• About

A Journey With You

~ surviving schizophrenia

A Journey With You

Tag Archives: trips

Public Service Announcement (PSA) About Medications During Holiday Travel

04 Monday Dec 2017

Posted by A Journey With You in bipolar, caregivers, mental illness, schizophrenia, Uncategorized

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

anxiety, autism, bipolar, disasters, emergencies, holiday, medication, mental health, mental illness, mentally ill, schizophrenia], travel, Treatment, trips

This blog post is a public service announcement (PSA).

I know that many of us with a mental illness or other disability don’t travel much because we can’t afford it, or because of all the details that go into it, or the fear of being far from our doctors, or a familiar pharmacy, etc. But we do travel, and this time of year more people are traveling than ever.

My husband’s father and his wife came to visit from overseas. They arrived on Friday night. So far we do not know where their luggage is. Thankfully, they put a week’s worth of medication in their carry-on, but they are staying for three months, and the remaining pills are in their checked bags. If you have an illness that requires you to take medications every day and you are traveling, never put your medication in your checked luggage. I always separate my medication into two groups. I put enough to get me through the vacation or trip in both places. I put one group in my purse and the other group in my carry-on. I always take twice as much medication as I need.

We took my in-laws to our pharmacy last night and asked what we needed to do to get them more medication if the airline is unable to locate their luggage. The pharmacist said that they couldn’t accept prescriptions from overseas so we will need to make an appointment and have my in-laws see a doctor here for new prescriptions. Obviously, this takes time, effort, and money. This is not what you want to be doing when you are far from home.

I know we will be able to take care of this situation for my in-laws (thank goodness), but not without stress, worries, etc. Also, it is possible we will need to go to a couple or a few doctors before one will prescribe medication to someone they don’t know. UGH.

Traveling can be a rewarding experience for anyone, but it can be particularly rewarding if you have a mental illness and you find your world is shrinking (my doctor has said this is what is happening to me – doing less, and less, taking fewer and fewer risks and trying fewer and fewer things). I need to take the opportunity to travel to open up my world, but there is a lot of planning that goes into taking a trip for me, and I can easily say that the handling of my medications is the top priority.

One last thing about this, if you live in a disaster zone, please keep an emergency kit by your door with at least a week’s worth of medication in it. I live in earthquake country, and I keep some cash, copies of my ID, and a week or more worth of medication in a bag in the hallway by the door.

Having a chronic illness of any kind takes so much work and care. It isn’t enough to simply get a diagnosis, take your medications, and visit your doctor every six months. There is a lot of work that goes into managing an illness, and I hope we can all be successful at it because our health and possibly our life depends on it.

When Companies Get It Right

05 Saturday Dec 2015

Posted by A Journey With You in mental illness, schizophrenia, travel, Uncategorized

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

airlines, bipolar, customer service, depression, mental health, mental illness, mentally ill, schizophrenia, travel, traveling, trip, trips, writing

If you have been on a plane lately, then you know that flying has become an almost miserable experience. No one wants to pay for their baggage, so they try to carry on as much as possible. Everyone tries to get on the plane as quickly as possible to make sure their carry-on bag has space in the overhead compartment. Seats are smaller. The seats toward the front of the plane (behind first class) are now considered an upgrade on most flights and cost extra money. People are rushed. People are uncomfortable. You no longer get a meal on a flight (unless you pay for it, and even then, they are usually out of most of the choices by the time they get to the seats near the back).

Airlines tend to be the one industry that doesn’t care at all about customer service. Rather than getting better over the years, they have been getting increasingly worse.

That is why my story of my trip to Seattle on Alaska airlines stands out.

When my husband and I went to check in on the Internet the day before our flight, there were no seats left together. My anxiety started to go up. When I fly, it helps me to be in an aisle seat because I drink a lot of water on the flight and have to get up frequently to use the bathroom. My husband, always the good sport, takes the middle seat even though it is the least desirable, so that we can be together on the flight and he can help me if I am overcome by anxiety.

We went to the airport at 6 in the morning (two hours early) to see if we could change seats and also to make sure that we weren’t rushed or hurried. When we arrived at the airport we asked a woman by the Alaska ticket counter if we could change our seats. She told us it was better to change them with the person working at the gate.

We headed for the security line. We took out all of our liquids. We took off our shoes. We put our laptop in a bin by itself. We emptied our pockets. We have traveled enough since 9/11 to know the rules about security. We made it through the x-rays (I got patted down) without incident.

We found a departure board and located our gate. We started walking down the long corridors with the people movers. We had plenty of time, so we walked on the carpet in the center instead of on the moving sidewalk. At our gate, we found two seats, and made ourselves comfortable. There were no employees at the gate yet. My husband went to get coffee and my water for the flight, and when he returned I went to find the restroom.

