Travelling on dialysis

I have always loved to travel. When I was on Peritoneal Dialysis, I could travel quite comfortably. Baxter has a good network in India and they would deliver the PD fluid wherever I wanted. I made a couple of really enjoyable trips (Kodaikanal, Mahabaleshwar) while on PD.

On Hemo, things are very different. You HAVE to have a dialysis center where you go because portable machines like the NxStage System One are not available in India.

Most places where I would like to go to (hill stations like Darjeeling, Manali etc.) do not have dialysis centers and I would need to travel around 3 hours to get to a facility.

It recently struck me that Goa, a great place to holiday would definitely have dialysis centers. So, I decided to check and found that they do have dialysis centers!

So, I have started to plan a short trip there.

There is one thing that I'm a little worried about. I am now used to nocturnal dialysis 6 nights a week. Centers will not do this (they have probably not even heard of something like this!). So, I will have to make do with 4 hour treatments, probably on alternate days. And this means fluid restrictions. Imagine going on a holiday and being worried to death about fluids.

I don't know how it will turn out. I cannot afford to drink too much fluid because there will be only a 4 hour treatment to pull it off.

I'm worried about this to the point of thinking of canceling the whole trip.

I wish they could do daily nocturnal even if in center. I should probably talk to the nephrologist there to try and arrange this.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I've had to use incenter dialysis after being on short daily at home. For me the excitement of travel overwhelms any feeling of ill health. Yes of course you will have try to keep you fluid gains down but if you are thinking of a one week trip than it should be alright.

You will be very well dialyzed to start. If you end the trip with 4 kg of extra weight you will be able to gently remove the excess fluid over the following treatments.

I think travel is wonderful even if it means having to go incenter. I hope you give it a try- if it is too bad you could always go home early. Cheers,
billp