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Travel and holidays

Long-haul with a needle phobia

Started 5 November 2024 · 14 replies · 163 hearts · read 3.2k times

TullaTralee, IE · 5 November 2024
1.7 years ago

Starting a thread on this because it keeps coming up in ones and twos: Long-haul with a needle phobia

Anyone else navigating this? I feel as though every piece of advice I read was written for someone with a completely different week.

This is the boring administrative kind of problem, which I gather is the kind that actually gets solved when you ask.

The thing I have not been able to find anywhere is how people manage this when the week has no fixed shape at all.

I would rather hear one person's actual arrangement in detail than five general suggestions, if anybody is willing to write theirs out.

Thank you. This circle has solved four practical problems for me already and I am hoping for a fifth.

54

NúriaBarcelona, ES
#1

What I would say is get a letter from your prescriber. I have never needed it and I would not travel without it.

10

MimiHong Kong
#2

Núria has already said most of this and I want to add the one part that was different for me.

Security has never once been a problem for me across about nine trips. I keep everything in hand luggage and have never been asked anything.

8

NoorFacilitatorSingapore
#3

Facilitator note: the guides cover the practical side of this reasonably well, and what this thread has that they do not is somebody's actual Tuesday.

19

TamarPlymouth, UK
#4

The hotel fridge is the thing to check before you book. Mine was a minibar that did not go cold enough and I found out on arrival.

6

VeraRiga, LV
#5

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

I split everything across two bags in case one goes missing, and on one trip that turned out to be the reason nothing went wrong.

11

SalmaManchester, UK
#6

Thank you for the update. Threads that stop are the worst kind.

9me too 7

OzzyAdelaide, AU
#7

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

13

BlueStroud, UK
#8

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

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

7

OzrenZagreb, HR
#9

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

11

BrackenHexham, UK
#10

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

11

NissaHaifa, IL
#11

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

Coming back from a three-week trip to say it was entirely uneventful, which is the outcome I wanted to read about before I went.

15

NevGrimsby, UK
#12

Thirteen hours in the air and the whole thing came down to a cool bag and a printed letter, and both of those took ten minutes to arrange.

10me too 2

NoorFacilitatorSingapore
#13

I want to slow this down slightly. Every household described in a thread like this is real, and not one of those arrangements transfers whole to anybody else, which is why the detail matters more than the conclusion.

25

DuncanPerth, UK
#14

No wisdom, just: I am sorry. That sounds genuinely hard.

8