Is travel possible

[Mymommyhero]

My parents have enjoyed an enviable retirement where they have spent many months each year in tropical locations like Mexico, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic.
This spring after their three months in DR, we started this journey with ureter cancer, a nephrectomy on cancer side, and a non functioning kidney on other side.
She is in hospital now post op, and I believe she will be starting to dialize today.
We live in Alberta, Canada so our winters get harsh so my parents are hopeful that travel is still possible for them.
I believe Hemodialysis is her only option at this time (all very new) and nephrologist has spoken about getting her and the family trained to get her home to do dialysis.
How realistic is it to travel for many months? How expensive is it? Does our Alberta Health cover treatments in other countries
Has anyone done this?
Are there machines that you can bring with?  Or do you need to find a dialysis centre?
What about travel insurance?
Other things to consider?
Please give your thoughts, no matter where you are from, but we would be particularly interested in answers from Canadians who have provincial health care.
Thanks gang.

[rcjordan]

My path to dialysis was exactly the same as you describe. My travel lifestyle was similar. I'm now 6 months into hemo, with the last 2 months being on the NxStage System One home hemodialysis (HHD).  Travel is possible, but it's not going to be easy.  Even if though I've struggled back to relatively good health, there are a lot obstacles to overcome.  #1, for me, is the sheer physical weight and quantity of supplies required to be 'portable.'

Take a look here for an overview:
https://www.nxstage.com/patients/traveling-with-system-one/

[justagirl2325]

Hi Canadian here, but I'm from Ontario and as you know, each province sets their own policies for health and reimbursements.

When my husband was on home hemo dialysis (he's transplanted now) we traveled and did dialysis while we were away.  You have to plan a good two months in advance.  The centre you go to will require all types of blood tests before they let you in.  We went to three different states and were never refused service.  Ontario does not support Nxstage so there were no machines that we could bring we had to arrange in centre dialysis.

Vegas was $400 US per session in 2015.  Ontario health (OHIP) covered the first $215 per session - pay up front & mail in receipts for reimbursement 6 weeks later.  Then I sent the difference to my work insurance and they reimbursed the rest.  We went 5 days, so 2 sessions.

Same thing with Minneapolis.  Although they tried to charge us $700 per session.  We said no, we'd call around and they called us back and said, ok $400.  It was only on treatment.

Florida was $700 per session and they wouldn't budge on price.  We went for 7 days and only did 2 sessions...that was a mistake, he should have had 3.

Each time we were reimbursed 100% but only because of my work benefits.  If we didn't have those we would have been out of pocket quite a bit.

[iolaire]

I'm US based and traveled a lot pre transplant (40-43 yr old healthy otherwise).  Generally I paid about $200-$300 USD for in center HD treatments when traveling abroad (Buenos Aires, Chile, South Africa, Singapore, Portugal, Spain etc...) - except for Canada - Montreal $700-$800, Brussels 500 Euro and Ireland (hard to find spot) 400-500 euro.  Those costs do not include IV medicines that are normal in my center, i.e. Epogen and Iron. 

I would think that at a lot of these centers you could get a much lower price for longer term care, my treatments were always three sessions or less.  I was happy with in Center treatments.  Most centers are setup relatively similar to my home center, a few had older machines but they were still clean and the care givers knew their job.  I never worried that much with treatment even when there was a significant language barrier.

The key to travel is to be generally healthy and to be experiencing tolerable dialysis treatments - i.e. get to a point where you are generally medically stable.

The site http://www.globaldialysis.com/ has a center search functions that gives contact information and some centers have reviews.  Also the closed Facebook group "Dialysis Traveler" with 519 members (they let new members in, some people don't want the posts public) have a lot of UK folks that go to warm Mediterranean centers in places we don't think about like Larnaca Cyprus, Crete, and Benidorm.  For my research I usually used the global dialysis site and each countries local NephroCare (Fresenius) website, i.e. https://www.nephrocare.pt/ (Portugal) or https://www.nephrocare.co.za/ (South Africa).

Also make sure you look at our travel forum: http://ihatedialysis.com/forum/index.php?board=53.0

[Michael Murphy]

When asked about travel I always show the picture posted on this web site by a member Bill Peckham.  It show him relaxing in a raft in the middle of the Grand Canyon having Dialysys from his nexstage system.  If he can arrange that with proper planning a patient should be able to go anywhere.

[rcjordan]

>arrange that

It's the 'arranging' part that bothers me almost as much as carting along all the supplies. I've always traveled 'on-the-fly' making reservations wherever I see I'm going to be that night or maybe the next few days.  This is a BIG travel lifestyle change for me.    Spontaneous, or even short-notice travel plans are likely out --particularly overseas.  For US travel, I'm just going to have to pack the supplies into a van or truck and/or do short, long-weekend trips around my sessions.  I've already built a nice, ultra-portable chair and side tables out of a zero-gravity lounge chair.  Works great in tests.  Next is to tackle the dialysates.  I'm eye-ing how to make the Pureflow portable.