If Grady Memorial Hospital succeeds in closing its outpatient dialysis clinic, Tadesse A. Amdago, a 69-year-old immigrant from Ethiopia, said he would begin \u201ccounting the days until I die.\u201d\u009d Rosa Lira, 78, a permanent resident from Mexico, said she also assumed she \u201cwould just die.\u201d\u009d Another woman, a 32-year-old illegal immigrant from Honduras, said she could only hope to make it \u201cback to my country to die.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n
The patients, who have relied for years on Grady\u2019s free provision of dialysis to people without means, said they had no other options to obtain the care that is essential to their survival. But the safety-net hospital, after years of failed efforts to drain its red ink, is not backing away from what its chairman, A. D. Correll, calls a \u201cgut-wrenching decision\u201d\u009d: closing the clinic this month.<\/p>\n
The sides confronted each other in state court on Wednesday morning as lawyers for the patients sought to keep the clinic open until other arrangements for dialysis could be secured. Dialysis patients and their families packed the benches and 60-year-old Nelson Tabares, a seriously ill illegal immigrant from Honduras, was wheeled into court in a portable bed.<\/p>\n
Despite a judge\u2019s urging that the two sides negotiate a solution Wednesday, there was no agreement by the end of the day on how to go forward. For the time being, a restraining order keeping the clinic open stands. The judge is considering whether to extend it.<\/p>\n
The dialysis unit on Grady\u2019s ninth floor might as well be ground zero for the national health care debate.<\/p>\n