VALDOSTA — For thousands fleeing Florida ahead of Hurricane Irma, evacuating ahead of a Category 5 storm can be a scary experience.

Imagine how it feels for someone with a major medical condition that requires constant attention.

Don O’Donnell, 78, left his home in Coral Gables, Fla., at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday with his wife, Kay. Thursday morning, he was in a recliner at Davita Oak Street Dialysis in Valdosta, connected to a machine which cleans his blood, since his failed kidneys can’t.

“We had no idea the traffic would be as bad as it was,” he said. “It normally takes us six hours to reach Valdosta; this time, we drove straight for 12 hours.”

O’Donnell was already familiar with Lowndes County, having stopped overnight in Valdosta many times when he would drive to a mountain house he used to own in North Carolina.

“The rest stops had people all over them,” he said of Wednesday’s trip. “You couldn’t find anywhere to stop for a break.”

The O’Donnells pulled into Valdosta at 4 a.m. in an RV towing a car. They already had reservations at a local RV park.

Dialysis can complicate travel arrangements. O’Donnell has to report to his Coral Gables clinic three times a week for three hours at a time.

As soon as he decided to evacuate, O’Donnell called his clinic, part of Davita’s nationwide chain of facilities, to find an out-of-state place to get his blood cleaned.

“I wouldn’t have hit the road if I didn’t know there was a (dialysis) chair waiting for me,” he said.

O’Donnell loves traveling, and said one of his fears when he started dialysis two and a half months ago was that it would interfere with his trips.

“I found there are clinics everywhere,” he said. “As long as I check to make sure a chair’s available, we can still travel.”

This was the O’Donnells’ first hurricane evacuation; they’ve only lived in Coral Gables for a little more than four years. Don O’Donnell retired 13 years ago after working as an auto-parts distributor in Dallas, Texas.

The O’Donnells planned to stay in Lowndes County at least through Sunday and possibly longer, depending on where the hurricane moves.

The clinic was expecting more Florida dialysis patients to arrive in the next couple of days.

Terry Richards is senior reporter at The Valdosta Daily Times.