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Travel Advice

J

jillharkness

Newbie
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3
Hi everyone, I am new to this forum. I'm 27 and was diagnosed with type 1 almost 2 years ago.

I was looking for some advice on travelling with insulin! I'm going away in September for 11 weeks, travelling across America and then to New Zealand. My problem is we'll be in America for 4.5 weeks, in a car, without a fridge! So my question is....what is the best way to travel with my insulin?

I have a frio wallet, that I used on holiday last year, and I'm wondering if that will keep the insulin sufficiently cold?

Does anyone have any advice on this? Or any other suggestions!

Thanks!
 
I've travelled all round the world with my Frio wallet and it has worked well for me. I find that it stays chilled for at least 12 hours before the effect wears off, but if you just re-soak the pouch you get a further 12 hours of chill.
 
Hi Jill,

To start with you are very brave even thinking about traveling for such a long time without a fridge!

I've found this site http://www.paramountzone.com/fridge2.htm which sells car fridges which plug into your 12v socket in the car. These should be suffient for long journeys.

We went to Australia last year for our honeymoon for 3 weeks and we did talk about backpacking around but my hubby was too worried about not having food or working insulin if we did. We settled instead for travelling around independently from prebooked hotel to prebooked hotel, and managed a fantastic trip from Sydney, to Melbourne, Great Ocean Road, Adelaid, Ayres Rock and back to Sydney! One thing we did do was highlight all the available hospitals in each of the areas we stayed just incase we needed to make a quick trip to one; thankfully we didn't!

Hope you have a great trip!
Also where did you buy your frio wallet as it sounds useful?

Cheers, Nic.
 
Hi Jill

The Frio wallet will do the trick, no problem at all.

You should get at least 2 days worth of chill out of each wallet, so it should be just fine.

The other thing to remember is that the places you are going will stock/sell exactly the same types of insulin that you use. Insulin itself is not particularly expensive, so if the worst came to the absolute worst you could always buy some!
 
Dr. Nic said:
Also where did you buy your frio wallet as it sounds useful?
Click to expand...
Hi Nic,
Very few chemists seem to stock the Frio range so the best place to get one is direct from the manufacturer. They sell online and the one I ordered arrived within 2 days.
http://www.friouk.com/
 
thanks for the advice everyone! I'll need to get a few more frio wallets now, to make sure i have enough room for all my insulin! the thought of travelling is quite daunting, but i'm sure people have gone to more remote places than i'm going and survived!!
 
Hi Jill,
Just one other thing that might help. Although insulin is freely available from pharmacies in most countries, they won't let you have it without some proof that you are diabetic. You could ask your GP for a letter stating that you are diabetic and insulin dependent (which is always useful to have at airports as authority for you to carry your insulin in hand luggage) - but GPs usually charge for this. An alternative which airports often accept and which might persuade an overseas pharmacist to let you have insulin supplies would be to get your GP to allow you to take a spare prescription. The pharmacist won't be able to act on the prescription, but may accept it as proof that you are diabetic. Alternatively you may need to see a local doctor and get a local prescription, but again this will be easier if you can show the local doctor or hospital a UK prescription.
 
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