Gabriela Herrera

For most of my life, travel was the easiest part of me. I said yes to flights the way other people say yes to coffee, new cities, new jobs, entire lives packed into a weekend. Then, almost overnight, my kidneys failed. I went from someone who barely thought about her body to someone who needed hemodialysis three times a week just to stay alive. The person I'd been for thirty years didn't disappear, but she suddenly needed a machine to keep going.

What nobody tells you is that the treatment itself isn't the hardest part, it's everything around it. The first time I tried to travel again, I spent more hours searching for a clinic that would take me than I spent on the trip itself. Numbers that didn't work, clinics that didn't take international patients, prices I could only find out by calling and hoping someone picked up. I remember sitting in an airport lounge with three tabs open and a treatment schedule I couldn't afford to miss, wondering if the version of me who used to travel without thinking twice was gone for good.

She wasn't. It just took work nobody should have to do alone. Once I found the right clinics, I kept traveling, weddings, work, the ordinary trips I used to take for granted, dialysis and all. I just had better information. That's the whole idea behind KidneyTrip: it shouldn't take detective work to find a place that will simply let you keep living wherever you are. So I built the directory I wish I'd had when I needed it, real phone numbers, real emails, real prices, organized by country, so finding a clinic takes minutes instead of days. And for the trips that need more than a search bar, a team that will make the calls for you.

I'm still on dialysis. I still travel every chance I get. Every clinic in this directory is here because I know exactly what it costs, in time and in fear, to need one and not be able to find it fast enough. If KidneyTrip gets even one person back on a plane a little sooner than I did, it's already doing its job.

Gabriela

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