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Travel and holidays

Pharmacies abroad in an emergency

Started 25 April 2025 · 21 replies · 209 hearts · read 2.2k times

NúriaBarcelona, ES · 25 April 2025
about a year ago

A question rather than an update: Pharmacies abroad in an emergency

The logistics of this are defeating me more than the medicine is.

I have worked out a system that mostly holds and there is one part of it that keeps failing, and I would like to hear how other people solved that part.

I have a plan for the ordinary weeks and no plan at all for the unusual ones, and the unusual ones are where everything has gone wrong.

If anybody has an arrangement that works and is willing to write it out, I would be very grateful.

70

TillyHereford, UK
#1

I keep the original packaging with the label on it, always, which somebody here recommended and which I gather makes questions much shorter.

7

NoorFacilitatorSingapore
#2

Adding a marker so it does not get lost: the most practical sentence in a thread like this is almost never the first one, and somebody arriving late will scroll straight past it.

19

SalmaManchester, UK
#3

Noor said something I want to sit with for a second.

My insurance needed a declaration and it took one phone call and did not change the price. Worth doing rather than hoping.

5

VeraRiga, LV
#4

What helped was doing a dry run at home with the cool bag for a full day, so I knew how long it actually held temperature.

10

AriaAuckland, NZ
#5

Never in the hold. That is the one thing everybody in this circle agrees on and it is worth repeating on every thread.

6

TullaTralee, IE
#6

Salma, thank you for that. It gives me somewhere to start from.

What I found is that other people's cooking on holiday was a bigger adjustment than any of the logistics.

13

MimiHong Kong
#7

Agreed, and I have nothing to add to it.

9

PrunellaBury St Edmunds, UK
#8

The eight-hour difference took me about four days to settle into, and I kept the interval rather than the clock time, on advice.

11me too 4

DuncanPerth, UK
#9

What I would flag is the return journey. I plan the outbound obsessively and had a difficult time on a delayed flight home.

9

NoleneDurban, ZA
#10

What Mimi described happened to me too, in a slightly different order.

Ferry travel is a different problem again because of the time and the temperature, and I have found the cool bag margin much tighter.

10me too 7

NevGrimsby, UK
#11

This is why I read the boring weeks. Thank you for the boring weeks.

8

MinnieDoncaster, UK
#12

Something I got wrong was assuming a long drive would be easy. The car got hot and I had not planned for that at all.

6

OzzyAdelaide, AU
#13

I found the anxiety about travelling with it much worse than the travelling. Nine trips in and it is now completely routine.

10

NissaHaifa, IL
#14

Gently disagreeing with Ozzy, or rather adding the other half of it.

The pharmacy at my destination was helpful when I had a problem, which I had not thought of as an option and now include in my planning.

8

OzrenZagreb, HR
#15

Something practical: a photograph of everything, including the label, on my phone. Costs nothing and has been useful twice.

9

BlueStroud, UK
#16

Coming back to what Ozzy wrote further up, because it is the bit I keep thinking about.

My prescriber wrote a two-line letter that has crossed nine borders and been read once. Still worth having.

7me too 4

TamarPlymouth, UK
#17

Blue, thank you for that. It gives me somewhere to start from.

I found holidays hard for reasons that had nothing to do with logistics. Other people's meals, other people's schedules, and no routine at all.

11

IzoldaVilnius, LT
#18

The thing that made mine easy was doing it before the trip so that the whole holiday was clear. Simple, and I did not think of it for two years.

9

NúriaBarcelona, ES
#19

Blue, thank you for that. It gives me somewhere to start from.

My experience is that the practical side is solved and well documented and the social side is the part that still catches me out.

12me too 1

NoorFacilitatorSingapore
#20

Gently: three replies have suggested the same thing and the fourth has said it does not work for them. Both are useful and neither cancels the other.

19

BrackenHexham, UK
#21

Coming back to what Núria wrote further up, because it is the bit I keep thinking about.

Somebody here suggested keeping everything in a single labelled pouch so that a bag search takes thirty seconds. Excellent advice.

11