Steven Rench is 13 years old and a 7th grader at Washington Jr. High School in Rock Island, Ill. Steven also suffers from End Stage Renal Disease due to a condition he was born with called Focal Segmental Glomerulosclerosis (FSGS), which has left his kidneys unable to perform basic filtering functions. Every night he hooks himself up to a bedside dialysis machine that filters fluid through his body, cleaning his blood during the night, and disconnects in the morning before going to school or spending a weekend with his family. Although the dialysis is bridging his life, Steven will die if he does not eventually have a kidney transplant, an operation he will likely undergo sometime in 2009.
As the story originally appeared in The Dispatch and The Rock Island Argus on December 28, 2008.
