By Natalie Skowlund for Denverite
Three times a week, Armando Guardiola wakes in the bleary morning hours and pulls on his clothes. The retired railroad worker traipses around his yellow ranch-style home in Commerce City making last-minute preparations before a public shuttle arrives.
He’s heading to an early shift, and he can’t be late — his life depends on it.
By 7:30 a.m., Guardiola is at a kidney dialysis clinic in Westminster. The 71-year-old spends hours at a time here, in a room where close to 20 strangers sit in sterile recliners, hooked up to softly-whirring machines that filter their blood through tubes. Some patients doze off, but Guardiola prefers to flick on the television at his station and watch the news.
