THE BIG Red Kidney Bus has been parked at the Wonthaggi Hospital for the past two weeks and is giving dialysis patients the chance to holiday on the Bass Coast.
The bus, named Suzie, travels to holiday destinations around Victoria, stopping for four to six weeks at a time giving renal patients who are normally on strict dialysis schedules the opportunity to vacation while still receiving vital treatment.
Across Victoria and Australia, most dialysis units are usually fully booked, making it nearly impossible for patients to holiday in a different area or to see family in another state.
Professor Peter Kerr, a Nephrologist from Monash Hospital said the number of people needing dialysis has increased over the years, making the bus a real boon for patients wanting to get away.
“At Monash alone we’ve grown by a total of 130 patients over the last three or four years. So, where we used to run about five or six hundred patients, we’re now up to 750 patients.”
The bus has been running for twelve years by Monash Health together with Kidney Health Australia and has a destination schedule a year in advance, so patients can decide where to go and can book in for a single session or for the full four or six weeks.
John Gahan is from Buelah in the Southern Mallee and has taken the opportunity to use the service for a month while he and his wife stay in Wonthaggi and check out the surrounding area.
They have been across to Phillip Island and visited the beaches of Inverloch, and although John hasn’t been impressed with the weather, he doesn’t mind it being on the cooler side as he’s originally from England.
He is very grateful that the bus gives him the chance to see new places and new faces and to take a break from the monotonous dialysis schedule in his hometown.
Stacey Neill-Andrews is a Registered Nurse working on the bus at Wonthaggi who commented that it’s a great place to work as the patients are always happy to be there.
It also gives carers the chance to meet and form an informal support network as they often end up at the same places because of the service.
“The patients are just really thankful that we can provide this for them, otherwise they just wouldn’t have the opportunity. A lot of them are retired, they’ve retired, then got renal failure and then they’ve basically got a part time job,” said Stacey.
That part time job is being hooked up to a dialysis machine three times a week for five hours each day.
At the end of each stay on the bus, patients are asked about the destinations they would like to visit; these destinations are considered and organised where possible, giving patients the chance to discover great destinations around Victoria.