At the gate next to ours, there were Alaska employees, and even though it is so unlike my husband to do anything outside the rules or norm, he went to the neighboring gate and asked the woman working if she could seat us together. She changed our seats (moving us up a few rows, but we still weren’t together). She told us to wait until the crew members for our gate showed up.

As soon as the employees working our flight showed up, my husband jumped up and went to ask if they could seat us together. He told the woman at the gate, “My wife has a mental illness and can’t fly alone.”

The woman my husband talked to said she would work on it, but she wouldn’t have an answer for us until almost the time that we needed to board. The flight was a full flight. There was only one seat open on the plane. She must have had to ask other passengers if they were willing to move to try and accommodate my husband and me. I am not sure, but close to the time we were boarding, she called my husband up to the gate and gave him boarding passes for two seats that were next to each other – an aisle seat and a middle seat.

This may not seem like a big deal, but in a travel environment where no one seems to care about the comfort of the passenger, this was extraordinary. The Alaska employees worked hard to make sure that we would be as comfortable as possible and they did it willingly, kindly and with smiles.

We booked another flight to Seattle last night, and without a bit of thought or hesitation, we booked it on Alaska.

 

Don’t let Your Illness Keep you Home

21 Saturday Mar 2015

Posted by A Journey With You in bipolar, schizophrenia, travel

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

adventure, culture, fear, medication, mental illness, museums, travel, trips

When I was younger, before I developed symptoms of a mental illness, I loved to travel.  I lived in Egypt for two years, and visited several times after that.  I went with my family on a tour of Europe in a van.  I visited Israel, Greece, and Cyprus, and I went of a boat cruise down the Amazon River.  I have been to Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Columbia.  Even after I got married to my current husband, we continued to travel.  We went to Abu Dhabi and Dubai, and our favorite city is Paris.  When we reached the age of forty, we had a midlife crisis and sold everything, lived in a van for six months, and toured the United States.

Now that my illness has progressed, I don’t feel as comfortable traveling long distances.    I don’t want to be far from a pharmacy that has my records and can fill my medications.  I always worry that something will happen to my medication (lost or stolen) when we travel and that I will be without.  I have a terrible fear of being without my medication.  It is a life line to sanity for me, and I don’t mess around with that fact.  I’m not the kind of person who accidently misses a dose, or takes my meds only when I feel the need for it.  I take my meds twice a day, with food, exactly how they are prescribed.

I miss traveling though, and my husband misses it even more than I do so, in order to compensate for fewer trips, we have found ways to travel long distances in our own city.  One thing we do is buy annual passes to museums.  Museums can transport you to Paris, to Cairo, or to ancient Rome.  When there is a new exhibit at one of our favorite museums, we make a day of it.  We usually walk to the museums because several of them are within a mile of our house, and that reminds us of visiting other cities where we walk most of the day, or use public transportation.  After visiting one or two museums, we eat in a restaurant nearby.  We try to eat in a restaurant with an outdoor patio (the weather is usually nice where we live), and afterwards we go to a café for a cappuccino, because that is something we always do when we visit Europe.

There is something else we do to transport ourselves to another place.  We go to ethnic grocery stores and shops.  We are fortunate enough to live in a city with a fairly diverse population.  We can find Mexican, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Middle Eastern grocery stores within a ten mile radius of our house.  Last week, while waiting for our car to be fixed, we stumbled upon an Asian shopping mall.  It was fantastic.  There was a huge Korean grocery store with very inexpensive produce, all kinds of candy and chips we had never seen before, and things like dried fish, the largest selection of kimchi we had ever seen, and to us, other exotic and wonderful finds.   The mall also had a food court with one of my husband’s favorite meals, Pho, and for me, there was an incredible French bakery with a Vietnamese twist.  We knew we would visit again.

Other things that can make you feel like you have traveled to a distant land, is taking an architectural tour of your city.  Most cities have at least a few buildings that were designed by innovative architects.  In our city, we have a library, a court house, many personal residences, and some churches that are definitely worth seeing.  We love to read about the history of a building and then go and visit it.

Of course seeing a play, a poetry reading, a concert, or a movie can transport you for a few hours to another time and another place.

If you don’t have many opportunities in your own town, or city, consider taking a short road trip to a nearby town or city and exploring their local treasures.  You don’t have to get on a plane to experience other cultures these days.  Often times there are treasures worth exploring in your own back yard.  Plan an adventure, and book that trip!

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Categories

Top Posts & Pages

  • A Seismic Shift
  • Netflix's Maniac From the Perspective of a Person with Schizophrenia
Follow A Journey With You on WordPress.com

A Journey With You

A Journey With You

Social

  • View A Journey With You’s profile on Facebook
  • View @wr8ter’s profile on Twitter
  • View Rebecca Chamaa’s profile on Pinterest

Most Popular Recent Posts

  • facebook.com/ajourneywith…

Blog at WordPress.com.