Cruising on Peritoneal Dialysis

[CruiseNYC]

Is there anyone currently on PD who has cruised in the last couple of months and required delivery to ship from Baxter?  Any problems with delivery?

Would love to have any current delivery info.

Thank you!

[Essiesmom]

I believe COVID caused a ban on dialysis as well as those on oxygen.  Doubt anyone has sailed since the shutdown.  EM

[CruiseNYC]

The ban is on Carnival, Princess and Holland America but not on Celebrity, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian. 

[kokopelli-az]

18 hours ago, CruiseNYC said:

Is there anyone currently on PD who has cruised in the last couple of months and required delivery to ship from Baxter?  Any problems with delivery?

Personally, I would not let one piece of medically necessary equipment out of my sight while traveling.  There are too many things that can happen and you do not want to end up without your supplies.   Your items can be taken on your plane as a carry-on at no charge.  

 

And like others have said, not all cruise lines are accepting dialysis passengers at this time. 

 

Don't forget to let your cruise line's Access Department know what medical supplies you will be bringing.  

 

[CruiseNYC]

Thank you. Of course we have notified all of the appropriate people at the Access department. 
if you’re unfamiliar with PD, manual exchange requires 4 bags of dialysate per day. Each bag contains 2000 ml of dialysate. It is simply not possible to carry that amount of product. Baxter delivers by truck directly to the cruise ports. They have a specific department that handles this kind of delivery - in conjunction with The cruise line access department. They don’t use a third party shipper. 
I was just checking to see if their service continues to be reliable and prompt. 

[cb at sea]

You will need a larger than "standard" cabin to house all of your supplies....it can be done, but for the 1st several days, you'll be jammed, if the room isn't spacious enough!

 

[CruiseNYC]

Yes- thank you. We have definitely taken the cabin size into account. Spacious suite - more than enough space.  
I should say that nephrologist and internist have all signed necessary docs to attest to his seaworthiness.

Just wondered if anyone had recent experience. I guess not. 
Thank you all! 

[Bigjennifer]

Did 3 cruises this year RCL,Celeb, MSC all looked after me . Baxter’s delivered to ship,and all boxes were in cabin.My nurse did all the arrangements.

I wish P&O would allow again.

[CruiseNYC]

Bigjennifer - Thank you!!!!  That's exactly what I was hoping to hear.  Baxter has been keeping us updated every few weeks.  We'll be on Celebrity Millennium on December 13 and really can't wait!

[DianneCS]

My husband has been on pd since July and we use baxter.  He has an exchanger which he uses at night?? we do not do manual exchanges. 

 

We r considering a cruise in March.

 

Our pd nurse says we need to do manual in case there is a problem.  How do u do that at night - wake up every 2 to 3 hours?

 

How much extra solution do u bring?  Some times the cassettes go bad and sometimes we have to throw away bags.  Also do u bring extra in case the cruise can't get back?

 

Our baxter rep said contract People deliver to cruises.  Not sure if that is right

 

Really appreciate ur help and insight.

 

Dianne

[Valen9]

9 hours ago, DianneCS said:

Our pd nurse says we need to do manual in case there is a problem.  How do u do that at night - wake up every 2 to 3 hours?

If you have a problem and need to do manual PD, then your spouse will do it while awake, maybe during the day.  Ask your nurse to give you both a refresh on the manual PD process, which was part of the initial training.  Someone can do an exchange, disconnect, go off and do something for a couple of hours, then do another exchange.  

 

9 hours ago, DianneCS said:

How much extra solution do u bring?  Some times the cassettes go bad and sometimes we have to throw away bags.  Also do u bring extra in case the cruise can't get back?

 

Our baxter rep said contract People deliver to cruises.  Not sure if that is right

This is something you can and should arrange with your PD nurse and home clinic.  They know what arrangements to make and what supplies to order.  There's a whole process & everything.

 

You can do this.  More than that, you should do it -- give your spouse and yourself something fun to look forward to in March and look back on when it's done.  Dialysis is a lot but it doesn't have to be everything.

