yessina Rodriguez’s life is at a standstill.

Ms. Rodriguez, 25, a mother of one, cannot work or attend school unless she gets a new kidney to replace the one that failed her, suddenly, when she was 19. That one was implanted when her kidneys first failed her, suddenly, when she was 10.

“I don’t know how long I’ve been on dialysis,” Ms. Rodriguez said. “Honestly, I don’t want to know.”

It has been six years.

She has end-stage renal failure, a condition that can be cured only by a kidney transplant. She is on the waiting list for a kidney at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, close to where her parents and two sisters moved in 1998, and is about to be added to a list at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan.

Ms. Rodriguez last worked when she was 16, as a cashier at a supermarket in Queens. Now she stays home, exhausted from the 3 ½-hour, thrice-weekly dialysis treatments around which she organizes her life. When she is able to work again, not until a year after a successful transplant, she has no idea what she will do.

“Maybe get into the fashion industry, or designing,” she said. “Maybe the medical industry? Because I know so much about it now.”

One glance at the interior of her apartment in East New York, Brooklyn, is evidence that Ms. Rodriguez’s aptitude for interior design could be parlayed into a career.

Her sparse living room features inexpensive but carefully chosen items from Ikea: artwork, a black leather couch with maroon and blue pillows and a red area rug over a cream-colored carpet. A small Christmas tree sits in a corner. The color scheme of her kitchen is red; the few appliances she owns gleam like candy apples.

She moved in with very little, however, from her former rundown apartment a few blocks away, and never owned a new bed until she received $750 from The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. With that money, she also bought a dresser and two nightstands to replace their broken predecessors. Her son, Brandon, 7, still has neither a bed nor any bedroom furniture. Until Ms. Rodriguez can afford them, he shares her bed. For now, his room is used solely as a storage space for his clothes.

The rent on the two-bedroom apartment is $1,400, utilities included. A federal subsidy covers $1,030 of that. Ms. Rodriguez’s only source of income is $642 a month in Supplemental Security Income, and $20 monthly in food stamps. Brandon’s father also contributes to his support.

Diana Naftal, Ms. Rodriguez’s social worker at the Brooklyn Bureau of Community Service, one of the seven agencies supported by the Neediest Cases Fund, said that Ms. Rodriguez’s determination made her an ideal candidate for Neediest Cases funds. “I was impressed with her participation in her own life,” Ms. Naftal said. “She is hardly a passive recipient of social services. She is a young woman with a serious illness who is making a nice life for herself and her son.”

Brandon, a second grader, greeted guests to his home while standing on his head. Soon he was racing around the apartment, demonstrating his ability to name all 50 states and performing back flips over the couch.

“He does not stay still,” Ms. Rodriguez said, as Brandon grabbed a photographer’s camera and snapped away. “He’s nosy. He wants to know everything.”

Ms. Rodriguez said that Brandon knows that she is sick and goes for dialysis, but he does not know what that entails. But even if he did, it probably would not slow him down.

“I’ve been to Massachusetts,” Brandon said, holding up a map from his school notebook.

“Oh, yeah?” Ms. Rodriguez said, laughing. “When was that? Because I didn’t go with you.”

Ms. Rodriguez said that initially, her illness was hard to face. “When I first got sick, I was really depressed,” she said. “The hardest thing was to accept it. I used to miss treatments on purpose. But I decided to live normally, to accept it. Because if I let it get to me, I’d probably get sicker.”

“And I will get better,” she added. “Eventually.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/12/nyregion/12neediest.html?ref=nyregion