For This Miss. Couple, the Water Crisis Is a Health Nightmare: 'No One Should Have to Live Like This' - PEOPLE

For Tamiko and Otis Smith, the ongoing drinking water crisis in their hometown of Jackson, Mississippi, has become a life-or-death struggle.

After losing one of his kidneys due to cancer several years ago, Otis, 57, has been forced to depend on at-home hemodialysis four days a week to stay alive. For years, water from the couple's tap was piped into Otis' hemodialysis machine that filters and warms the water, then mixes it into a dialysate that filters the longtime EMT driver's blood.

"It's his lifeline," says Tamiko, 54. "If he doesn't have those treatments, he's going to die."

But the city's ongoing issues with contaminated water — that has been shown to contain E. coli bacteria and lead — has turned the process into a nightmare for the couple. And Tamiko, who oversees her husband's at-home treatments, realized she could no longer trust using potentially contaminated water from their tap for her husband's hemodialysis.

"We can't use that water," says Tamiko, describing how the latest crisis — which began on Aug. 29 when the city's long-deteriorating water system crashed due to river flooding — has made their situation even worse. "We just can't rely on it."

Instead, the couple is now forced to rely on bags filled with sterile water (mixed with the dialysate) that they receive in the mail and are stockpiled in a bedroom in their house. "Those bags," she adds, "are now his lifeline because we don't have clean water."

The City of Jackson, Miss. Getty

But Tamiko's worries don't end there. Because her husband has a port installed in his chest that connects with his hemodialysis machine, she lives in fear that he could contract a blood infection every time he showers in potentially bacteria-laden water.

"He has to be so careful with bathing," she says, explaining that Otis has ended up in the hospital on two occasions because of blood infections. "Even if we boil the water I don't trust it because it can still have bacteria in it that could cause an infection and possibly kill him. It's a constant fear and not something anyone should have to be concerned about in this day and age."

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The stress, admits Tamiko, can sometimes be overwhelming. "I don't let him know how nervous I am," she says, "and that helps keep him from being nervous."

Exactly what the future holds for the worried, frustrated couple — along with the other 180,000 residents of Jackson — isn't clear, but the Smiths don't see the situation improving anytime soon.

"I don't see an end in sight, and that's just awful," explains Tamiko. "You have to be strong to live in Jackson. This place isn't for the faint of heart. . . But no one should have to live like this."

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For This Miss. Couple, the Water Crisis Is a Health Nightmare: 'No One Should Have to Live Like This' - PEOPLE
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