Andrea Reavill, 53, has relied on the electricity-sapping device, which keeps her alive by drawing waste products from her body, since her transplant failed three years ago. But the mom of four, who’s been off sick off work since November last year, says she now fears being “cut off” by electricity firms and can’t survive on her limited welfare payments.

She said: “It’s quite frightening, and it’s stressful as I don’t know if I can’t pay my bill, will these companies cut me off? I don’t know where it stands. It is a matter of life or death, really, because if I don’t use the machine, that’s what will happen—I will die. It sounds really harsh but that is the bottom line.”

Reavill, who was diagnosed with kidney disease almost 30 years ago, has already seen her monthly gas and electricity bills rise from £80 to £120. And she now wants the U.K. government to bring in targeted support for people in her situation, as the price of an average annual electricity bill is set to top £5,000 next year.

She said: “I don’t know where that extra money is coming from. I’ve got no savings account to withdraw from. It’s a very bleak outlook because, without any help from the government, I have no idea how I’m going to pay these bills.”

Reavill, from the town of Grimsby, first found out she had hereditary kidney disease when she was in her twenties while undergoing a maternity scan.

She explained: “It’s polycystic kidney disease, and I was diagnosed at 24 during a routine baby scan with my eldest child. I went onto dialysis back in 2004 for the first time and received a transplant in 2007, which lasted until about three years ago. But the transplant failed and I’m back on dialysis now.”

Sadly, two of her children and both of her two sisters have the same life-long condition, which eventually stops a person’s kidneys from functioning altogether. And Reavill was forced to take time off work last year, as her condition worsened, and she struggled to find a new kidney donor. She now has to remain attached to her life-saving dialysis machine for 12 hours each day, which keeps her alive but also drains her wallet.

She said: “I do peritoneal dialysis, and we don’t get any reimbursement for it. At the moment, the machines use roughly £20 per month. I supposed it doesn’t seem a lot, but when you’re not getting paid and benefits (welfare payments in the U.K.) are limited, it’s a lot of money. Even for people living on low incomes, if you tie that over the year, it’s £2,400 at least before the price hike.”

Reavill says she’s struggling to even afford her £610 rent payments at the moment, as while she’s off work, she only gets benefit payments of £500 a month. And she has now called on the government to help cover the rising costs for sufferers like her who have no choice but to keep their dialysis machines running every day.

She said: “Without the government’s intervention, there will be people like me who won’t put the heating on in the winter. The problem is that we have to do our dialysis because that’s our lifeline. So there is no option but for that machine to be on. We can’t miss nights.

“The government needs to be awarding money to individual NHS (National Health Service) authorities, to let them reimburse us. Where that money comes from, I don’t know. But the government is very clever at finding lots of money for other things, and I think the NHS has been ignored for a long time.

She added: “I daren’t even contemplate what the bills might rise to. But something needs to be done, and it needs to happen really quickly.”

Produced in association with SWNS.

This story was provided to Newsweek by Zenger News.