come up to the front of the transplant list and can pay $1M for the privilege of not spending $75K in perpetuity. So at least half of the dialysis patients at my clinic can’t afford to be doing dialysis except by the favors of the government, employment, insurance, or other unreliable sources. On any given day they could walk into the clinic and be asked “Pay your tab or leave”. My basic concept is offering to pay dialysis patients $500 for a halfliter of blood. Or even more simply: I am offering them their lives for a half-liter of their blood. The medical system is offering the same reward (brokering me) for $500 per session and a half-liter of their blood. I do get a cut of that $500 in my stipend, but definitely not a significant portion of the million dollars that the twelve patients gave the system. The patient could sell their plasma (where legal) for maybe $50 per session, but they would still be down $450 to get their treatment. And I am not sure whether dialysis patients are allowed to donate plasma. Too complicated Maybe I should just buy the blood instead and store it? That would require spending something like $2K a week. That and the equipment would be a serious expense. And it would only help me: it would keep me ‘alive’ without giving me any reason to be. I can only truly live by enabling others to live.
LANA The US Army accidentally provided a major part of the ‘cave dialysis’ solution. Blood transfusion kits are not available at the local CVS, so even after getting the tubes, needles, pump, and bandages that seem to be required to make this work, you need someone that knows how a non-hospital transfusion setup would function. And would trust it enough to try it out. On themselves. - 46 -
