Ebon Sledge drives her daughter to dialysis from their hotel room three days a week, working as a cook and uber driver every free moment she has.
GRIFFIN, Ga. — Nearly 10,000 children in the United States have kidney failure, turning lives upside down for so many families waiting on a transplant.
It’s a struggle Ebon Sledge and her eight children know well.
“For a kid to be sick, you just don’t plan for it,” Sledge said. “You plan for everybody to be healthy and then boom, the unexpected happens.”
The unexpected came when Sledge’s 11-year-old daughter J’Adore was diagnosed with kidney failure in 2020.
“Her oxygen levels were falling, they put her on a ventilator, they did a blood transfusion,” Sledge recalled. “It was nerve-wracking to see the cords coming out of her neck and her arm. Real emotional, not really knowing what was going to happen.”
J’Adore ended up needing a nephrectomy, a surgical removal of both kidneys.
As the bills piled up and became overwhelming, Ebon and the children were eventually evicted from their home. They’ve been living in a two-bed hotel room in Griffin for the past year.
Three days a week, Sledge and her daughter drive over an hour to Tucker for J’Adore’s dialysis treatments.
“Like most moms, I do have times when I’m in the shower and I let the tears all out,” she said. “But then I’ll be like ‘OK, lets get it together.'”
Sledge works as a restaurant cook and Uber driver every free moment she has between appointments and bringing the kids to and from…
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