[CruiseNYC]

I really appreciate hearing from you!  We leave in a little over one week.  
We decided that it would be safer for him to do manual exchanges just in case there was any problem at all with the machine.  Baxter - and our dialysis center - have been wonderful, making sure we will have everything we need. We have a checklist. Baxter will deliver solution and caps. We’ll bring the rest. We even purchased a relatively inexpensive travel “IV/Dialysate” pole for convenience.  He’ll do his exchanges 4 times a day - and enjoy the rest of the day carefree.

Of course, I’m a bit nervous about getting the Baxter delivery at the port. With the trucker shortage, it is worrisome but we’re hoping our experience will be as Bigjennifer’s.

[CruiseNYC]

Happy to share with you that we are on board the Millennium along with all the PD supplies. It was not in our stateroom when we boarded but one of the officers came by and he checked for us. He found that the delivery - 9 cartons - had made it to the ship and the boxes were sent up straight away.  Big shout out to Baxter - everything delivered as ordered. 

 

[GeezerCouple]

16 minutes ago, CruiseNYC said:

Happy to share with you that we are on board the Millennium along with all the PD supplies. It was not in our stateroom when we boarded but one of the officers came by and he checked for us. He found that the delivery - 9 cartons - had made it to the ship and the boxes were sent up straight away.  Big shout out to Baxter - everything delivered as ordered. 

 

SO glad this worked out so well!

 

We'd have been soooo nervous.

I think I would have freaked out upon entering and not seeing the supplies already there.

The one time we needed to have something special IN our suite, it was all there, in plain sight when we walked in.  (But that didn't require an outside vendor, and the cruise line could have "fixed" things had the messages not gotten through, although it would have taken several hours.)

 

I assume you knew the supplies were on board before sailaway?

 

Have a great time!
We are still waiting to travel.... Sigh...

GC

[CruiseNYC]

Lol - I WAS freaking out!  In fact, DH was on the phone with Baxter when the officer and retreat host came in to greet us.   There was no way that we could have flown from NY to FLL with all the supplies.  
Our next cruise leaves from NY; we’ll bring everything with us to the port.   It will be less stressful. 

[Nancycat]

Has anyone on PD cruised in Europe?
 

[CruiseNYC]

19 hours ago, Nancycat said:

Has anyone on PD cruised in Europe?
 

I'd be very interested to know about this, too, please.

[jaygatsby27]

On 10/23/2021 at 7:23 PM, CruiseNYC said:

Is there anyone currently on PD who has cruised in the last couple of months and required delivery to ship from Baxter?  Any problems with delivery?

Would love to have any current delivery info.

Thank you!

Im Fresenius but we have sailed multiple times since last year and there were no issues with PD delivery.  There is no ban on anyone doing PD.  

[jaygatsby27]

On 6/16/2022 at 8:40 AM, CruiseNYC said:

I'd be very interested to know about this, too, please.

Me too.  Im not planning on doing it for a couple of years but i have never shipped supplies overseas, just to US ports. 

[jaygatsby27]

On 12/13/2021 at 5:21 PM, CruiseNYC said:

Lol - I WAS freaking out!  In fact, DH was on the phone with Baxter when the officer and retreat host came in to greet us.   There was no way that we could have flown from NY to FLL with all the supplies.  
Our next cruise leaves from NY; we’ll bring everything with us to the port.   It will be less stressful. 

yes, you can certainly do that,  

[bklynangel]

On 10/24/2021 at 2:34 PM, CruiseNYC said:

Thank you. Of course we have notified all of the appropriate people at the Access department. 
if you’re unfamiliar with PD, manual exchange requires 4 bags of dialysate per day. Each bag contains 2000 ml of dialysate. It is simply not possible to carry that amount of product. Baxter delivers by truck directly to the cruise ports. They have a specific department that handles this kind of delivery - in conjunction with The cruise line access department. They don’t use a third party shipper. 
I was just checking to see if their service continues to be reliable and prompt. 

Just cancelled a cruise.  We were thinking about cruising on Pd , But we had to sign a lease basically saying if the supplies do not make it to the pier You are s@ out of luck . We have not Cruised for almost 6 years since my husband started pd . He was going to do manuals. We were waiting for him to get a kidney, but that is not happening and that is why we booked the cruise. We were all happy about it until we got that form we had to sign and then decided to cancel . I’d be too nervous for my husband and not only that , it’s stupid that you have to get a covid test two days before you board , but people get on planes to get on the ship the day before and are spreading covid anyway.  It just don’t make sense and it still don’t feel safe to me . 

