Traveling with special needs - long flights

There were a few things that ended up being flight issues. I don't know that I have great answers for them, but I can tell you what we ran into.

As a diabetic who currently has all injectables in vials, not pens, I kind of hate the liquids rule. Ideally I would have the vials in a padded box of some kind that would protect them, but I need them in a plastic bag. It's true that the vials are pretty tough, but I have had one break once, and you never forget it. I keep a pair of socks in my purse, and once through security I roll the bag up in them.

If you are going to be injecting on the plane, you need to think about cleaning and disposal. I use individually packaged alcohol wipes for the one. My inelegant solution for the other is a plastic bag and saving the tip from the needle to put back on it. Most airline restrooms have sharps disposal now, so you are only keeping it until the end of the flight.

On the plus side, with international flights they are bringing you food and beverages on a regular basis, so you are unlikely to get dehydrated or end up with low blood sugar without having a remedy. You should still never count on that. I made sure to stock up on glucose tablets before we left, and it ended up being really important when we hit Amsterdam on the way back. I'll write more about that next week.

I had to keep track of medications for both my mother and myself. With the time changes that involves deciding how to split them up. There is no exact perfect way, but I look at getting us onto the local schedule. For the first flight we were leaving Monday morning and arriving Tuesday afternoon, without long layovers. I gave her the Monday evening medications about three hours after the equivalent of the dinner they served us. We had an airport transfer and started a new flight around 10 AM in the time zone we were going to be in, so I gave her the Tuesday morning pills after boarding. Possibly an hour or two earlier would have been better, but we were rushing to make our flight then. You do the best you can.

It would be very helpful if I could have kept my mother's pills in her pill organizer, but again, that is not something security likes. So if in the process of fishing through four bottles for five pills, one tiny one gets dropped and can never be found again, well, that could have been much worse.

There were four main issues to traveling with a dementia patient.

One was Mom's inability to leave her purse alone. It is supposed to be stowed under the seat, and I kept putting it there and she kept pulling it back out. Dementia patients may not be able to identify that it is their memories that are missing, but there is still a sense of loss, which can lead to obsessing over possessions. I eventually gave up, and the flight attendant only mentioned it when we were getting ready to land, at which point Mom did leave it there, probably because the words of someone in authority matter more than me.

I touched on the bathroom issue in an earlier post. On eight and ten hour flights, you can't be expected to hold it the entire time, and it's good to get up and move around some. It stressed her out a lot to think about getting up, but you can tell when there is more anxiety about needing to go, and then you need to be firm. I timed my bathroom visits to go with hers. I thought that made sense in terms of less getting up, and not leaving her alone in the row, but when I got out the first time she had wandered to the back of the plane and I know she did not know where she was. That was frightening. I was more firm on subsequent visits about telling her to wait right there, but there are no guarantees. I had told her to wait the first time too. That's where I think tag teaming with another person could be good.

Having a partner could also be helpful for the reminders, because she did forget where we were and where we were going at times, and what we had done with the luggage (more of that obsessing). One of our seatmates could tell, and he very kindly started making conversation with my mother, which could have been a good rest only I was drawn into the conversation too. I came home with a deep tiredness, but that was not the biggest problem.


The biggest problem was her tiredness. There is sleep deprivation, and the more tired she became, she not only became more disoriented but more hostile about it. One the way there we were met at the airport by a cousin and while we did make one visit first, I could then say that she needed to rest, and we went to the hotel. Even after just an hour or two of lying down she was somewhat better.

The return was much worse. Not only did it end up being longer, but then there was a much worse customs process, and no one to meet us. We used MAX for transportation to and from the airport on our California trip and it was fine, so that was still my plan. I quickly realized that I needed something faster and simpler, but it was midday so that added an expense. I probably could have done better with prearranging something. I have never used Lyft or Uber, but this probably would have been the time.