Category: PD Travel Tip

Maryland 2025 Trip Report (Day 0)

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This trip did not start well. While packing yesterday, I couldn’t find my neck pillow. Fortunately, today’s flight is a short one, so I’m hoping my neck will be OK. On the drive to the airport, I had a collision. Specifically, the sideview mirror on the passenger side collided with a road construction sign that was sticking out from the curb. Lucky for me that my mirrors can be folded inward. I was afraid the mirror was damaged, but I stopped to check it out, I found it had just been partly folded inward. It was fine once I manhandled it back into place.

After two more near-collisions, I got to the Charlotte airport, where I chose to make use of the wheelchair service. My pusher got me to the TSA checkpoint and helped me unload all the stuff that needed to go through the X-ray machines. He then waited in the recombobulation area while I went into a private screening room for the full pat-down. Now that I have the pat-down down pat, it didn’t take long until I was back in the wheelchair. The pusher didn’t start pushing right away, so I figured he was just giving me more time to recombobulate. So, I got my belt, shoes, phone, etc. all in place and fastened. Again, though, no response from the pusher.

After waiting a moment longer, I formally announced that I was ready to head to the gate. The pusher asked whether I was certain; I confirmed, and off we went to the gate. Gate A24. Those of you who are frequent flyers based in Charlotte know what this means. Y’see, gate 24 is part of a recently completed extension of an existing concourse. This new area is a LONG walk from the terminal.

As I was de-wheelchairing, I went to grab my carry-on bag from the rack at the back of the wheelchair. It wasn’t there. A brief conversation with the pusher man revealed that one pair of TSA employees had been inspecting my carry-on while another pair was inspecting me in the privacy of the screening room. Apparently, the bag inspectors had not finished by the time I was ready to go.

Despite my morning mirror mishap, I still had plenty of time left before my flight. Wheelchair man undertook the long walk back to the TSA checkpoint, leaving the wheelchair with me as collateral. The TSA folks let him take the bag and haul it all the way out to gate A24 and a waiting Cedric. And so, I recognize that I have another…

PD Travel Tip:

Always keep track of your own bag(s). Specifically, don’t trust airport or TSA employees to track your bags for you, even if you are required to leave a bag in their custody.

I boarded the plane normally and, despite not having a neck pillow, I also slept normally.

After picking up my rental car, I made the 2.5-hour drive to Cumberland, Maryland. I found a Mexican restaurant there called El Rio Grande. This turns out to be a small chain, that has no relation to the small chain of restaurants in Colorado that use the same name. Unlike the Colorado chain, the one here in Maryland does not put insane amounts of alcohol in their margaritas. But they make up for it by serving HUGE margaritas. I could only drink about half of one. Oh, yeah. Food was excellent, too.

Tomorrow’s destination: A scenic train ride.

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Colorado 2024 Trip Report (Days 2 through 5)

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Day 2: In my previous post, I mentioned that I would be staying up late to see if waiting for exhaustion to set in would make for better sleep. Well, it worked. Too well. I didn’t wake up until 11 AM on Day 2. If … Continue reading Colorado 2024 Trip Report (Days 2 through 5)

Man vs. Cotton

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I am, as most of you know, taking multiple medications AND multiple dietary supplements in my fight against Parkinson’s Disease (PD). This of course means that I am handling a variety of pill bottles, featuring a variety of anti-tamper / safety seals. But I’ve discovered an industry secret: These seals are not actually designed to protect you. They are designed to make you drop the pill bottle at the exact moment the seal pops off, so that they spill all over the place, causing you to lose half of them so that you have to buy more. But not all of them are like that. Some bottles don’t spill because a cotton ball has been stuffed in on top of the pills. This cotton ball cannot be removed by anyone with PD tremors or really anyone with full-grown fingers. I believe the drug / supplement companies are trying to get children interested in pills at an early age. Think about it: a cap that is supposedly child-proof (what kid isn’t going to see that as a challenge?) followed by a cotton ball that requires child-size fingers to remove.

For the longest time, I handled the “safety seals” by stabbing them with either a steak knife or a car key – whichever was handy. As for the cotton balls, I would always fumble around trying to pin a substantial amount of the cotton between one finger and the inner wall of the bottle, then keep it pinned as I tried to slide it up to where I could get a second finger involved. With some bottles, this could take months.

It wasn’t until surprisingly recently that it occurred to me I should employ some kind of tool to remove the cotton ball. My first thought was needle-nose pliers. But I know where those have been. So…no. Don’t ask, just know it’s no. So, I thought to myself, “What’s a smaller (and hopefully more sanitary) version of needle-nose pliers?” The answer: tweezers! I retrieved the one pair of tweezers that I own, and set to work on a newly opened bottle of pramipexole. To my great delight, they removed the cotton ball with ease. On top of that, they turned out to be the ideal seal-stabber. Since I could be just about anywhere when the need to open a new medication or supplement bottle arises, I added tweezers to my packing list. And thus we have the latest PD Travel Tip.

PD Travel Tip: Pack tweezers.

NEW Helpful Tool!

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Long ago, I realized it would be a good idea to take an inventory of my meds about a week before each trip I take, to ensure I’ll have enough to last me through the trip. For a long time, I did all the math in my head. But the number of prescriptions keeps growing, and so does the number of places where I keep them. So, before my last trip (Vermont), I decided to build a spreadsheet to help me with this task. It occurred to me that I’m surely not the first person to do this, but I’m also surely not the last. So, in hopes that some o’ y’all may get some use out of this, I am making my creation freely available to download. Here’s a quick preview of the beast, which I call MedSpred:

Start by typing the names of all your medications and/or dietary supplements into the “Drug” column under the red section. If you need to add more lines for more meds, you should be able to add lines normally. The formulas should be entered automatically, so your new row should have zeroes in columns C, H, and I. Now, in Column B under the Red “Demand” section, enter the number of pills you take per day, for each medication / supplement.

Next go to Row 5, directly under the green bar, and enter a short name or description for each place where you keep a stash of meds. For example, I keep the bulk of my daytime meds in the kitchen, the bulk of my bedtime meds in my bedroom, a day or so worth of meds in a fanny pack I keep just inside my front door, and a two-day supply in my Aware In Care kit (which lives in the trunk of my car). If your meds are strewn across more than four locations, you may add more columns (again, the formulas should be updated automatically), but you should seriously consider consolidating.

Now the math fun begins! In the yellow cell (C2), enter the total of number days you need to have covered – including the days between now and your trip (e.g., if you will be leaving 7 days from now, on a 7-day trip, you would enter 14). Lo and/or behold, column C now shows how many total pills you will need for each medicine and/or supplement! Go now, if you will, to each of your med stashes. Enter the number of pills of each medicine at each cache. Unless you only have unopened bottles, this will require actual counting.

Once you have entered all of your information as described above, look at the purple-headed “Result” column. A negative number means you don’t have enough of that drug /supplement to last the whole trip. Contact your pharmacy / doctor immediately to make sure you can get the amount you need before you have to leave. If you get a result that’s at or near zero, you might want to contact your pharmacy / doctor while you’re away, to make sure your meds are waiting for you as soon as you get back.

In case it helps, here’s an example, showing my completed MedSpred for my last trip:

If you’ve gotten this far and think you want to give MedSpred a try, click here to see the available files.