July 2010 – Three Rivers Kids Foundation will be sending Rockel Gladstone, 20 years old, to India soon for a kidney transplant.
[image title=”Rockel Gladstone” size=”small” id=”390″ align=”center” ]
KIMBIA, BERBICE RIVER – Rockel Gladstone, 20, requires dialysis treatment twice weekly in Georgetown because of her non-functioning kidneys but her family is struggling to cover the costs.
“We have to pay $80,000 weekly for two dialysis sessions for my daughter and transportation. How can I afford something like that? I am just a poor peanut and red-bean farmer.”
Rockel Gladstone was diagnosed with renal failure last year after experiencing ill health since 2005. “We need money to do the kidney transplant. She is my only daughter and I would do anything to save her life. She is still very young, the third of five children. When she does not receive the dialysis she gets delirious. On any given day she can only use about 20 ounces of fluid whether it is tea, water or whatever.”
Her mother, Cheryl Gladstone, 41, of Kimbia, Berbice River, told Stabroek News that the dialysis costs $36,050 per session and she also has to pay $6,000 each time she and her daughter travel from Stanleytown, New Amsterdam, where they are staying with relatives.
Her savings are almost exhausted while her father, Frank Gladstone is not making enough money from their provision and peanut farm at Kimbia.
Rockel, the third of five siblings, returned home two weeks ago from Barbados, where she had gone since last September to be treated at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. The woman said her daughter was on a life support machine for six weeks at the hospital. “I felt I would have lost her,” she said.
According to Cheryl, “Now that she is doing better, I feel real good.” But she is aware that her daughter “cannot be on dialysis treatment all her life” and is “ready for her to have a kidney transplant.” The woman said she and her husband both willingly agreed to undergo tests to determine who would be an eligible donor.
It turned out that Rockel’s father would be the one who can donate his kidney. However, their limited finances are holding them back and Cheryl is pleading with the public for assistance so her daughter’s misery could soon be over.
She said too that “from the time she got sick members of different churches and individuals prayed for her, and I wish to thank all of them. I want to tell them not to forget her now that she has recovered a little but to keep on praying for her.”