Lance Hahn is the singer/guitarist/songwriter of the San Francisco punk band J Church. They now live in Austin, and about a year ago, Lance ran into some terrible health problems that put him on the kidney transplant waiting list and dialysis.

This benefit was the idea of my friend Chad Riley (from the Dallas band Non Radio Friendly). All of the bands donated J Church covers, and all proceeds are going to help Lance with his enormous medical bills.

J Church has never been on MTV or the cover of Rolling Stone, but they are true punk pioneers. Not only is Lance a songwriting genius, he's also a very seasoned writer who's published numerous articles in various zines over the years. He also publishes a newsletter, titled "It's A Living… But It's Not A Life". Below is part of the latest one which includes some more health info.

But most of all, Lance is one of the nicest musicians I've ever met. He is so smart and down-to-earth, it makes those children who ARE on MTV and Rolling Stone look like the idiots they are.

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It's A Living… But It's Not A Life #15.13

J Church & Honey Bear – Still raining – Knut!!!

HEALTH

I guess I haven't gone into much detail about my health situation in the last few newsletters. Here's a brief version of what's been going on:

First of all, I am no longer on hemo-dialysis. I've made the switch to peritoneal and it's made my life a lot better. I no longer have to get up in the morning and go to the clinic. I just do my bags from home. Instead of four hours a session three times a week, I do this version four times a day, but it's only 15 minutes total and I can do it while I'm watching TV or sitting at the computer. In the long term, if I never get the transplant I need I can have a much longer life expectancy on peritoneal as it's much easier on my system. I'm not draining and cleaning all of my blood three times a week AND because I do it so often, it's a better clean anyway. Most importantly, no more needles. The needles were starting to really freak me out and getting stuck several times a week was super painful. None of that anymore. It's been really great overall.

I do, believe it or not, sort of miss the old dialysis. It was a little nice lying somewhere for four hours with other people taking care of me, not having to really think about anything. I also liked a lot of the staff at the dialysis place I was going to. I sort of miss them.

The new dialysis makes travel more possible as well though I don't see that happening anytime soon. Even if I was in top health, I wouldn't want to hit the road before we recorded a new album.

One of the biggest benefits I've been noticing has been with my shrink. Seems like changing my dialysis has helped break me out of some of the depression and anxiety I float back and forth between. There are still LOADS of problems and post-traumatic stress isn't something that's got a quick cure. We've been working for a year now and it feels like there's a long way to go. I won't go into the depressing details, but my shrink helps a lot and home dialysis seems to make me feel more positive (even if the new schedule sometimes has me up until 5:00 AM watching X-Files re-runs).

Finances are really screwy at the moment. I lost my main insurance through Humana, but found out that Medicare is actually better in some areas. Two of my major surgery bills are in collections at the moment and there's nothing I can do about it, so I'm not thinking about it, which might be stupid. But I can't deal with that stress right now. I don't have any money, so I don't know what I could do about it anyway. I needed the surgery.

The one major benefit of Medicare over Humana is I can work on getting a kidney transplant here in Austin. Humana wouldn't cover me to have it done here, and I was going to have to start commuting to San Antonio (as one friend called it, "a hive of scum and villainy"). Now that I've lost my insurance, I can do all the testing here in Austin. No traveling.

I'm waiting to hear back about my first test for the transplant. Then I've got to find a kidney. I'm also getting my sleep apnea machine in the next few days. I feel more and more like a PKD short story every day. It's weird. It's cyber. I DO feel paranoid. 700 pages of declassified CIA docs aren't helping. Don't think for a minute I didn't read through them the moment they went on-line.