Traveling across Canada

[jambo101]

 The 3 day a week dialysis regimen is in my very near future,i was wondering what would be involved in travel across Canada, i currently reside in Montreal. Is there a network of dialysis centers across the country? and do i just make reservations to use a dialysis unit at any given location?
Paint me a picture of what its like '
Thanks
Jim

[lulu836]

Social worker or equivalent has to make all arrangements for US citizens.  Don't know about Canadians,

[justagirl2325]

Hi Jim

You'll have to arrange your visits with the hospitals you would like to dialysis in at least a month before your expected arrival date.  They want all the blood tests and stuff before they take you.  My husband did it (he's from Ontario).  He had dialysis in three other provinces on his way across the country.  The cost was 100% covered under the reciprical provincial health plans.

[Riki]

Your renal social worker should be able to help you find dialysis units near where you are going, but don't be surprised if you find out they are too full.  I live on PEI and before we started doing evening shifts in Charlottetown, all four units on the Island were full and unable to take vacationing patients.  They had to go to Moncton, which is a 3 hour drive away.

There was a guy from Newfoundland a few years ago who put up a stink because he wasn't able to get dialysis on the Island while he was vacationing.  He was told 3 months before his trip that there wasn't room for him.  He was really po'd that they couldn't squeeze him in somewhere, but there wasn't anywhere to squeeze him in.  He went to the media, trying to shame the units to fit him in, but it didn't work.

My uncle lives near Truro, NS, and he has to go to Halifax for his dialysis because the Truro unit is full.  So he went from a 5 minute drive away to a 2 hour drive away.

[jambo101]

 I guess the prospect of long distance travel is more trouble than its worth,guess  my traveling days are over as i am now on dialysis 3X a week.

[iolaire]

I guess the prospect of long distance travel is more trouble than its worth,guess  my traveling days are over as i am now on dialysis 3X a week.

If you enjoy travel it’s completely worth it as a trip can give you months off anticipation and the trip itself is a great break from home.  It does take some planning but is well worth it.

I’m in a dialysis travelers Facebook group with lots of folks from the UK and many of them look forward to their trip to Spain or the Crete for most of a year. Others are traveling far and wide. When I was on dialysis I was fortunate to be healthy enough and have the income to continue traveling and received treatments on five continents. The main concession I made was to stay in large cities so it was easy to find dialysis centers and be scheduled.

Your overall health and how you react to treatments is the biggest factor limiting travel.  If you handle dialysis ok and don’t otherwise have barriers to travel then it’s possible and depending on the person quite rewarding.

[Alexysis]

It's actually a bit easier here in the states. Many centers can fit you in with only 2-3 weeks notice, and in places like Florida, there seems to be an abundance of clinics in all but the height of vacation season. Most of them are stand-alone clinics, rather than those in hospital settings, as seems to still be common in Canada. Of course, there are sometimes issues; my mom had to go to Philadelphia for treatments once while visiting my sister in Wilmington around the time she had her first child. I also talked to a 'transient' at dialysis a few months ago who was miffed that he had to go to my clinic, which was all the way across the county from where he was visiting....

[Michael Murphy]

The late great Bill Peckham took a rafting trip through the Grand Canyon and brought a nextstage machine and did self dialysis in a raft in the middle of the canyon.   If he could plan that a cross country trip should be much easier to plan.

[Riki]

I guess the prospect of long distance travel is more trouble than its worth,guess  my traveling days are over as i am now on dialysis 3X a week.

Traveling across Canada is easy.  It's a matter of getting your social worker to connect with his/her counterpart where you'd like to go.  To have it covered under provincial medicare, it has to be approved, but that's usually not a problem, and is just a formality.

Traveling to the US is a little more complicated, as any dialysis clinics you want to go to want a crapload of info about you beforehand.  I tend to start planning my US trips about 6-8 months in advance of when I want to go.  I'm going to Philadelphia in July.  I've been working with Davita on all the details since January.  The majority of the testing for that trip will probably be done in the next few weeks, as it has to be done within 30 days of the trip.  You still have to have the funding approved by government, even though you have to pay up front for your treatment.  The approval allows them to reimburse you when you get home.  The only exception to this that I know of is Ontario, which has reciprocal agreements with a couple of dialysis clinics in Florida, mainly for Snowbirds.

Traveling on dialysis is possible, it just takes a bit of extra planning.  There's no need to give it up just because you are dialysis 3x a week.  I most certainly am not going to.  I've been on hemodialysis for over 10 years, and probably will be for the rest of my life.  I've been to NYC so many times that the workers at the clinic I go to know me.  I've also gone to Atlanta, GA, and Ottawa and Halifax on dialysis without any issues.