While I am in no condition to travel these days, I have dreams that someday I will be improved enough to consider leaving my own hometown for reasons other than medical needs once again. When living with chronic illness, these kinds of things have to be carefully planned and strategically plotted. You can't just "pack up and go" but need to think through so many things. I remember one cross-country trip several years ago where the airline mangled my wheelchair in their checked baggage handling, then would not cover the damage claiming it didn't qualify as checked baggage in the first place (though they didn't bother warning me before accepting it when we were preparing to board).
I know for some of us (physically or financially) travel is limited only to our dreams. But dream a little with me. Where would you go if you could travel anywhere? Why would you choose that destination? What preparations would you make to make this trip as do-able as you could?
The last fun trip I took was a little over a year ago with my family. We won a week's free RV rental and I learned that taking a "home" on wheels was a fairly workable solution for my travel/health needs. I blogged the entire trip Classic RV Adventures.
What are your best travel tips for navigating away-from-home with chronic health challenges? Do you know of helpful travel websites or resources? I stumbled upon one today called Disability Holidays Guide that prompted this post. Is there are tool or tip you don't leave home without? How do you manage medication, sleep schedules, special transportation needs? Please share!
2 comments:
Hello Jenni great post. How are you? I use a motorized wheelchair full-time however I do have a manual chair for backup and special situations during travel. I need to look into getting a new manual chair actually now that I think about it. :-) I have had the current one for a long-time.
Thanks for commenting on the discussion at the site I maintain
Scott Rains is a disability travel expert who has a great site called the Rolling Rains Report http://www.rollingrains.com/ I think Scott is definitely an excellent resource regarding these issues.
Sincerely,
Rudy Sims
Rudy, thanks for the input. Headed to check out Scott's site now. :)
I've been a member of your website for quite some time after finding you on Twitter, but I kind of forgot about the forums there for a while and was glad to "re-find" you again this week. :)
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