Should you need to go on dialysis due to kidney disease or failure or for numerous other reasons. You can still have a fairly active lifestyle of RV'ing while on peritoneal dialysis or PD as it is known by. You do have to have a machine about the size of an old electric typewriter and storage area for a 4'x4' pallet load of supplies about 5' high once a month. But it is very doable and is a great way to continue to enjoy a great lifestyle.

I have been on PD for a bit over 6 years now and been a full timer for nearly as long. We don't travel as much as we would like as we both have businesses that need our daily attention most of the time but when we do travel I load up enough solution to cover the number of days we plan on being gone plus a couple just in case and off we go as if we didn't have any cares in the world.

Anyone who might have questions about traveling while on PD I am more than happy to answer any and all questions not only about traveling on PD but about PD itself and the advantages it has over hemo dialysis. I have done both although just 3 weeks on hemo but I can tell you there are some huge advantages to PD.

Please feel free to contact me either here or privately through my email address.

Hi Jim. I will second the notion that one can do PD on the road. I did not have an RV at the time, but did actually do an exchange in the car a few times (not while moving), thinking at the time how much easier it would have been in an RV. I did PD for about 9 months, prior to being blessed with a kidney from a living donor. I also did not do the automatic PD, but rather just did 3 manual exchanges per day. One guy I met in our PD support group spent his winters in the south, and his summers in the midwest. He was telling me how he could make a phone call telling the dialysis unit where he was going to be and they would have his supplies delivered wherever he happened to be staying at the time. That way he wasn't dragging all that extra weight back and forth. Thanks for putting yourself out there offering your assistance to RVers finding that they need to go on dialysis, or dialysis patients wishing to RV. Wishing you the best!! Jeff

Jeff, Best of luck with your New, slightly used kidney. My daughter was all set to give me one of hers. So as I am on the Veterans clock I guess you could say we set it up through them. I had to go through all kinds of tests and checks to see if I was a viable reciptient. This took most of 2009 to complete. Then they told us that if I get the transplant and all goes well after about a year they would revaluate my disability and reclassify usually down to 30%. Now we have been living on the 100% disability for 6 years now which makes the payments on our home on wheels. If we had to take a reduction to 30% we would be living in a cardboard box on the street somewhere probably. So we turned down the transplant. The VA pays over $20,000 a month for dailysis services for me plus my nearly $3000 in disability. After the transplant they would have had to only pay for the anti rejection drugs at around $200 a month or so. One would have thought they would have jumped at the chance to only have to pay for meds and disability at 100% instead of diaysis. Anyway when dealing with any government agency always watch your back. And now with government run health care you better be watching not only your back but your front and both sides. Maybe even above and below. I wouldn't trust them to do anything in your favor. The sad part of the story is, there is a very simple way to fix the broken system at least with the VA anyway. But we all know that would never happen with a government run system.

Sad but true.