Mr. Garcia was one of the lucky ones.
Not in the born-in-poverty or kidney-failure-by-30 sense. But lucky in the sense that by the time his kidneys failed completely, he was in California where Medicaid pays for undocumented folks get the same dialysis as the US-born and not in one of the 38 states that wait until undocumented people show up to their ERs damn near dead before they will give them a dialysis treatment or three before they send them back out to start the process again five or six days later—even though it is far more expensive than standard care. Because racism.
But even in the land of milk and honey (and earthquakes and wildfires), Medicaid does not pay for the costs of kidney transplant for undocumented folks—even though dialysis is much more expensive than transplant and undocumented people comprise only about 1% of the US population with dialysis-requiring kidney disease. Again, because racism.
Yet, here again, Mr. Garcia was lucky because his circumstances allowed him to get a lawyer, which ultimately resulted in him gaining citizenship, which allowed him to move forward in the transplant process. But his path was still fraught with bumps, potholes, and hurdles.
This is why I thought of him while making my most recent video for “Real Kidney Talk with The People’s Nephrologist”: How to get on the kidney transplant wait list
Mr. Garcia was one of my dialysis patients. Besides kidney failure, his health was good. He didn’t smoke or use drugs. So, with the insurance piece taken care of, he was a good transplant candidate.
But so were about 90,000 other people already on the waiting list for a deceased donor kidney. And at the time, only about 15,000 people actually got a deceased donor kidney transplant each year. Accordingly, transplant centers have rules in place to decide who can even be on the list, much less get a kidney. I don’t know how many are denied.
My gut and my experience tell me that racism plays a role in these rules. Because this is America and no aspect of America can be immune to its legacy of racism. Not that anyone involved would admit to it. And as I explained in a post 5 years ago, nobody has to admit it:
Nobody has to because it is woven into the fabric of how things are done in such a way as by design it mostly affects the poor and people of color.
In this same post, I go on to tell Mr. Garcia’s story as an example of how. With a little bit of my coaching and advocacy, Mr. Garcia was not only approved to be on the waiting list but got a kidney transplant about year later!
Like I said, Mr. Garcia was one of the lucky ones. I hope the info I share in this latest video will help you or someone you love to be lucky too.