TASHA'S STORY: Right now, I am so tired of waiting to get a kidney. I pray every day for God to help me find a kidney. Every week, we have to go Rapid City for my appointment for labs, and a check up with the doctor. I get tired of getting poked for blood samples. I wish for a normal life. I have a big family and sometimes we have a hard time with money for my trips. I switched schools to an alternative school where I can do home schooling. One thing I don't like is I can't spend the night with any friends and I can't go on field trips because I have to have my dialysis three times a day. My family went through five microwaves in heating up my solutions for my dialysis. I would like to get encouragment mail and hear other people's stories like me.

TASHA'S HISTORY: More than a year ago, Tasha was diagnosed with end stage renal, a kidney
disease that slowly destroyed her kidneys. Since that time, her and her
families life has changed considerably.

Tasha is 11-years old and has had to live on a periontenal dialysis machine
that she gets on four times a day. Her mother Claudia was trained by
hospital staff to give Tasha dialysis on the machine.

Tasha attends school at American Horse School. Her mother travels
to school give her dialysis as needed.

It is a procedure that times time out of their lives and is risky for
infection if they aren't careful.

Since she has been diagnosed, she has spent many days in the hospital at
Rapid City Regional and at St. Luke's Children's Hospital in Denver.

Tasha's mother and father, Claudia and Albert Apple have seven children
including Tasha. Their oldest is 16-years old and their youngest child is
4-years old.
They are a close knit family, meaning when Tasha got sick, they all stayed
near her when she was hospitalized. Her father, Albert, said Tasha grew up
close to her brothers and sisters and they wanted to be nearby Tasha during
operations and hospital stays.

Sometimes it got hard for us financially and hard on the family to all try
to stay with her during her surgery and those times she has been
hospitalized, said her mother Claudia. But they overlooked that and kept to
their faith and family values.

During the spring of last year, Tasha's heart couldn't handle the strain
and she began to have problems. She was again hospitalized in Rapid City and
Denver for a couple of weeks.

Albert said he was glad hospital staff were understanding when Tasha's
sisters and brother wanted to stay near her while she was hospitalized.

Tasha longs to live a normal life. During Christmas her wish for a gift was
just to be able to find somebody to give her a kidney.

Besides being listed on the donor list for kidney foundations, her auntie and a friend Juanita have helped her build this site
for her in an effort to help find Tasha a kidney. Through a 6-month span
her web page received more than 3,000 visitors.

Through this site, Tasha got offers for a kidney donation but most of them
weren't the same blood type. Tasha's blood type is A positive.

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