Kim Adams Cromer isn’t looking for a handout. She’s merely looking for a hand up.

The former Tonganoxie resident has been searching several months for affordable medical insurance to help pay her pharmacy bills, which run from $1,500 to $2,000 every month.

If she can’t find the coverage and is forced to quit taking the expensive medications, her body is likely to reject a kidney her brother donated to her three years ago.

“I will lose my kidney,” Cromer said. “How can I do that to him? He gave it to me.”

Then Cromer, 42, would be forced to undergo dialysis. Ironically, Medicare, a government health insurance program, would pay 100 percent of the dialysis costs.

Kim Cromer’s story should be a success story, a story of a survivor. Instead, it’s one fraught with frustration and fear.

The past three years, Cromer has been covered by her former husband’s insurance company. But that policy expires Saturday. And that’s when Cromer’s pharmacy bills will soar.

Two years ago, she began researching her options.

“I don’t want a handout,” Cromer said. “I just want to be able to buy it at a reasonable cost.”

Kim Adams Cromer, left, needs medical insurance to pay for expensive medications that keep her body from rejecting the kidney her brother, Kevin, right, donated to her three years ago.

She’s signed up for a state program designed specifically for people like her. It will help, but not solve, her financial problems.

She and her husband, Kerry, operate a horse-breeding farm south of Pratt. They also raise cattle and plant row crops. Kim, a 1979 Tonganoxie High School graduate, works part time at a veterinary clinic. They also have five children.

Kim’s been so concerned about the financial drain on the family that she’s talked with Kerry about divorce — reasoning she could qualify for a government-provided medical card if she weren’t married.

“He’s just totally against that,” she said. “He just won’t hear of that.”

She’s applied for work at larger companies with health insurance that could handle Cromer’s hefty claims. But such companies are rare in her area of Kansas.

She’s written numerous letters and made numerous telephone calls, seeking solutions.

“I feel like I’ve exhausted everything that I know of,” she said.

A letter to her current insurance carrier was finally answered, but the company indicated it wouldn’t help her.

She’s been told pharmaceutical companies sometimes provide extremely expensive drugs at reduced costs. She’s filling out applications, in hopes she’s approved for such a company program.

‘A huge problem’

Another letter landed on state Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger’s desk. Praeger’s staff helped Cromer hook up with a state program, the high-risk pool, that serves as a safety net for people with extreme health-care costs. Currently, the pool administers health care coverage for about 1,700 Kansans.

“These are heart-breaking, gut-wrenching cases,” Praeger said. “We do everything we can to find alternatives for folks.”

But, Praeger said, it’s not enough.

“For people like Kim, it’s still a huge problem,” Praeger said.

And it makes no sense, Praeger said, that government programs such as Medicare, only pay for anti-rejection drugs for transplant patients for three years.

“It’s crazy,” she said.

It’s time, Praeger said, that the federal program recognize transplant patients aren’t dying within the first three years after surgery, but are leading normal, long lives.

Costly dialysis

Michael Grant, a kidney specialist who is Cromer’s physician, said he couldn’t agree more.

“Keeping Kim going with medicine is so much cheaper than dialysis,” said Grant, a Wichita physician who frequently provides care to patients in Pratt. “Dialysis costs $60,000 a year. It’s much cheaper to pay for medicine than to pay for dialysis. You would think somebody in Medicare would realize this.”

If Cromer stops the anti-rejection drugs, toxins would build up in her blood and, ultimately, her body would destroy her brother’s kidney. That would mean dialysis — and, possibly, another kidney transplant, which her physician says is physically possible.

“She’s young, and she keeps herself in very good shape,” Grant said.

But, of course, with a new kidney would come anti-rejection drugs and the whole cycle would start again.

Grant said Cromer’s situation was a tragedy.

“She takes her medicine religiously. She does everything the doctors tell her to do. This is what a kidney transplant is made for: people like Kim,” he said.

Family worries

For Kim’s parents, Don and Shirley Adams, who moved from Tonganoxie to Lawrence four years ago, their daughter’s situation is a constant worry — and her fortitude a source of pride.

“They’re farmers,” Don Adams said. “This is a tremendous financial burden. But they have a good frame of mind. They don’t mope and complain about things. They have a terrific attitude.”

That seems to run in the family.

It was Kim’s brother Kevin, a 39-year-old Sprint employee, who immediately stepped forward when he learned his sister needed a transplant.

“I always refer to my kidney living in Pratt,” Kevin Adams said. “It loves Pratt. It’s very happy there.”

And he wants it to remain just where it is.

“I did what I did to help her live a happy and healthy life, as much as possible,” he said. “It’s frustrating to me that the cost of a little-bitty pill could stand in the way of her leading a healthy life.”

For Cromer, the past few years have been an emotional roller coaster. She’s gone from the high of living a healthy life again to the low of wondering whether she will lose that. She often turns to prayer, where she finds comfort and strength.

Still, she doesn’t know exactly what the answer is to her dilemma.

“I get up every morning and am thankful that I’m alive and that I feel good and that I have energy,” she said. “If you’ve never been sick and your ability to live a normal life has almost been taken away, I don’t think you appreciate that. Every day is a gift for me. I don’t want to give that up. I’m willing to work. I’m willing to do anything I need to do to keep that.”