Dialysis in Santiago, Chile (cross posted to milepoint, ihatedialsyis and flyertalk)
Over Thanksgiving, Susan and I took a quick trip to Phoenix and Las Vegas. Our excuse for visiting Phoenix is we bought two nights of hotel for the Palomar Phoenix, one of the trendy Kimpton hotels, at a silent auction. Since we were in the South West, we decided to add in a few nights in Las Vegas. We should have known better, but we arrived in Phoenix on Thanksgiving day and were surprised to find everything closed in the Downtown. Luckily, there was one speakeasy open nearby that opened at 9 PM, so we were able to have a drink and eat some pizza. We made plans to visit a craft market located in the building complex of the hotel on Black Friday. However, when we woke up my RSS feeds pointed out that Copa Airlines had a strong sale going on, resulting in $330 airfare to Santiago Chile... Some how it seems like fairly often when we are on vacation great airfare sales hit! I'd say a good price to Chile would be in the $600-$700 range, the $330 price is the lowest I've ever seen for that destination. Luckily, we were still in the room and Susan and I agreed on heading to Santiago for the Martin Luther King holiday week. I made a few booking attempts for a normal Saturday to Sunday trip, but it kept erring out after the purchase, so I moved to MLK Monday to Tuesday the following week and was able to complete the trip purchase! The rest of the trip in Phoenix and Las Vegas was good. Dialysis in Phoenix worked out good, as usual. I'm very appreciative of Google Maps and how it integrates with public transportation, allowing me to confidently take the bus to the Center. After Dialysis, Susan met me at a Pizza restaurant with a outdoor seating and we enjoyed beers, a great pear & blue cheese salad, and pizzas. Las Vegas was good, we stayed downtown at the Golden Nugget and I enjoyed Cirque du Soleil's risque Zumanity show a bit more than Susan. Heading home, we enjoyed 8 am cocktails and snacks at the American Express Centurion lounge in the LAS airport.
Back home in DC it was time to figure out dialysis in Santiago. This was one of the few times where I need to plan my dialysis quickly, usually I have well over four months to plan out my treatments. I searched around and found one website with centers throughout Chile but only two in Santiago. Later I found the
Nephrocare (Fresenius) website, which had many centers in Santiago, so I promptly emailed two centers which looked well located. And at that point started waiting for a response which didn't come.
All the dialysis websites have phone numbers for the centers, but generally I don't like talking on the phone, and especially when the center has a different language! So I was excited when I figured out that DaVita will help coordinate foreign travel. My social worker has been great about setting up US dialysis but didn't know the company could help with foreign travel. All that I had to do was call 1-800-244-0680 and give them information on the two centers that would work for me. At that point someone else took over contacting the centers and setting it up. That was very easy. And of course they took care of getting the dialysis orders sent, except they required me to get my HIV lab results on my own, for some reason the center stays away from ordering/tracking those results. When it was all said and done, I had my preferred time at my preferred center, and a regional
Nephrocare contact in Mexico City.
It turned out very good that we were departing on Monday since I had a rush project at work that I was able to complete on Saturday and Sunday prior to leaving. If we had left on Saturday, I probably would have had to try get that work done while on vacation...
We arrived in Santiago at 6:30 AM, took the bus and the metro to the Radisson Blue in an upscale area near the largest mall in South America. I picked the Radisson because I have gold status as part of their credit card offering, which also offers two award nights for the price of one, because of my status and the size of the hotel I thought that they would let us into the room early. They offered us the breakfast buffet while we waited, and at 10 am they offered us the choice of a standard room, or waiting longer for a junior suite, we jumped at the standard room, took our bath and a quick nap. Then we were off to one of two (or three metro) accessible wineries. There was no english tour that day by we still enjoyed the $15 spanish language tour, we only got lost when they described why their premium wine was premium (likely very old vines). The downside is the included wine tasting was three very small sips of wine, similar to what we would find in a non specialty grocery store. That turned me off to future winery tours.
The next morning, I set out for my first dialysis session. Again thanks to Google Maps, it was easy to plan out how to get to the center via the Metro (or bus). It was fairly obvious when I arrived that the center staff was not ready to speak english, and my basic Spanish only allowed limited interactions with the staff. However, it seems like the process is the same where ever you are with limited differences as to how they clean prior to inserting the needles and how they use tape, so its fairly easy for me to just let them set me up how they usually do and let the process work.
It's always interesting to notice the staffing difference, which to date has had many more employees than my center at home. And like other foreign centers they offered a snack which was a grilled cheese and tea or coffee.
The one problem I did encounter both days is my blood pressure was higher than normal. That could have been due to a miscommunication where I though they were asking the pump speed so I said 400 and they were asking how much liquid to take off. Since I still urinate (a lot) I would have not taken off more than 1,000 ml, so 400 ml is not that bad. (I personally think I urinate enough that I would not gain weight if they stopped taking off liquid.) Regardless, the high blood pressure and low communication ability did stress me out a bit, and the center's doctor had me sit around afterwards until my blood pressure settled down.
The one thing about Santiago is it felt like they are less used to English speaking tourists, and also they have their own Spanish dialect, so it was harder than normal communicating. For example, usually Susan and can read the menu, but in Chile she could not recognize the main dishes so the meals were more of a guess. So at each meal we were happily surprised.
We spent the week exploring Santiago, going on "free" for tips walking tours, eating and drinking... We went a few times to a bistro that offered wine flights and enjoyed tasting the local wines withe more generous pours than the winery. Also we hit up the local ice-cream shop more than a few times. The weather was in the low 80*'s but quite warm when you were out walking in the sun.
One day, we took the bus under two hours to Valparaiso on the coast for a day trip. This town was the main port after the ships came through the Straits of Magellan in the gold rush days. Lots of the town is situated on hillsides, similar to San Francisco but with more burro sized walking paths rather than streets. One modern attraction is
tons of murals, so we arrived by 10 am for the "free" for tips walking tour and got to see the highlights of the town.
For lodging we started at the Radisson, then moved to a local business type hotel, and finally moved to a hostel for the final three nights. The first night at the hostel they advertised a pub crawl, which we deiced to join. After an hour of free beer, we had a great night visiting other bus, and ending with dancing at a nightclub. Some of the locals made a movie of Susan and I dancing, i.e. the old folks dancing. I realized next time we should save the more comfortable Radisson for the final two nights since we really are ready to relax by the end of the trip.
It just so happened our flight was at the end of the year for United upgrades so on the way home we enjoyed a more luxurious return thanks to an upgrade to business class on the Panama to Dulles segment thanks to a milepoint forum member. Thank you...
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