Jesse Hernandez

Jesse had been feeling tired all of the time and was constantly nauseous for as long as he could remember. It wasn’t until he went to the hospital for a staph infection that he realized something bigger may have been going on. In the summer of 2017, He had been kayaking on the river when he flipped his kayak and scraped his knee. A couple of days went by and not only was the injury not getting better, it was getting worse. So he went to the doctor and they proceeded to take blood and urine samples to check for infection. They sent the tests off expecting staph infection or MRSA, which is pretty bad, but never did we fathom the news that we were about to hear. After the tests came in they had concluded that he had end stage renal failure (stage 5) due to an auto immune disease that attacks the kidneys. By the time he was diagnosed, he only had 8% functionality between both kidneys. They said that he may have had the auto immune disease for the majority of his life. There is no way to tell when it began. He has had an uphill battle with this ever since.

Jesse has been having issues with his eyesight. He woke one morning not being able to see more than a few inches in front of him. His vision is so blurred that he cannot read the text messages on his phone, or look up a contact to call anyone. He scheduled an appointment with an eye specialist to see what was going on. The news was not good. The doctor told him that he had suffered irreversible damage to his eyes do to high blood pressure, more than likely caused by his kidney failure. There is no medication or surgery that could help him get his eyesight back.

Jesse has gone through years of dialysis and two failed attempts on the kidney transplant list. Jesse passed away due to complications of his kidney disease the morning of New Years Eve 2023. Although we know his disease was serious we were not expecting it to take his life so soon or so suddenly jesse was a great father good brother and mostly a dedicated friend to many.