Travelling with Illness
Travel is supposed to be fun, right? Fun, relaxing, a break from it all... inherently enjoyable. I'm sure those of you with kids are now yelling at me, but I bet even louder yells are coming from the chronic pain community. Cos guess what?
Getting yourself comfortable and managing your health is hard enough at home, with all of your supports, meds, routines, and home comforts. Now try taking all of that away, and still managing. Cos that's what travel with chronic illness looks like.
You can try to ersatz your way to a home-from-home style vacation, of course. Get yourself as close to comfortable as possible. For example, last week we went away to a cottage. It was less than a four hour drive away from our home, we booked a place with every modern comfort (including a single level for the main rooms to avoid stairs), we packed a car load of stuff including food, meds, pillows, and healthcare devices... and even doing all this, it was not quite enough. Cos it's not home, and even when you are home, not everything is perfect all the time.
Suddenly you're in coping mode, when you're supposed to be on holiday. You're start bargaining with your health in an attempt to make your needs as minimally inconvenient to others as possible. Cos, you know, they're on holiday too! So med times are missed, meals are weird, sleep is all off and you can't take a nice hot bath to ease your aching body cos there isn't one. Fun, right? Holidays! Yay!
Travelling with chronic illness sucks.
Getting yourself comfortable and managing your health is hard enough at home, with all of your supports, meds, routines, and home comforts. Now try taking all of that away, and still managing. Cos that's what travel with chronic illness looks like.
You can try to ersatz your way to a home-from-home style vacation, of course. Get yourself as close to comfortable as possible. For example, last week we went away to a cottage. It was less than a four hour drive away from our home, we booked a place with every modern comfort (including a single level for the main rooms to avoid stairs), we packed a car load of stuff including food, meds, pillows, and healthcare devices... and even doing all this, it was not quite enough. Cos it's not home, and even when you are home, not everything is perfect all the time.
Suddenly you're in coping mode, when you're supposed to be on holiday. You're start bargaining with your health in an attempt to make your needs as minimally inconvenient to others as possible. Cos, you know, they're on holiday too! So med times are missed, meals are weird, sleep is all off and you can't take a nice hot bath to ease your aching body cos there isn't one. Fun, right? Holidays! Yay!
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