I have stage 5 kidney failure or ESRD with advances in medicine this is not a terminal disease but i have to undergo dialysis 3 times a week in order to survive. My main ambition is now very basic and everyday is a struggle, a fight with myself controlling my food and fluid intake and most days i will give in to temptation and i will feel with regrets.
I have to undergo a few surgical procedures in order to prepare watch the you tube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXeuB1P8sDs. I am a singaporean and we have been described as a practical, pragmatic, calculative and we are people who are lacking in emotions. i am not an exception when i was told of my illness there was some sadness but only for a moment, my thoughts then turn to the practical side of the illness especially the financial aspects of the illness.
In singapore we have a national healthcare savings scheme call medisave to help us in paying our medical expenses. Medisave is like a savings account money in this account is derived from a certain % of our salary manage by the govt. Dialysis patient can claim a maximum of $450 from this account. We also Medishield. MediShield is a catastrophic medical insurance scheme that enables us in settling another portion of our dialysis bill we can claim a maximum $1000, so in total we have $1450 to help us defrey our dialysis treatments but inline with govt policy we still need to co-pay $600-$800 cash.
In singapore we also have the National Kidney Foundation which is is a charitable organisation that provides dialysis treatment and rehabilitative care to kidney failure patients at affordable, subsidised rates also known as NKF, we also have other organisation providing assistance to the dialysis patients but the NKF is the biggest.
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