Article published Dec 31, 2007
Single mother of two struggles with kidney problems
Chronically ill woman refuses hospice careBy Tabitha Yang
DEMOCRAT STAFF WRITER
Unless she can get the kidney transplant she needs, Cherise Marcelle may not live much longer. Three months ago, doctors recently advised her to go into hospice care, but she refused.
"It would be too depressing," her mother, Helen Marcelle, said. "She told me, 'I need a reason to get up in the morning.'"
Cherise Marcelle is just one of many chronically ill patients who must make decisions about hospice care.
"Every situation is entirely different and individual, and there's just many, many factors that might go into that decision," said David Robinson, the medical director for Big Bend Hospice. "In general, for any treatment or combination of treatments, you really have to balance the overall benefits and potential burdens, and then after that it's up to the person to accept or refuse treatment."
After weighing her options, Cherise, a 32-year-old single mother of two, opted instead to continue taking classes at Tallahassee Community College. Already certified as a licensed practical nurse, she wants to get a degree in office technology so that in case she gets a transplant, she will be able to support herself by doing administrative work at a hospital.
Cherise was diagnosed with kidney failure nearly 10 years ago. She knew something was seriously wrong because she was nauseated and throwing up constantly. She's been on the transplant list since 1999. She found out a year ago that her antibody levels are too high to get a transplant. A person's antibody levels are increased by getting blood transfusions, and in women, antibody levels increase with pregnancy. Unfortunately, Cherise didn't know that until recently, when she asked someone at Shands Hospital in Gainesville why it was taking so long for her to get a match.
"That was my first time hearing it in the years that I had been on dialysis," she said. Not knowing what to do or what to expect has been an ongoing concern while continuing the treatment. One of the side effects of getting dialysis and taking the drugs she has to be on is that she's lost most of her hair, but she said she was never told to expect that. She also has had some memory problems due to the dialysis, another side effect she didn't know about. It's hard for her to retain information long-term.
"I went through school and I did really well without studying because I had a phenomenal memory," she said. "But now, all of the sudden, I'm struggling to get C's."
Cherise has to get frequent surgeries related to her condition and often must go to the hospital. She would like to move somewhere where she could be near a kidney specialist, but in order to do that, she'd have to leave her family, which is basically her only support network, behind. Besides her two sons, ages 14 and 10, her mother and sister live in Tallahassee.
Recently, her car's transmission stopped working, and she can't afford to fix it, so she's been waking up at 4 a.m. to take a community shuttle to get her dialysis treatment. She usually calls her sons from the center to make sure they're up and ready for school.
"I'm doing the best I can," she said. "But sometimes it feels like I'm caught in the worst Catch-22."
# Contact Reporter Tabitha Yang at (850) 599-2304 or tyang@tallahassee.com.
http://www.tallahassee.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071231/NEWS01/712310313My Comment: Hospice??
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