ANTIOCH – A new kidney is all that stands between Govinda Regmi and a life free of seemingly endless dialysis that has left him unable to work or travel and often too sick to visit family or friends.
But to continue his treatments and get on a list for a kidney transplant, Regmi must first obtain proper immigration status. It is a slow-moving bureaucratic process, and help could be years away.
“I’m waiting and waiting for everything,” said Regmi, while curled up on a chair halfway through his three-and-a-half-hour hemodialysis treatment on a recent afternoon at a house where he has been living in Antioch.
The 36-year-old Nepali native and former accountant almost lost all hope nearly three years earlier when he found out that he had a rare genetic liver disease that couldn’t be treated in his home country. He and wife, Mira Basnet, his caregiver and a registered nurse, had gone to India for better medical care, but with the new diagnosis and potential need for both a new kidney and liver, they returned to Nepal.
They were out of work, out of money and had nowhere to turn.
That is until an Antioch mom, Kristi Ouimet and her husband, Kelly, met Regmi on social media, offered to let the couple stay in their home and connected them with UCSF doctors for the dialysis he requires as he awaits a new kidney. The Ouimets are all too familiar with Regmi’s struggle: Two of their children, Carswell and Matthew, are battling the same serious disease, called primary hyperoxaluria type I, which often causes recurrent kidney stones and ultimately organ failure.
“I never thought that would be happening in our life,” Basnet, 30, said of her new home with the Ouimets.
But Kristi Ouimet is not one to be underestimated. When she found out about the couple’s situation, she got to work advocating for them to get the proper documentation to come to the United States, agreeing to provide shelter and support as Regmi sought treatment.
“I have a service heart. I want to help,” said Ouimet, who like her husband is a retired police officer. “If you don’t have it, it’s hard for someone to explain it.”
Regmi, who has total kidney failure, now receives injections of an investigational medicine for compassionate use that he hopes will keep him from having to have a liver transplant. The Ouimets’ daughter, Carswell, is taking the same medicine, called Rivfloza, which the FDA recently approved.
But two-and-a-half years after coming to the U.S., the Nepali couple are now facing more roadblocks that could hinder Regmi’s ability to get a kidney transplant. They both came here on the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ Humanitarian Parole program, and now they need an extension to stay.
“We are confident that getting Govinda to America saved his life, but our journey has stalled out with complications in extending their ability to stay with current documentation,” Kristi Ouimet said.
For the past 19 months, Kristi Ouimet has worked to secure the proper papers to continue Regmi’s treatments, hoping he soon can get on a list for a donor kidney. Because of his B blood type, it could take years, she said. During this time, her own children — Carswell, now 21, and Matthew, 12 — underwent kidney transplants within a day of each other, part of a years-long medical journey chronicled by this newspaper.
Lacking the liver enzyme needed to properly dispose of waste, Matthew had become ill when just five months old and had to undergo dialysis and a double liver/kidney transplant at two-and-a-half years old. But over the years, his kidney began failing, and he and his sister wound up needing transplants in April of 2022. At the same time, the Antioch mother was helping the Nepali couple, whom she considers family, try to renew their immigration documents that spring and again in August of 2022. In September of that year, they learned that the application had been accepted and the check for $1,200 had been cashed.
At their side has been the office of U.S. Rep Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, which has helped navigate the complicated application processes to secure help for Regmi. The congressman previously helped a Concord woman with a rare medical condition, Maria Isabel Bueso, who was here on a medical deferred action program. Facing deportation to Guatemala, DeSaulnier authored a bill in 2022 that gave Bueso permanent residency so she could continue treatment for her life-threatening disease.
But 19 months after applying for humanitarian parole, Regmi still hasn’t heard where he stands. And now because of redistricting, their new representative is U.S. John Garamendi, D-Fairfield. His office hasn’t received any word, either — only that the application is “pending.”
A USCIS spokesman said the U.S. is currently receiving an “extremely high number” of requests for humanitarian parole, and petitioners should expect delays.
Medi-Cal will cover Regmi’s future kidney transplant costs at UCSF, and his wife now has the proper certificates and licenses to be able to work as a registered nurse in the U.S. Basnet has had several job offers from companies that would sponsor her for a green card, Ouimet said, but with her status pending, she can’t move forward.
For now, Basnet, who was an intensive care unit nurse in Nepal, has learned how to give her husband dialysis at home, a process that takes hours of preparation, not to mention observation and care. Receiving dialysis at home helps keep her now-frail husband from feeling anxious, she said.
“It’s pain, anxiety, not only physical pain, but also mental pain,” she said, noting she tries to keep him distracted during tough times of dialysis.
In the meantime, Kristi Ouimet is setting up a nonprofit in hopes of helping others navigate the difficult journey of finding proper medical care. She paid for and accompanied Basnet on a recent whirlwind trip to the Nepal embassy in Washington D.C., the only place the Nepali native could get her passport renewed.
“I can’t just sit there and not do something,” she said. “I have insight that you can only get from personal experience, and my unique insight to what we’ve experienced and the hardships we faced.”
While in limbo, Regmi dreams of taking classes so he can work in the IT field when his health is better. Basnet hopes some day to work as a hemodialysis nurse to help alleviate some of the suffering her husband, now barely 105 pounds, has experienced.
Kelly Ouimet is teaching the Nepali couple how to drive. He takes them to their medical appointments, giving Kristi time to focus on navigating medical issues, answer inquiries about organ transplants and primary hyperoxaluria, promote blood drives and help provide emotional support to Regmi and Basnet in an often-discouraging world.
“She is like a mother to me and my husband,” Basnet said.
For her part, Kristi Ouimet says it’s a “no-brainer” to help someone in need — despite all she has on her plate.
“They have the right, and they matter,” she said. “Everybody deserves a chance.”