I heard the most peculiar story yesterday.
Nick is in the hospital, sharing a semi-private room with an elderly Burmese man, who yesterday, out of the blue, started telling me why he is in the hospital.
He claims that he had kidney failure, and was on dialysis, and was not an acceptable candidate for kidney transplant in the US due to his age (74), so he went on the internet to research where to buy a kidney.
He learned that, while you can buy a kidney for $500 in India, the chance of getting HIV is very high, and even higher in Pakistan and the Philippines, and so high in Thailand that you shouldn't even visit Thailand.
In China, he said, there are hospitals that specialize in organ transplants, many many hospitals all in one city (I think he said Guangdong but he must have meant Guangzhou).
He paid $5,000 for a man to act as a translator and facilitator, and travelled to China, and went to one of these hospitals. He said, on one floor, everybody is waiting for a liver transplant. On one floor, kidneys. On another floor, bladders, and so on.
He had to bid for a kidney, and wait. He bid $55,000, which is high, because he has type B blood, which is rare in China, they are mostly type A, he said.
He waited three months. He was not allowed to leave his bed. He was tied to his bed like a horse to a tree, he said, like a horse to a tree.
Hospitals in China don't have hospital food, your family or friends bring you food. Since he didn't have any family or friends with him, he ordered Chinese takeout and they delivered it to his bed.
It was the worst three months of his life, he said, and he started to think his visa would expire before he got a kidney.
Finally, just before his visa expired (what a coincidence!) he got his kidney transplant, but his visa expired before the wound healed, and he had to come back to America with an open wound, a hole, he said. So he is staying in the hospital while his wound heals.
He thinks maybe the kidney came from a bad man, a criminal who was executed, but he doesn't really know, and anyway, what could he do, he was dying.
I could tell that this fact was troubling him, that the whole story amazed him, especially finding a kidney on the internet. I asked him what his doctor thought, and he said that the doctor blamed him. I asked him what his daughter and his son thought, and he said that they disagreed with him.
Then I told him that my father found his wife on the internet, a Chinese wife from Guangdong, whom he brought to America, and the Burmese man rested his head in his hands and just shook his head in amazement.
I don't know how well he is doing, though, a social worker was in the room earlier in the day trying to get him to execute an advanced care directive (DNR form). |
