That night, he called and came by for coffee.
Joe Hawk liked to tell people he never had a chance. He was 49. Jean was 32.
They were married for 28 years. He adopted her three kids. They had a marvelous life together, she said.
In 2004, at age 58, Jean went into kidney failure and endured six months on dialysis. Tammy, her middle child, insisted on donating a kidney.
"If I die on the operating table," her daughter told her the morning of the transplant, "at least I know I died so you could live."
The transplant went perfectly. Jean was soon back to work.
But Tammy died a year later from liver cancer, making that kidney even more precious to Jean.
And Joe died months after that.
Medicare paid for the transplant, $75,000, and for three years covered 80 percent of Jean's anti-rejection drugs, $2,000 a month.
Her employer, MI Windows & Doors in Gratz, Pa., covered the other 20 percent.
In July 2007, three years after the transplant, Medicare, by law, stopped paying for Jean's drugs.
Her employer assumed the cost.
Last January, however, Jean abruptly retired.
And lost her insurance.
The home-building business had slumped, and Jean knew people were going to be laid off. She felt she had no choice but to retire. And sure enough, she said, weeks later, nine people lost their jobs.
Jean got a $1,200 Social Security benefit from her late husband, and intended to live on that.
Even though she had a transplant, and a well-functioning kidney, she still had end-stage renal disease, and thought that would make her eligible for Social Security disability. And with disability, she'd be entitled to receive Medicare coverage again.
But then she was told it would take four months for Social Security to decide whether she was disabled, and there was no guarantee, especially since she was in good health.
And if she applied for disability, she said, she was told she'd have to give up her widow's pension.
"One or the other," she said.
