30 Months on Dialysis your primary insurance is Medicare:

1. Once you hit 30 months on dialysis (any type) Medicare becomes your primary insurance provider even if you have another insurance provider.
2. You must enroll in Medicare Part A and B, to be able to get a transplant.
3. You must pay for Medicare Part A and B after 30 months on dialysis as your (other) insurance will no longer pay for your transplant and deny paying for any other medical treatments.
4. If you are only on Medicare Part A you may be charged with a “Late fee” up to 40% more until you reach the 65-year-old timeframe (if you are under 65).

I am sharing this with you because I have been on dialysis for 6 years (way over my 30 months) and working on starting on the process to be listed on the transplant list.  I received a call from the financial department of the hospital that I would need to be on Medicare Part B along with my Medicare Part A. 

Make sure that you talk to your transplant financial coordinator to find out what you need to have Medicare Part A and B before you reach the 30 months on dialysis.

Check with your dialysis nurse on how long your machine is set to sit after you have primed.  On an Nxstage machine, this can be up to 72 hours.

1. To make dialysis not seem so long, we prime at a different time depending on what is happening in our lives.
2. I prefer to run early in the morning as it works better with my work schedule and my husband’s work schedule. Because of this we usually prime the night before and set everything up so that in the morning we can run right away.
3. Planning makes it a lot less difficult at the time of doing treatment.

*Once your machine is primed you push the yellow button twice.  You can turn your machine off.  To start up again, you turn your machine on and when the 40 appears and the machine beeps you can push the kidney to run a 6-minute (reprime).  Now you will be back at your tap-and-snap stage of getting ready for your treatment.

When you start Dialysis depending on the company you go through they will ship your supplies to your house.  They do not bring them into your home.  When you order your supplies, they do not always come on the day or the time you request them, so have a backup plan.   

Your nurse can talk through these requirements with you:

• A clean room, or other area, for your treatment
• A space for your dialysis supplies and dialysis machine
• Additional storage space for up to 6 weeks’ worth of supplies
• Depending on your therapy choice, a care partner who will either help or be with you during treatments

If you are like me and live in the northern part of the United States, where our supplies take many days or travel and spend many nights sitting on trucks.  You will not want to bring your boxes into your house right away.  I have had more times than not in the winter where bags of dialyate have been frozen, when they freeze they tend to break the bags.  It is great when they are frozen, Not so great when they thaw....  You will have dialysate running everywhere.  

***Recommented to unbox all dialysate bags before bringing them inside when delieved in the winter.  

***UPS deliverys or other company deliverys this will happen to.

When traveling you more than likely will not be traveling with a sharps container.  You can find a soda/pop/water/juice bottel and put the syringes into this bottle and when all your runs are done you can tape the top closed.  This can tavel home with you without any accidental poking.  If you have a number of days, the tubes off of your needles can be cut off and thrown with your cartridges and then just the needles can be placed within the bottle to allow more room.