PD Patients: Avoid Air Canada

I started peritoneal dialysis on Feb. 2 of this year. This entails 10 1/2 hours a night of being hooked up to a very sensitive machine. I traveled to Canada in August--my first time leaving home since beginning dialysis. I was so looking forward to this trip and had worked hard to make sure that everything was delivered to a cabin so that I could do the dialysis there. I needed to take my dialysis machine on board. I was told by the nursing staff at the dialysis clinic I attend that all I needed to do was show the airline personnel a letter from my doctor re the machine and it could be taken on board, even though it is over the 22-pound limit.

I got to LAX and was met by very uncooperative Air Canada personnel. They didn't care about my letter. They didn't care about he sensitivity of the machine and how, if it were broken in cargo, I would end up in the hospital. They wouldn't budge. They wouldn't even give me an empty seat for the machine. They insisted I check it. It was a terrible experience. They had me in tears.

On the return flight, on United, it was a completely different story. On the two United legs--Halifax to Dulles and Dulles to LA--the gate personnel and the flight attendants were extremely accommodating, no questions asked. They made room in the first-class closet and moved crew carry-ons to accommodate my machine, saying that the dialysis machine was much more important than any of these things.

So, the bottom line: PD patients with cyclers should avoid Air Canada at all costs. United is fantastic!