Ireland Trip May 2015
Just returned from a trip to Ireland, scheduling dialysis was an ordeal. We bought tickets via an AF sale so we left a bit earlier than planned. Using DaVita’s travel coordinator I tried to schedule dialysis with about a month notice. She could not find a spot and heard from the Irish Kidney Association that they had no space in the entire country until June at the earliest!
So we started trying to find space in London with the hope that I could fly over for treatments on Ryan Air. But after a week or so of not receiving confirmation of space in London, my wife reached out to the same Irish Kidney Association who said there might be space in private centers.
So I two weeks before departure I sent out emails to all the private Dublin centers I could find and received two responses, including the Fresenius center the previously did not have space. That kicked off a lot of lab work. The Friday before departure we finally received confirmation that they would take me at the Fresenius center!
At that point my option was to be in Ireland for Sunday – Wednesday AM and use United points to fly back if dialysis was in the cards.
-----
We (my wife and another couple) returned from our Ireland trip last night. It was a great trip with friends, but we had to do a ton of driving to see both the Dingle Peninsula (instead of the longer Ring of Kerry loop) and the Cliffs of Moher.
To get dialysis I commuted to Dublin from Limerick via train and back to Galway on the bus on Wednesday. I took the city bus to the dialysis center in the suburbs.
I was happy that I didn’t miss my bus stop despite the cellular service from “Three Ireland” that completely conked out in Dublin. (Later I purchased a “Lycamobile Ireland” SIM card that worked MUCH better.) From what we could tell “Three Ireland” is not a good option despite some recommendations online and the €20 unlimited plan…. “Lycamobile Ireland” worked much better under more limited €10 plan. My friend with a newer Galaxy 6 had better “Three Ireland” service for voice and texts, but not for data.
We returned to Dublin on Friday as a group so I had pickup and drop off at dialysis.
Overall the trip was great. We were fairly rushed the entire time because it did take a long time to drive everywhere. We arrived at the B&B each night at about six or seven and did have dinner out but we were completely beat most nights.