text: Mike Megna can't afford to wait for science. 
   
   His kidneys are functioning at 45 percent, the bank has foreclosed on his West Milford home, and his urine is routinely pink. 
   
   "I'm leading my life like I'm rotting from the inside," he said. 
   
   He traces all this back to the three weeks he said he spent at Ground Zero, trying to rescue people he hoped were still alive in the smoldering debris of the World Trade Center. 
   
   There is a fund to help 9/11 workers who developed health problems as a result of their work at the site, but Megna's kidney ailment isn't on its list of covered illnesses. 
   
   In fact, his illness is so rare researchers at the Mayo Clinic just named it three months ago. 
   
   In his frustration, Megna has taken out two billboards – one on Route 3 across from MetLife Stadium, the other on an approach to the Holland Tunnel – to plead his case. 
   
   "Add Kidney Disease for 9/11 Rescue Workers," they state, accompanied by a photo of the burning towers, along with one of Megna and his three kids. 
   
   They urge motorists to call the top administrator of the World Trade Center Health Program, John Howard, and list his phone number. 
   
   One of the revolving digital messages even asks Donald Trump for help. ("I figured he was raising money for veterans, so he could buy my house. I'd pay him back, totally," Megna said. "Is that such a crazy idea?") 
   
   The billboards mention his website, www.DoRightByMike.com, which tells his story. 
   
   Howard, the director of the Fund, had no comment, said a spokeswoman for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the federal agency that determines which diseases qualify for compensation. 
   
   Megna, 44, has been told he needs to wait until medical researchers can prove a link between 9/11 exposure and his illness. His blunt response: "When they asked us to come down to help that day, I didn't wait." 
   
   Megna was a Marine vet working as a Pompton Lakes police officer on the day of the terrorist attacks. He said he and his brothers, who worked for sheriff's departments in two counties, headed into the city because they hadn't heard from their father, a Port Authority police officer. 
   
   After locating their father safe and sound, Megna said he and his brothers stayed to help with rescue efforts, often working as part of the "bucket brigade" clearing debris. 
   
   Megna said he returned to the site nearly every day after work for as long as hope remained there might be survivors – about three weeks. 
   
   "That should be the end of my story, but in 2007, I started urinating blood," he said during an interview in the ranch house he and his three children will have to vacate because of the foreclosure. (He is divorced.) 
   
   After countless rounds of testing, his bewildered doctors could determine only that his bone marrow was producing some substance that was slowly attacking his kidneys. 
   
   As his condition worsened, he became chronically anemic from the blood loss. Eventually he could no longer work and went on disability. 
   
   (He'd resigned as a police officer after being indicted for failing to report a co-worker had leaked information to other members of the force about an undercover drug investigation. He was eventually sentenced in 2008 to probation for one count of hindering prosecution.) 
   
   With money tight, he said he stopped paying his mortgage, assuring his bank he'd catch up on payments once he got money from the September 11th fund. 
   
   When his application for a compensation award was rejected, the bank began foreclosure proceedings. 
   
   Meanwhile, Megna had a follow-up biopsy earlier this year, and this time, to the surprise of his Veterans Administration doctor, the lab report came back with a diagnosis: "Monotype atypical anti-GBM nephritis." 
   
   The disease had been documented by the Mayo Clinic, which had found it in just 20 people so far. 
   
   Megna headed to Minnesota recently to meet doctors, a trip funded by New York State's Workman's Compensation, which has a special fund set up for Ground Zero volunteers. 
   
   Stephen Erickson, his Mayo Clinic nephrologist, explained his ailment is a rare variation of an already rare kidney disease. 
   
   The antibodies of the human immune system are produced in the bone marrow. Any defective antibodies are usually filtered out by the kidneys. In Megna's case, however, his defective antibodies actually attack the kidney filters, Erickson said. 
   
   Since chemotherapy might do more harm than good, Erickson recommended more waiting – in this case, waiting until a better treatment comes along. 
   
   "He has time," Erickson said of his patient. "It's not his personality to let trouble come to him. But he's better off waiting." 
   
   While Megna was relieved to learn his illness wasn't moving quickly, having a disease that now has a name doesn't get him any closer to getting compensation. 
   
   "You can't honestly say that 9/11 caused this, but something caused it," Erickson said. "There's really no letter I could write to the commission that would be of any help to them. There's really no way to do a study that can prove this – the numbers are too small." 
   
   The problem is that the Fund awards compensation only if a person's illness has been scientifically associated with exposure to the terrorist attack sites. 
   
