July 11, 2010

Riverdale man fights for his life and funds to get a liver transplant

Saturday, July 10, 2010 - 9:45pm

RIVERDALE -- "There's a strong possibility that in two or three months, I won't be here no more."

Bob Leggett, 55, sits in a brown recliner, an oxygen tube running along the floor, his swollen legs propped on the foot rest.

Bob is dying.

He needs a liver transplant. Soon.

He is currently ineligible for Medicaid and Medicare and Bob and his wife, Roma, can't afford the $140,000 they would need as a down payment to begin the process of paying for a transplant themselves.

Bob contracted hepatitis C. They don't know when or where. Their best guess is an infected blood transfusion from an operation more than 15 years ago, but it might have been from one of his amateur tattoos.

Whatever the cause, he began having symptoms and was diagnosed a year-and-a-half ago. Now he has cirrhosis.

"Six months ago, he was a big, burly mean sucker. Look at what it's done to him," Roma said, looking at her husband.

Because of the cirrhosis, Bob's body is retaining fluid. His stomach is distended and his feet are puffy, making it difficult and dangerous for him to get out of his chair and walk.

Bob had to quit work as a truck driver more than a year ago. He lost insurance and Roma applied for Medicaid several times, but problems kept cropping up. He was finally approved and had two months of Medicaid coverage until he began receiving disability payments.

That was when Medicaid said he was making too much money to qualify. Roma has severe arthritis and between the two, they get $2,800 a month in disability.

The letter they received said the limit was $1,200.

They have applied for Medicare, but must wait two years on disability before it takes effect. Roma said Bob doesn't have two years. Without a transplant, he probably will not make the four months until their 16th anniversary.

There is not anything Medicare or Medicaid can legally do under the circumstances, said Mike Fierberg, regional spokesman for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

The only way to bypass the two-year waiting period for Medicare after getting disability is to have end stage renal disease (kidney failure) or Lou Gehrig's disease (ALS), he said. Fierberg said he doesn't know why those are the only two exemptions, but it is specified by law.

He said nobody at CMS likes it, but they can't change it. An attempt to change the length of the waiting period was originally included in the recently passed health care reform bill, but the provision failed.

So now the Leggetts wait, playing a cruel game that is robbing Bob of the years he could have.

"I would have stayed driving truck until I was 62 or 65, retired and then taken my little guy, my grandson, and gone fishing."

Roma said it's hard to see her husband, once a strong man with a scrappy streak, barely able to move around their mobile home.

Bob is the kind of man to help anyone without a thought for himself, she said.

It's tough for the hard-working man to be idle, and even harder for him to handle what his illness has done to his family. Bob said it's especially hard on his daughters because their mother died two months ago and their brother two years before that.

He takes 10 prescriptions daily, one of which is $1,300 a month. He's been hospitalized several times. The high medical costs meant they sold their house and moved to a trailer park.

"I just want to make sure the best I can that she (Roma) has a good place to go," he said.

"He's just a good ol' teddy bear really," she said, tears in her eyes.

Roma said she doesn't know if they will get help. She'll keep fighting for it, just in case. If nothing else, she hopes it makes people more aware of how the system works, so they will fight to change it.

For now they play a waiting game, hoping for a miracle that may never come.

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