There's no such thing as a Dialysis vacation.

Last week I decided to get away. With one week left before school starts, and a general hate for my small suburban town, and most of it's occupants, Southern California was the place to be. A sweet family that has part way adopted me in the kindest way possible, informed me that if I were to get a dialysis transfer to San Diego they would buy my plane ticket. THEY ARE PAYING FOR MY VACATION AND WE ARE NOT EVEN RELATED. These people have already opened their hearts and their home and their lives to me, I am already like a daughter to them. They are so kind, and I am thankful every day that I have Carol, Paul, Daniel and William in my life.

After filing the necessary paperwork, and doing another TB test, I received the OK to dialize down south, and Carol bought my ticket! That Tuesday morning I left Oakland airport, knowing I would not have to worry about my medical troubles for at least another 30 hours, and for that I was thankful as well.

The weather was beautiful and my days were spent with old friends I hadn't seen for years, new friends that I became quite fond of, generous hosts, lounging by the pool, shopping in La Jolla, gourmet cookies shaped like whales and kittens, delicious sushi, and last but CERTAINLY NOT LEAST, debatably one of my favorite days of the year, SEA WORLD. Where Carol and I got to experience the "soak zone," coo over perty baby sea life, and I almost pee'd myself like a thousand times out of pure excitement.



That entire week there were only two times I experienced any kind of stress or dysfunction, save the obvious overload of family togetherness, Wednesday and Friday. Yep! Go figure Dialysis would worm it's way in and fuck everything up.

WEDNESDAY: The family had a Padres game, and I had Dialysis, I wasn't too hurt, most baseball games are pretty much the same and I can go to those here, but boy was it inconvenient. After having the whole car yell and grumble as we tried to locate the San Ysidro Dialysis facility on 30th street, downtown, it became more and more apparent that I may be looking for a facility that didn't exist. So, I called Davita, lo and behold! there are two 30th streets in San Diego. Aaaand the mix up was not even our fault! Imagine that. They have the wrong address plotted on the map and it shows that San Ysidro is downtown and closest to La Jolla. AWESOME. after driving another 40 minutes, I arrived at San Ysidro. Right at the Border, below Chula Vista. Really? This kind of luck is special, and I am the only one "blessed" with it, because I'm probably the only one that can handle it.

Fortunately, we managed to get there ALMOST on time and although Carol was about to kick ass and take names, and I was mostly just nervous about being in a different facility at a different time of day, they were nice and apologized, and then they hooked me up to the machine and sent Carol and the fam on their way to the baseball game! I was only terrified and alone for a short time before a handsome young gentleman friend of mine who lives in San Diego, came to my rescue and protected me from the crazies in San Ysidro. We asked them nicely to transfer us to the other dialysis facility for our last day in SD and they called over and imidiately obliged!

The second facility was closer, and seemingly less stressful to drive to and it was all planned out who would drive, and when we would leave. Until I went to take a nap and left three young "adult" males in-charge of making sure I woke up on time to leave! Needless to say we left 20 minutes late, didn't know where we were going (to drop someone off and pick up actual directions) and I was still half in nap-state. Well, shit.

Eventually, we found our way and I was only fashionably late. Dializing until 10:30pm was pretty unfortunate, but most things related to Dialysis are unfortunate.