   The Zadroga Act, which sets aside taxpayer funds to deal with the long-term health damage of 9/11, lays out the steps that must be taken to qualify for money: 
   
   Researchers must first gather information about how many 9/11 responders have developed a condition, then compare it with the percentage of the general population that would come down with the same disease. 
   
   Only if the 9/11 group's rate is higher than that of the general population can an illness be placed on the list of ailments that entitles the victim to a payout. 
   
   "We have to follow the process that was put in place by Congress," said NIOSH spokeswoman Christina Spring. The World Trade Center Health Program funds some of the research projects aimed at establishing a connection between 9/11 exposure and illnesses. 
   
   One of those grants is to researchers at Mt. Sinai Hospital to look into kidney ailments. An earlier study had pointed to a link, but not a strong enough one to get kidney problems on the list. That could change with new information, Spring said. 
   
   "Some health conditions will take decades to show up," she said. 
   
   Megna's mood changes moment to moment these days: He can be agitated, perched excitedly on the edge of his couch, raging against all the closed doors he has encountered. 
   
   The very next minute, he'll slump back and say with a resigned wave of his hand, "I hate them all." 
   
   "He's depressed. Look at him!," said his brother Christopher, a retired sheriff's officer who has his own crop of 9/11-related medical problems. Mike has gained weight, he said, and the Mountain Man beard his brother now sports isn't a fashion choice, but rather a sign he has simply given up. 
   
   "I'm not asking for a pity party," Megna said. "How much sicker to I have to get?" 
   
   Kathleen O'Brien may be reached at kobrien@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @OBrienLedger. Find NJ.com on Facebook. ||||| Mike Megna rushed to Ground Zero on Sept. 11, 2001, to help look for survivors in the rubble of the fallen towers. Along with his two brothers, Megna, then a Pompton Lakes police officer, searched the debris pile and ruined buildings nearby for three weeks. 
   
   jennifer brown/special to the record Mike Megna, a father of three, wants compensation for his rare kidney disease before he loses his home. 
   
   Now sick and disabled from a rare kidney disease that he believes was caused by dust from the destroyed World Trade Center, he wants the Victim Compensation Fund created after the attacks to pay him for his losses, which may soon include the house in West Milford where he and his three children live. 
   
   He's so desperate, he put his story up on billboards outside MetLife Stadium, the Holland Tunnel and on the sides of New York City buses. He paid for only one, but the advertising company helped him with the second billboard and the buses, he said, because they felt sorry for him. 
   
   "Add Kidney Disease for 9/11 Rescue Workers!" the signs read, beside a photo of the bearded ex-Marine, identified as "Mike Megna, Sick 9/11 Responder." The backdrop includes a photo of the burning towers and a portrait of his family, and lists his website — DoRightByMike.com. 
   
   "I want my disease to be certified," he said, so that the fund will provide compensation. "They owe me a lot of money." 
   
   On a hot Monday afternoon, Megna fielded phone calls from reporters interested in his story while the truck from his former scrap-metal business – "Scrapman Mike" – stood in the driveway. He has sold the business because he's too tired for that work, he said. 
   
   The list of health conditions eligible for coverage under the James Zadroga Health and Compensation Act of 2010 does not currently include kidney disease caused by the World Trade Center dust. 
   
   "A health condition can be added to the list, only after published, peer-reviewed epidemiologic evidence in 9/11-exposed populations provides substantial support for a causal relationship between the 9/11 exposures and the health condition," said Christina Spring, a spokeswoman for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which administers the program. Currently, the evidence is insufficient, she said. 
   
   A medical researcher at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan, Mary Ann McLaughlin, petitioned the program two years ago to add kidney disease to the list, based on preliminary research, Spring said. But the program has not done so, pending the completion of that study — expected this year — and its publication. 
   
   Although Megna is not included in McLaughlin's study, she met with him and examined his medical records. 
   
   "It is my opinion that exposure from toxins from 9/11/01 may more likely than not be related to the development of Mr. Megna's biopsy-proven renal disease," she wrote in March 2015. 
   
   "As soon as the McLaughlin study is published, the issue of adding kidney disease will be reevaluated for addition to the list," Spring said. 
   
   Megna, however, is impatient. He's 44 and doesn't have time to wait. "I'm anemic. I can't get up in the morning. I can't afford my mortgage. I've been waiting eight years," he said. 
   
   Megna has been monitored by the World Trade Center Responder Health Program at Rutgers/Robert Wood Johnson Medical School since 2003. For the first few years, his ailments were those common to many 9/11 responders and included a chronic runny or stuffy nose, digestive problems and anxiety. 
   
