Top 7 Tips for Taking Medication While Traveling

Taking medication can be a challenge. Even at home, we need our rituals to get the pills down. For me, it was cancer medication. I had to take 10 pills every morning on a trip to Italy and another trip to the Bahamas; further, even though the protocol and meds changed, my trip to Spain still saw me taking meds every morning and even at night. So I have some experience and it does involve some forethought. Here are my top 7 tips for handling your medication protocol while on a trip.

Packing Your Pills

When you pack your pills, you will need to bring them all in their pharmacy containers with the prescription label. This is a requirement for international travel. It helps to plan a space for your pills and it's also recommended that you keep your pills in your carry on luggage.

You may want a pill bag that will hold all your pills together, or you can use a specific compartment of your backpack or carryon.

Putting your pills into a weekly compartment box can work too. When I went to Spain, I had 2 weeks worth of my morning pills broken out into a two week pill box. I had to use duct tape to make sure the box would stay closed while we were flying, but when we got to the cruise, it made it easy to wake up in the morning and have the pills ready and counted.

Here's a few options for bags and containers to pack your pills in:

Pill Container

Pill Organizer

Medicine Storage Bag

Personally, for evening pills, I just took them out of the pharmacy bottle. This is the easiest way to manage. On my trips to Italy and the Bahamas, I just used the bottles that the cancer medications came in, and took the 9 pills in the morning and 3 pills at night. This was simple enough, but once you are also taking pain medication, it can involve more forethought.

You just have to determine what you will need for your own pill taking rituals. Ensuring that you have the appropriate space for your medications while you are packing for the trip is the best way to simplify and plan for taking them the whole time you are away.

Sourcing Your Fluids To Take The Pills

For me personally, I couldn't take my pills with water. They were quite large and morning orange juice was a necessity. This presented an additional challenge while traveling because I had to make sure there would be orange juice or something similar at breakfast.

On several occasions, I bought bottles of orange juice in the evening so that I would have them for my morning pill taking ritual. At the breakfasts on the trip, they often did have juices available so I would go down and grab a glass of juice and then return to our hotel room and then sit down at the edge of the bed and take the pills.

If I had to take the pills on the go, I would use my purse or bag to carry the pills; sometimes already counted out and free in a pocket left just for them or sometimes in their bottles. Then I would count out the pills at the table and take them as quickly as possible during my breakfast.

Breakfast of Champions

Taking the pills as the first thing that you do can be an effective strategy for getting them in. Personally, I thought of my pills as a breakfast of champions, because they really affected my appetite and I often didn't have much of a desire to eat after taking them.

If you can adopt an attitude that your pills are your breakfast of champions, you can make sure one of the first things you do that day are getting them into your body. Once you've taken your meds, you're free to enjoy the day and get into vacation mode.

Bring a Later Container

Sometimes, I just wouldn't be able to take the pills first thing. It's good to have a specific pocket in your purse or a little container on hand to get your morning medication ready in and take it on you so you can have it later in the day.

This had to happen sometimes for me, just because I didn't have juice available and wasn't able to go to a store the night before to get some for the next day.

In Italy, I used this bag.

It had multiple pockets and I was able to use one specifically to hold pills. Then when I felt more awake and my stomach felt more settled, I was ready to take my pills one-by-one and get them in.

Have Anti-Nausea Medication Available

I started needing a medication called Pantoprazole to take my meds. This medication is a strong antacid and made it so I was able to take my medication everyday without it unsettling my stomach.

Anti-nausea pills are also good to have on hand in your medication arsenal. You will be bringing them in their pharmacy container in your carry on, so you can have them available to take out if you are experiencing nausea and it's getting in the way of your medication ritual.

Adopt a Meditation Ritual for the Activity

I used to take my pills in a certain order. I'd take 3 large pills, the 3 smaller pills, and then the final 3 large pills. I'd imagine the contents of the pills going to the cancer cells in my body and attacking the cancer, enveloping it and dissolving it.

By adopting this meditation as part of my pill taking ritual, I was able to make it a more concrete activity. I was able to keep in the forefront of my mind the reason for these awful large pills, which helped me see them for a purpose and made them a little less awful.

By planning this time for yourself everyday, you can make space to fit medication into your travel plans. It just gets tacked on to the time it takes to get ready every morning. For me personally, it rarely exceeded 5 minutes and was pretty manageable.

Give Yourself Grace to Skip a Day

I wasn't perfect on any trip that I've been on. Every single trip I have taken has involved one day where I just wasn't going to be able to take my medication.

As simple as it seems to just take 10 pills and then 3 more at night, it just isn't feasible to do it everyday while you're away. Some days, you might just feel too sick in the morning to fit it in and have zero faith that you're going to fit it in later that day.

Another attitude you can adopt is to just give yourself the grace to skip a day here or there. You don't have to be perfect and if you're feeling nauseated enough that you won't be able to keep the pills down, you might as well skip that day.

The Ultimate Tip is to Be Flexible

You need to be rigid enough that you have a plan around taking your medication, but ultimately the plan will involve steps you can take to make yourself flexible because everyday doesn't always go as planned when you're traveling.

I feel fortunate that with my disease, pills are the only thing I will have to do for treatment, so I am able to travel despite my health. I hope these tips explain how I was able to go away despite having to take medication on a daily basis. Hopefully, they inspire you that you can do it too. It just takes a little forethought and planning around the ritual.