Medications and prescriptions

A traveler's guide to carrying medications and getting prescriptions filled on the road

Prescription meds

Take enough of any prescription medication you’re on to last your trip plus one week (just in case).

Keep all pills in their original vials—that and an innocent smile will help prove to customs officials that they're prescription drugs, not narcotics.

Pack meds in your carry-on

Many folks mistakenly pack their mini first aid kit in their toiletry bag, since that is where they keep their medicine cabinet is at home. This is silly, because the odds of needing it while you are in bed asleep are minimal.

Insetad, toss it into your daypack, where it can do you some good while you're on the plane and out and about your sightseeing.Bring along extra written prescriptions in each drug's generic, chemical name, not a brand name. This type of prescription will help customs officials approve it, and foreign druggists fill it.

Over-the-counter meds

From the over-the-counter department, the only necessities to toss into your mini first aid kit are:

• Aspirin (or your favorite reliever of pain, swelling, and fevers—though aspirin does double-duty as first aid for heart attacks)
• Dramamine or motion-sickness wristbands (twisting foreign roads and bus drivers can test the most iron of stomachs; I swear by Relief Bands, well worth the outrageous price; I wouldn't have survived the 40-foot seas off Antarctica without one)
Useful gear

Day/Night Pill Organizer
Compact and lightweight, the Day/Night Pill Organizer's 16 individually labelled pouches are color-coded for daytime and nighttime use, and have easy-to-use slide-locks to keep pills and vitamins secure...

Compact Medicine Case
Two insulated pouches accommodate a cold pack (not included) to protect insulin and other temperature sensitive medicines...

Duo Large Insulin Cooling Case
Insulin Cooling and Insulating Case makes it easy to travel with temperature-sensitive medicines. Holds six vials with syringes or four insulin pens...
• Pepto-Bismol (for big meals, foreign foods, overindulgence, indigestion, and mild diarrhea; chewables are handiest)
• Antidiarrheals (Immodium/Loperamide —for when what you've got is more than Pepto can handle)
• Decongestant (hint: take one before your flight to cut down on ear-popping)
• Antihistamine (never know what foreign plant in bloom will tickle your allergen responders; also useful to pop one, just in case, if you get stung by something local to which you very well might be allergic)
• Also: Band-Aids (just a handful), moleskin (for blisters), and triple antibiotic (Neosporin, etc.)

Don't overpack meds

Don't bother carrying tons of the stuff. A few tabs of each will suffice.

Everything you can buy at home they carry (or something similar) in most of the rest of the world, easily obtainable from any corner farmacia. Remember: Bayer is a German company, after all.

I also throw into my mini first aid kit a couple of gelcap doses of whatever multi-symptom cold and flu meds I happen to have in the bathroom cabinet, just in case I come down with something and can’t find an open pharmacy right away.