   But "I started urinating blood in 2007," he said. He was in denial for months, but after rounds and rounds of tests, he finally received a definitive diagnosis at the Mayo Clinic. 
   
   He has a "super-rare kidney disease," he said the team there told him, after a three-week work-up in June that included bone marrow and kidney biopsies and blood tests. 
   
   Only 20 people in the world have been diagnosed with atypical anti-glomerular basement membrane nephritis, his Mayo doctors told him. For those afflicted, the antibodies produced by bone marrow are not filtered by the kidneys; instead they destroy the filters in the kidneys, leading to blood in the urine. 
   
   Megna said he was reassured by the doctors that the disease was slow-moving and wouldn't kill him. But they said in eight or nine years he would likely need dialysis to replace the function of his damaged kidneys. By that time, he hopes further research will produce a treatment. 
   
   He has been disabled since 2011 and receives medical treatment through the Department of Veterans Affairs. 
   
   His quest now is for lost income so he can save his house, on which he owes upward of $120,000, he said. 
   
   Megna received some money from the Victim Compensation Fund, a separate program run by the Department of Justice that aids people who were present at one of the crash sites and have suffered from a physical injury or from debris removal. 
   
   He used part of that money to pay for the billboard, which ran for a month until mid-July, and website development. 
   
   But the payout was based on his initial diagnosis of less severe respiratory and digestive ailments, and not on the kidney disease. 
   
   If kidney disease becomes a recognized illness for 9/11 compensation, he will be permitted to reapply, according to a spokeswoman for the fund. 
   
   "If you have already submitted a claim and a decision has been rendered on your claim, and you subsequently develop a new condition, your eligible condition increases in severity, or you incur a loss not accounted for in your original award, you may amend your claim,'' the spokeswoman said. "The [fund] will review the new information and determine if it provides the basis for a revised decision.'' The deadline to submit an amendment is Dec. 18, 2020. 
   
   At the time of the World Trade Center attack, Megna was a Pompton Lakes police officer. He later resigned after being indicted and pleading guilty to hindering the prosecution of an undercover drug investigation. He was sentenced in 2008 to six months of Pretrial Intervention, a form of probation. 
   
   The program through which Megna and thousands of other responders are monitored for the lingering effects of the dust cloud on 9/11 is named after James Zadroga, a North Arlington resident and New York City police detective who worked on the rescue and recovery efforts at Ground Zero for about three weeks after 9/11. 
   
   Soon after, his family said, he began experiencing flu-like symptoms and difficulty breathing — common symptoms in first responders that doctors called the "World Trade Center cough." Zadroga was recognized as the first police officer to die as a direct result of inhaling the toxic dust. He died at age 34 in 2006. 
   
   Staff Writer Mary Jo Layton contributed to this article.Email: washburn@northjersey.com
target: – A 9/11 first responder with kidney disease close to losing his New Jersey home is taking his plight public in a big way: through his website and a series of tri-state area billboards, the Record reports. "Add Kidney Disease for 9/11 Rescue Workers!" the signs outside MetLife Stadium and the Holland Tunnel and on NYC buses read, referring to the illness 44-year-old Mike Megna says he came down with due to dust at the decimated World Trade Center, where he toiled for three weeks after the attacks. Megna started seeing smaller symptoms, like a constantly runny nose and digestive issues, early on, but in 2006 blood began showing in his urine, and a diagnosis delivered heart-sinking news: He had a "super-rare" form of kidney disease that only 20 people in the world have. And while Megna, who's been disabled since 2011, has applied for compensation cash from the James Zadroga Health and Compensation Act of 2010, there's a complication: Kidney disease isn't one of the recognized illnesses covered by the fund. That means the divorced dad of three isn't eligible for any money—even though Mary Ann McLaughlin, a Mount Sinai Medical Center researcher who petitioned the fund two years ago to add the disease based on initial research, has examined Megna's records and believes the WTC toxins "may more likely than not" be tied to his sickness. However, a rep for the CDC's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which runs the program, says a disease can be added to the list—and compensation issued—only after "published, peer-reviewed epidemiologic evidence" shows "substantial support" for a direct link between the WTC fallout and the disease. Megna will have to hold tight, per the rep, who says once McLaughlin publishes her study, kidney disease eligibility will be considered. But that's time Megna—$120,000 behind on his mortgage and anticipating dialysis down the road (his kidneys are now functioning at 45%, per the Star-Ledger)—says he doesn't have. "When they asked us to come down to help that day, I didn't wait," he tells the paper.