Lisa Ramer is afraid she could soon be homeless.

The 48-year-old former Bradford resident is renting a home near
Harrisburg and living off the tail end of money saved from when she
sold her home in June.

She has been on dialysis for more than two years after her
kidneys shut down. She can’t work because dialysis takes up a huge
chunk of a day and employers can’t work around her
appointments.

A kidney transplant would allow her to get her life back, Ramer
said.

“It isn’t the end-all, it’s just a better way to live,” she
said.

Ramer is trying to get on a kidney donation waiting list at both
Hershey Medical Center and the University of Pittsburgh Medical
Center. She is nearly done with the six months of prescreening
examinations necessary for a kidney transplant.

She is unsure of how long it will take to get a donation but it
would allow her to work again.

But Ramer said she shouldn’t even be alive. She spent nearly 10
years battling with glycocidic vasculitis with essential mixed
cryoglobulimia, a rare autoimmune disorder that affects the blood
and various other body systems. A small percentage of people who
contract hepatitis C will develop the disorder. She was a
37-year-old single mother of two elementary school-aged daughters
when she was diagnosed in 1997.

The disease has caused Ramer numerous complications and she
nearly died a few times, she said. Her body has gone into septic
shock, her lungs have collapsed, her blood-oxygen levels were
dangerously low at times. Ramer also suffered anemia and the amount
of medications she was taking to treat her disease caused her to
have congestive heart failure. She has had numerous ulcers cover
her body, some covering her entire leg with wounds down to the
bone. She has also undergone a hysterectomy and surgery for
cataracts during her battle.

Ramer has been in and out of area hospitals nearly 50 times in
the last 10 years. She was taken to the hospital by life flight
three times. She spent two hospital visits in a coma, each lasting
about a month. But Ramer continued to battle her disease with
minimal support outside of the strength given to her by her
daughters, Carly and Allison.

“I didn’t want to believe that death was an option,” she said.
“They are the only reason I sought to be alive.”

Her daughters spent much of their middle and high school years
living in hotels and going to new schools while Ramer sought
plasmapheresis treatments at Hershey and Harrisburg hospitals.
Ramer sold her home in Bradford in 2001 to move closer to her
doctors in Hershey and Harrisburg. Both girls took accelerated
classes and received great grades despite their being worried their
mother could die. The girls’ father, who left when they were young,
paid child support, which helped the family get by, Ramer said.

Ramer began dialysis in 2005 and her disease is thought to be in
remission, although a recent outbreak of blisters could prove
otherwise, she said. She is now concentrating on getting a new
kidney. She should already be on a kidney donor waiting list, but
put off the prescreening.

“After all I have been through, the last thing I wanted to think
of was a hospital,” she said.

Dialysis is hard on her body, not to mention the limitations it
has put on her ability to work, she said.

“All I want to do is just concentrate on this transplant,” she
said.

But money is running out, which means she soon won’t be able to
pay the rent.

“I’m trying to make the right decision, but its almost
impossible to do,” she said.

Ramer said she is scared, but hopeful that things will work
out.

“As always, I will try to overcome this.”