[bklynangel]

1 minute ago, bklynangel said:

Just cancelled a cruise.  We were thinking about cruising on Pd , But we had to sign a lease basically saying if the supplies do not make it to the pier You are s@ out of luck . We have not Cruised for almost 6 years since my husband started pd . He was going to do manuals. We were waiting for him to get a kidney, but that is not happening and that is why we booked the cruise. We were all happy about it until we got that form we had to sign and then decided to cancel . I’d be too nervous for my husband and not only that , it’s stupid that you have to get a covid test two days before you board , but people get on planes to get on the ship the day before and are spreading covid anyway.  It just don’t make sense and it still don’t feel safe to me . It also cost a few hundred dollars and if you get dented boarding , you don’t get refunded for the pd Supplys   It’s not worth my husbands life . Going to wait till things are feeling more safer 

 

[CruiseNYC]

Oh no!  So sorry to hear you canceled.  After our first experience, we will not hesitate to cruise again.  In fact, we have about 5 more cruises already booked.  We have two more this year - but those leave from NY area; we'll bring supplies on board with us.

The other thing is that both Celebrity and RCCL are affiliated with DialysisAtSea cruising so, perhaps, they're more used to having supplies delivered.  Once on board, the medical officer located the boxes and the dialysate arrived 10 minutes later.  He only left after the boxes were safely delivered to our cabin.  (Our Retreat Host was also actively involved in the process.)  We had followed up repeatedly with our product supplier (Baxter) pre-cruise and it was all done to perfection.

 

We are curious, however, how it would work if we decided to cruise out of the UK.  Wondering if anyone has had that experience.

[cali-croozer]

On 7/8/2022 at 4:00 AM, CruiseNYC said:

Oh no!  So sorry to hear you canceled.  After our first experience, we will not hesitate to cruise again.  In fact, we have about 5 more cruises already booked.  We have two more this year - but those leave from NY area; we'll bring supplies on board with us.

The other thing is that both Celebrity and RCCL are affiliated with DialysisAtSea cruising so, perhaps, they're more used to having supplies delivered.  Once on board, the medical officer located the boxes and the dialysate arrived 10 minutes later.  He only left after the boxes were safely delivered to our cabin.  (Our Retreat Host was also actively involved in the process.)  We had followed up repeatedly with our product supplier (Baxter) pre-cruise and it was all done to perfection.

 

We are curious, however, how it would work if we decided to cruise out of the UK.  Wondering if anyone has had that experience.

Hi. I am looking to take a short cruise, first one on PD (been stable for 3 years, so not worried about that). I'll be on princess.  I was planning on bringing my cycler. Is that what you have done? If I have to do manuals, I won't go.  I will also bring my solution boxes with me as it is a short cruise and the port is close to home.  I am working on figuring out what i do with them once I get dropped off. Don't want to just hand them over to the porter.

[CruiseNYC]

13 minutes ago, cali-croozer said:

Hi. I am looking to take a short cruise, first one on PD (been stable for 3 years, so not worried about that). I'll be on princess.  I was planning on bringing my cycler. Is that what you have done? If I have to do manuals, I won't go.  I will also bring my solution boxes with me as it is a short cruise and the port is close to home.  I am working on figuring out what i do with them once I get dropped off. Don't want to just hand them over to the porter.

We are just back from a 7 day cruise from NJ to Bermuda. DH did manual - but we could have brought machine with us. I’m less afraid of issues (in case of power or internet outages) when he does manual. We brought the dialysate cartons with us and put large, white stickers with our names and cabin # on all 4 sides. When we arrived at port to drop luggage, they added one of their stickers and they transported them, along with our suitcases, to the cabin. Very, very easy.  Celebrity provides plastic waste bags and a sharps container (in case he needs heparin).
We are on a 14-day Princess cruise in November and he’ll probably do manual again. We’ll bring the cartons with us to Brooklyn, label them on all sides and drop them with luggage. The boxes are too heavy to carry on board!
We have already filled out all the special access forms for Princess so we should be good to go!

We really hope you will go. It has really been wonderful for both of us to be able to cruise again. Celebrity makes it very easy; we hope the same is true of Princess. 

Please share your experience with all of us after your trip. Thank you in advance!