Louie Montoya made a health choice tied to his 1949 Cadillac.
Montoya needs a kidney. The car’s a nicety, not a need, so he’s trading the Cadillac for a kidney.
Montoya sat comfortably July 14 under the arboretum surrounding the fiesta activities on the plaza in Española. His Cadillac sat beside a table where he was selling raffle tickets so he could make enough money to help pay for post-transplant drugs.
Medicare will pay for most of his procedure costs. The anti-rejection drugs will cost Montoya about $300 a month for the rest of his life, he said.
Montoya’s prescription drug need falls in what health insurance providers and government officials call the donut hole. They’re specialized drugs and Medicare doesn’t pay all of any prescription and it pays less when the drug is experimental, new or still has a patent on it.
A woman buying a raffle ticket to win the classic car asked how he could part with the black beauty, with sleek lines, indicative of the time the car was a champion of the road.
“I’d rather have 10 more years of life instead of the car,” he said.
Both of Montoya’s kidneys are functioning just above the level where doctors would put him on dialysis.
The numeric system describing kidney function would put a healthy person’s kidneys between 30 and 32.
A kidney functioning below 14 would require dialysis help.
Montoya’s kidneys are functioning at 16 to 24, depending on the day he tests.
His kidney failure is the result of diabetes, he said.
Montoya looks perfectly healthy for a 66-year-old man. He’s got a quick smile that envelopes his whole face.
He’s not overweight and has no ambulatory issues.
Dessert was his downfall.
“I like the sweets and my sugar was too high for too long,” he said.
To keep his kidneys operating at their optimum, Montoya has adopted a healthy diet, which includes milk thistle, cinnamon and garlic tablets and lots of vitamins.
“I eat the sugarless stuff now,” he said. “Sometimes I’ll splurge and have some fruit.”
Super son
Presbyterian EMT Larry Roybal bought a raffle ticket and when he was asked his name he told a story of how his mother had gotten toward the top of a liver transplant list but never found a match.
“Whenever I see someone doing something like this (raising money for a transplant) heck yeah, I always give money,” Roybal said.
He wondered rhetorically why people don’t donate organs. The need far outstrips the available donors and organs.
“What are people going to do with them (their organs) when they’re gone?” Roybal said.
Most people have the struggle of getting on a transplant list, then working their way to the top.
Once there, a transplant candidate must then wait for a match. Roybal said it was emotional getting a call and then the organ not matching.
Montoya won’t have to wrestle the donor list and matching requirements. His 39-year-old son Louis Montoya is his father’s donor.
Louis Montoya was working construction in Las Vegas, Nev. up until a few months ago, when he came home to Albuquerque to be with his father.
Now his job is to lose about 30 pounds so he can take the final tests that will determine if he is a solid match to his father.
Initial blood tests show they’re a match but the tests go deeper.
“Doctors say immediate family are almost always matches,” he said.
No smoking, drinking or drugs are a must for both donor and recipient, the younger Montoya said.
He’s hitting the gym and following a diet. He predicted a 15-pound weight loss by the time the winning ticket is drawn at the lowrider car show in Española Aug. 10.
The Cadillac
Louie Montoya’s Cadillac has been repaired and maintained by him for over 40 years. Louis Montoya said only 5,200 were made that year, so rare describes the car.
Louie Montoya has put brakes on the car and painted it in the 1970s.
The upholstery is new and well-maintained.
The engine has had work done on it and he said it runs great.
The goal is to sell 4,000 tickets at $10, Louie Montoya said. That will pay for his medication and incidentals or deductibles with the surgery.
“I’ve sold 850, so far,” he said Sunday.
Montoya is from Albuquerque but is going to events throughout Northern New Mexico because that’s where his roots are, he said.
“I worked for Lowrider magazine and worked the Northern New Mexico circuit for a long time,” he said. “A lot of people here know me from the 1980s and ’90s.”
He was headed to the Taos fiesta next and any other small fiesta or gathering where he could park the Cadillac and draw a crowd.
The former wall-paper hanger, T-shirt print-maker and second-hand store owner said he hoped to get close to his ticket sales goal by the time Española’s mayor pulls the winning ticket Aug. 10.
“Either way, the car will go,” he said. “I’ll do the best I can with what we make on it.”