WHEN PAIN riddles your body and a reality of lack stares you in the face, it is easy for hope to be lost and faith to wane, but 59-year-old Venda Anderson says that is all she has left as she contends with impaired vision, stage five kidney failure, hypertension, and diabetes.

Anderson spent almost two decades of her life working for the janitorial department of a hospital, but she never thought that she would spend the remaining years of her life visiting the hospital in another capacity.

Every week ,the mother of three, who has pleaded to receive treatment twice instead of the three times per week as was prescribed, goes on the dialysis machine and hopes to live to fight another day.

An ailing Anderson said that while she can get some of the medication for her diabetes and hypertension free, she has to pay for dialysis before she can even go on the machine each week.

Anderson said she was taken to the hospital in Mandeville, where she found out she had had a ruptured aneurysm, then was rushed from there to Kingston.