Mom’s Traveling Medicine Cabinet

On a trip we typically being along a traveling medicine cabinet of sorts: a gallon zip-bag filled with what we have found to be essential medicines and cure-alls. When packing your own bags, you might consider the following:

In addition to any maintenance medications, I typically pack:

• Children’s Tylenol
• Children’s Motrin

(I bring them both incase I need to alternate them to break a tough fever.)

• Benadryl
• General cold and cough medicine
• Dramamine
• Dosing spoons or cups
• Neosporin
• Bandages
• Claritin and Advil (for the grown-ups)

I try to keep my bag from getting to heavy by packing these essentials, but depending on how remote (or tropical) a destination might be, the bag could grow to accommodate nighttime cold medicine, and anti-itch cream, bug spray and sun screen.

For trips to well-populated places, rather than stock up, I pack enough medicine to handle about a day of illness (or whatever is left in the bottle, whichever is more), assuming I could go to a local drug store to buy more of whatever I need.

In packing, I try to think of what I might need in the middle of the night under strange circumstances and go from there. On one trip I left the Benadryl at home, only to have our son break out in a body-covering rash one evening after rolling down a huge hill of freshly cut (and maybe fertilized??) grass. I was able to go buy Benadryl, but it would have been better had we not had to.

Before we leave for a trip, I check my dosing list at home to be sure I know what the proper dose is each for each child and each medication. Then I take a Sharpie marker and write each child’s correct dose along with his or her initial on each bottle.

I also bring a photocopy of our medical insurance information (in addition to the original) and list our doctor’s information on the paper and store it with the medicine so a copy of everything is in one place.

Depending on your child’s age, take care to keep your medicine stash out of reach. Just like at home, you don’t want curious hands finding the medicine and tragedy to ensue.

See anything I’ve forgotten? What do you typically take?

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