You Must Be Trippin'

Documents, Documents and Pills

January 19 2012 by Sam Lowe

As we graciously move into the more advanced stages of life, we are finding that travel is no longer a simple matter of tossing some clean underwear and a toothbrush into an overnight bag and taking off. Now, every trip requires substantially more pre-planning, particularly in the areas of medicine, insurance and health care.

So before every extended trip, we create a check list of items that are absolutely vital to assure us that we'll get there and back without legal or medical problems.

If it's out of the United States, we begin with our passports. Okay, so the photos are still horrible, and they don't look like us because they was taken several years ago, but everything else has to be up to date. It would be most frustrating to arrive at the airport with an expired passport.

Next, the meds. We require a few pills, not enough to open a pharmacy but enough to require separate packaging. If possible, it's best to leave them in their original containers so they get through the airport scanners without raising questions. But we also utilize plastic pill boxes that hold a week's supply. They have one drawback, however - they sometimes pop open in your luggage, which means you have to dig through underwear and socks to locate your cholesterol-reducing pills upon arrival. After it happened to me several times, I began wrapping a piece of paper around the box and using a rubber band to secure it.

Then we check our insurance policies to see what coverage we have on both foreign and domestic trips. We contact our agent to see if our policies cover rental cars, medical emergencies, fraud and theft. And if we're renting a car, we make sure at least one of us has a non-expired drivers license that can be used here and overseas. Usually, a second license is required if we're planning to drive in a foreign country.

Many of those countries have socialized medicine but not free prescriptions. On a recent trip to Italy, I developed phlebitis in my right leg. We found a doctor who didn't speak English and my Italian is limited. You don't really understand frustration until you're standing in front of an Italian doctor with your pants draped around your ankles while pointing to "problemo." He finally understood and wrote a prescription. The office call was free; the meds weren't.

Finally, we contact our credit card institution to inform them that we'll probably be spending a lot of money in a lot of places that we normally don't frequent. We learned that lesson on a recent trip to New Mexico, when we couldn't use plastic to buy gasoline because the company had noticed several unfamiliar charges and nullified the card.

So make a list and check it twice. It'll save you some major headaches later on.

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Categories : Are We There Yet?

Tags : best western, best western international, senior travel, travel tips, traveling with prescription medicine

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