The great thing about family vacations is the anticipation of going. You plan and plan, and wait and finally the time comes for you to pack your bags and head off, away from the daily grind of school, work, life to some alternate universe that we call vacation. So imagine if you will a trip, 4 years in the making. My parents have a Marriot Time Share in Orlando, so 4 years ago my immediate family and I made our way to Orlando for an amazing Disney trip. My boys were 8 and 5 and my nephew was about 3. We had a blast, of course we couldn't wait to come back. Well skip ahead 4 years and here we are, planning for February 2013 for a journey back to "The Happiest Place on Earth Inc."
Planning for the trip was the easy part, we knew where we were staying, what we HAD to see, what we wanted to see, we talked about Fast Pass and waiting on line and meals and what to pack and all that good stuff. We are experts just give us the map and we can tackle any Disney Park without a glitch. However, no one tells of the issues you can't prepare for that would be part of your trip. Nobody 4 years before your pilgrimage to see a mouse, tells you to include one very important thing on your itinerary. DIALYSIS was not on the brochure. It isn't an amenity at the hotel, it isn't an extra excursion or free fast pass on your favorite ride. It was certainly no part of my plan, yet there I was, 5 months before my journey having to include it on my list of MUST DO's while on vacation. Oh wait didn't I say that vacation was a way of escaping from the everyday mundane tasks of life. Then surely, this would fall under that category. Sorry, no, wherever you go your kidneys come with you, so guess what dialysis goes too.
The thing about being a dialysis patient is there are wonderful people at the dialysis center who truly are there to take care of you. I happen to have amazing social workers whose job is to facilitate travel plans for treatment. Several months before I filled out some paperwork and they locate a center near where you are staying and get it all set up for you. People on dialysis nowadays have a lot of options. Orlando being one of the top 10 destinations for dialysis patients to go, it was not a difficult process. Las Vegas, San Diego, Nashville all good places to travel to if on dialysis. There are several others too. Believe it or not there are even DIALYSIS CRUISES now!!! How cool is that!! Haven't done it yet, but it could happen!
For those of you who have done a Disney trip or two, know that Disney is work, and it takes a lot of timing, waiting, planning, waiting, walking, trams, monorails, boats, strollers and general stamina to have a good time and not go crazy. The hardest part of the trip was planning on when to get dialysis, I went back and forth for weeks- do I go at 6 am get done at 10 am and then have the whole day in the park? Do I go at 4:00 in the afternoon get done at 8pm, have dinner go to bed? Or in some places (like Orlando) some centers have late night so you can start as late as 9:00 pm. So which do I choose. My family and I played out every possible scenario. I settled on evening around 7:00. I get VERY tired after dialysis so I felt that going first thing in the morning and going into the parks after would be very challenging. Going in the late afternoon would present it own challenges as to when to leave and getting the car and all that nonsense. So going at the end of the day at this point only seemed logical.
It really turned out to be the best way to do it for my families purposes. The only bad thing was whoever had to pick me up at 11:00 had to be awake enough to remember to come get me!
I must say that for the most part the process was pretty seamless. Due to the length of time I was to be away I had to have dialysis 4 times during our trip. The centers in the Orlando area are used to having people travel in and out. I showed up at my designated time, got my treatment and went on my merry way. The part that sucked was that it took me out of my alternate universe called vacation, and gave me a hard smack back to reality, if only for a few hours. My husband (in all his awesomeness, I told you I'll talk more on him later. I promise I will!) arranged for me to get a scooter to tool around Disney in. We arranged it with a private company for the week. They delivered to our hotel and picked it up at the end of the week. Much cheaper than a daily rental at the parks. It fit in our SUV (yes, we drove down) and made my life much easier. It did help us to get on some attractions quicker, but not everything. On the rides where no scooters were allowed they would transfer you to a wheelchair. I DID NOT DO THAT. I stood on line on my own 2 feet because thankfully I still can. But I found having the scooter extremely helpful. HIGHLY RECOMMEND! So even though I was limited in some respects I tried very hard not to let it slow me down or limit my family in any way. I think I did a pretty good job.
It wasn't easy traveling while having to do dialysis but I can't say that it was hard either. If you have doubts about vacationing while having to get treatments, don't. Just go. Go to that alternate universe for a few days, step away from reality, just know that a few times for a few hours you have to go back there while you are away. At least the rest of the time you are someplace else.
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