Tuesday 8 February 2011

Dialysis treatments while on a cruise.

Just recently I have had a few clients enquire regarding having dialysis treatments whilst taking a cruise.  After an exhausting search, questioning and calling different companies, I found out that you can still take a fantastic cruise and receive dialysis treatment!
In basic terms, there are two types of dialysis treatments; Hemodialysis and Peritoneal dialysis.  Hemodialysis requires the use of a machine to filter blood and then re-feed the blood back into the patient.  With Peritoneal dialysis, the patient requires a sterile, glucose solution to be fed straight into an abdominal cavity that goes around the abdominal organs.

At the moment, there are a few options if you require dialysis treatment and want to take a cruise, but it all depends on what type of dialysis you need.  If you require a machine based dialysis, essentially, there are two types of machines you can use. A small portable machine that does a partial cleansing or a large machine that does the full treatment.
Currently, if you require the small machine, the patient can rent these and take the small, rentable machine onboard most of the cruise lines as long as this has been mentioned to the travel agent and agreed by the cruise line.

Tuesday 1 February 2011

Prepare your taste buds for REAL Mexican/Mayan food.

In my last blog, I talked about the first Mexican cruise line which should have onboard some traditional Mexican dishes.  On this blog, I will talk about traditional Yucatecan food which will be useful if you are taking a cruise that goes to the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.
Top of the list has to be cochinita pibil, my personal favourite and Yucatan’s number one dish.  Cochinita pibil is pork that has been marinated and slow cooked in achiote (annatto) together with a very bitter type of orange/grapefruit, all wrapped up and cooked in banana leaves.