My name is Dummu Ramesh Kumar. Most nights nowadays, I can't sleep. I stare at the dark ceiling of my small home, my hand resting on my swollen stomach. I can feel the liquid inside shifting with every breath, a cruel reminder of how badly my liver has failed me. Sometimes I wonder if I will even open my eyes to see another morning. My thoughts always drift to my little son sleeping in the next room, unaware that his father’s life has been balancing on the edge of a knife since he was just fourteen.

It had terrified me. Can you imagine being 14 years old and vomiting blood? Doctors told my family that my liver was damaged. From that moment, my life became a series of hospital visits, tablets, injections and my parents' desperate prayers. My father is a fisherman, used to hard work, but nothing could have prepared him for the endless struggle he has faced to keep me alive. He carried me from hospital to hospital, hoping each time it would be the last.

I somehow managed to stay alive long enough to finish my BTech. I found a job as a computer operator, I got married. I had a son. For the past few years, I thought maybe I could live a normal life with this disease. I started thinking that maybe I had even left this disease behind. I didn't know it had only been waiting to return.

My stomach swelled, my legs began to hurt, and I could barely eat. When we finally went to a private hospital, the doctor’s face told me everything before his words did. My liver was completely damaged. He said if I did not get a transplant soon, I would not survive. Those words crushed me. For days I hardly moved, hardly ate, lost in the thought that I might leave my family behind forever. I have lived with this shadow over me my entire life, but hearing that my only option was a transplant we cannot afford nearly broke my spirit.

But I can see her wiping her eyes in the kitchen when she thinks I am not looking. She wonders why we are being punished like this. Our son is just four years old, too young to understand why his "Naanna" can’t lift him up or run around with him. Each day I see his face, I feel a fresh ache. There were moments when I almost gave up completely, lying on my cot thinking that at least if I was gone, my family might not have this burden. But then I remember that every rupee we are spending now — the ₹1.2 lakh we have already poured into my treatment — could have gone towards my son's future. That thought destroys me more than the pain in my body.

I want to see my son go to school, to grow up with his father by his side. I want to repay the kindness of strangers who might decide to give me that chance. Please help me afford this transplant that stands between my family and a lifetime of grief.

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