The Reasonably Good Health I Had Enjoyed Up to This Point Would Not Continue Forever

Day 18: Travelling with CF

Thailand, 2007 | Image Credit: Grant Parsons

My first significant bleed was a reminder that the reasonably good health I had enjoyed up to this point would not continue forever. I had my vision corrected with laser surgery, I began to write The Mystery of the Sixty-Five Roses, and then I started to travel overseas.
My first overseas destination was Thailand. — and once I started traveling, I didn’t want to stop.
Between 2005 and 2008, I visited Thailand twice, Bali and Singapore. The difference in environment and pollution levels always saw my lungs struggle for the first few days as they adjusted. 

Ventolin was my best friend on these trips.

A portable pharmacy
My carry-on luggage nearly always hit its weight limit as I had to carry my small pharmacy on the plane.
Although I’d love to be able to be a spontaneous traveller and go on a holiday at the drop of a hat, as with everything else when it comes to CF, traveling requires careful planning. Letters from my medical team with details of my medical history along with the list of medications that I intend to carry through customs are essential.

Insurance in a bottle
Along with my regular medications, I would also carry oral antibiotics (so I could start treatment immediately if I experienced a problem) and tranexamic acid (which helps the blood clot quickly in case I had a bleed while overseas.)
Travel Insurance companies have strange ideas regarding CF and travel. They place a lot of weight on hospitalizations or the administration of IV antibiotics in the last 12 months. Ticking those boxes increases the odds that rejection for cover for CF as a pre-existing condition will be the result.

Ironically, right after a course of IV antibiotics is when a person with CF is most fit to travel.

Next in the 31 Days of Cystic Fibrosis series - Disability Discrimination Was Still Alive and Well in the Noughties
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Mama Bear wanted me removed from the school immediately. The Principal was a man with little backbone, known to the staff as the Parent’s Principal because he tended to shove his staff under a bus to please parents.
Mama Bear and the Parent’s Principal banded together. They wanted me gone.

31 Days of Cystic Fibrosis is an awareness-raising campaign to coincide with
the national Cystic Fibrosis (CF) awareness month in Australia.
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​If you’ve just joined the journey and want to start at the beginning, you’ll find the first post here: Your Daughter Has Cystic Fibrosis