Albertan diagnosed with kidney disease in need of help

March is kidney month and an Alberta man diagnosed with kidney disease is in need of help.

One in ten Canadians are living with the disease, and Miguel Azzarello is one of those people – diagnosed at age 11.

Both his kidneys eventually stopped working, forcing him onto dialysis before he received a kidney transplant in 2007 — from his mother, Claudia.

A few years later, however, his body began to reject the life-saving gift. By 2019, it no longer worked at all.

“That kidney worked perfectly fine until, I’d say, 2016, and then I started having minor rejections,” he said. “Then in 2019, they found out my kidney was shot.”

Not a candidate for another transplant, but he is grateful he has dialysis to keep him alive.

However, the 30-year-old struggles with how the disease has highjacked his daily life. It leaves him pretty much confined to his home where he does daily dialysis to free his body of toxins, unable to work or do simple things, such as swimming with his five-year-old daughter.

His daughter, along with family, and friends, is what gives him the strength to keep going.

“Sadly, I run too many complications to undergo a second kidney transplant, so I’m permanently on dialysis,” he said.

“Being unable to work has made things a lot hoarder on me. I was given the advice to start a GoFundMe to hopefully help make things a little easier on me.”

More than 52,000 Canadians are being treated with dialysis, and nearly 18,000 have had a kidney transplant. Miguel says fellow Canadians can often help those battling the disease.