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Traveling with Autoimmune Disorders
I’m currently drafting this in a hotel room in Alabama, where I’m staying for the week to attend a Cybersecurity Conference. I wanted to talk a little about traveling with auto-immune disorders and a bum-shoulder. There isn’t a secret to this or something magical, but it does require that I take the time to make sure I have all my medications packed and to make sure that I stay on schedule. The trip to the airport, we less than interesting and fun, as I was flying out of Northern Virginia / DC area, and getting up to the airport can at times be a challenge and this was one of those days.
I live 1 hour away from the airport in normal traffic and today, Waze was telling us that I-95 was not the right choice and to take US-1. Alright, this trip is going to start off really badly. However, we made it to the airport in time for me to catch my flight. I was TSA-Precheck, which is nice and certainly sped things up. I haven’t traveled since 9/11, except once in 2011, so I knew that the process has changed a ton, but it was quick and painless.
I’m waiting to load up into the plane when my name gets called. Well, that is never a good thing, but in this case, they were just moving my seat so a family could sit together and they needed someone to sit in the exit row, which is usually a big man, and I fit that bill. Once on the plane, the trip was really smooth, until, we started our descent into Huntsville it was one hell of a bumpy ride, and I mean bumpy, like something you see in the movies. I have flown many times both commercial and military and this flight was the most turbulent that I have ever been on. We land and Huntsville is a total ghost town, and I just thought it was because it was a Sunday, but nope, this entire town is nothing but deadsville. Nice wide streets, well built up, but just no people, compared to Northern Virginia, where you can’t turn around without hitting someone.
I get my luggage and move to the rental car place and I was jealous because they gave a pickup truck to the lady before me, and I was slated to get a little car, but they said that they are out of the class of car that I requested, so they will give me a free upgrade. And sure enough, I was upgraded from Compact to a Dodge Ram 1500 Rebel, sweet. The Rebel package is aimed more toward people that are interested in taking their trucks off-road. The Rebel package upgrade includes 18-inch wheels, an upgraded off-road-focused suspension, a locking rear differential, Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, LED fog lamps, and a folding rear bench seat. I of course accepted the upgrade, duh. I get to the truck and exit the airport and the very first road I enter is a 70MPH highway so I had to punch the pedal, to see what this truck has under the hood and sure enough, the 5.7L HEMI has balls. I’m loving it.
I get to the hotel and nice, I got a very nice hotel, that has a happy hour every night and they comp you three free drinks, and to top it off, they serve “dinner items” every night. The first night it was mashed potatoes, meatballs, salad, nachos, soup, and salad. Plus free fountain sodas all day long. Damn, I hit a home run on the hotel. But this post isn’t about my trip, it is about traveling with auto-immune diseases.
I got lucky that my Humira injection was on Friday, two days before I left for the trip, so I didn’t need to worry about traveling with a refrigerated injection. But I was very nervous about traveling with all my medications as some of them are obviously controlled medications. To help me keep track of everything, I ordered this nice pill organizer from Amazon, and so far it is really helping me. But my concern was TSA and my controlled scripts, which turned out were not even the slightest concern. In fact they never even questioned me. I put my laptop and bag which contained all my medications, on the conveyer belt and it went right on through, with no questions. I picked it up and took off to the gate.
The actual travel process with the auto-immune disorders didn’t actually cause a problem, but I made sure that I purchased a bottle of water for the flight and a couple of snacks to help with hunger and beyond fatigue, which isn’t anything I can do about that, though I did doze on the flight, so that did help a little. I think that if I had to change anything, I will request early boarding on the return flight, so I can get on the plane and chill. Since my seat was changed on the flight out I was asked to board in the last group, which wasn’t a terrible problem, but I was standing waiting for a while and then had to stand inside the plane while everyone in front of me got seated. I think boarding sooner will be better, but I just check the American Airlines website and I would have to pay for priority boarding. So I will just deal with it. What sucks is the Government gets the cheapest tickets available, which means you board last.
I think being able to have downtime on the back end of the trip is a HUGE help too, but I likely won’t have that available to me on the return trip. I will jump right into running balls to the walls.
Safe Travels!
