<p>Medicare is available for all with ESRD - Part A is free and Part B is about $99/month. You need both for a transplant or dialysis.</p>
<p>NO WAY! </p>
<p>Physician here. Just because something can technically be done doesn’t mean it SHOULD be done. Save your “spare” kidney for when your own start failing- if it happened to your parent it could happen to you… Also- all 80 year olds have had a long life already. And, as my father says, pay forward. Do something for the next generation, not your parent.</p>
<p>I could go on and on about health care for the elderly… gotta get off my soapbox and offline.</p>
<p>tom - I wasn’t expecting a response, so thank you for your well-crafted reply. I agree that it’s a personal issue, and that the decision is often a reflection of a family’s dynamics.</p>
<p>Concerning potential age limits for kidney donation recipients, from what I have seen in reading about it, the following is the current thinking:</p>
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<p>There are apparently no legal mandates regarding upper age of transplant recipients. However, if the recipient is viewed as too frail, it won’t happen, because you cannot force a surgeon to operate on a patient he feels won’t make it through the surgery and recovery period.</p>
<p>Interesting thread subject.</p>
<p>Answer to the OP: I really don’t know what I would do - I could conjecture, but if it actually happened, I might react differently.</p>
<p>NRdsb4… I am pretty sure I would not do it considering my dad’s condition…</p>
<p>If his condition was better…I doubt I would do it…but who knows… </p>
<p>I agree with you …</p>
<p>I had a kidney stone that almost destroyed my left kidney. I will ill for a year, went to the doctor and was told the fainting, heated feeling I had was menopause related. One evening, following aroebic exercise the stone moved. The pain resulted in a trip to the emergency room. Fortunately, I was a candidate for lithotripsy. The stone was blasted to particles and passed. I would not want to put myself in the postion of not having a spare kidney just in case of a kidney stone and the damage they can do.</p>
<p>Our family was in this position two years ago. My FIL, 80 years old, learned that he was in kidney failure and needed dialysis. He had high blood pressure for over forty years and did not take his meds for at least 10 years (because of the side effects… he was a newly wed and his wife was many years his junior). He absolutely refused dialysis, instead suggested that he would be open to receiving a kidney from one of his three grown children. I was floored. He made the decision to not take care of his health AND refused dialysis. My husband has his own business and three children. He employs both of his siblings. If he were to have an issue in surgery, not only could it destroy our lives but also that of his siblings.
My elderly mother would never take a kidney from her child (at her age). She told me (when I asked her opinion) that she thought it was an incredibly selfish request. If she were 60 and I were in my thirties, maybe but not now.
My husband decided that he could not risk the surgery (the time out of work alone could have been very detrimental to the business since he is the business and no one else could fill in for him). Both his siblings started testing for compatibility to donate to thier father. As fate would have it, when my FIL had further tests he was found to have other issues that needed to be fixed (aortic anurism) before he could even be considered as a candidate for a kidney transplant. He was not surgically cleared and he passed away a few months later. He always did things his own way, from refusing to take meds that would hinder his love life to refusing dialysis, which he heard was “no way to live”. </p>
<p>We miss him very much. I don’t feel any differently today about the issue though.</p>