Medicine Chest

Aaron will say that I’m an over-packer.  But he exaggerates.  I simply like to have options and feel prepared.  Yes, that may mean that I bring two suitcases on a weekend trip, but you never know what will come up!  And I hate the feeling of knowing I have the perfect thing for [fill-in-the-blank-scenario] at home.  But when it comes to packing, Aaron and I agree on one thing: Bella Star’s first aid kit should be filled to the hilt.

It’s been remarkably easy to get all the prescription medications that we (hope to never) need for our trip.  We’re not the first boat to sail off into the sunset, which means that most of the research on which medicines to bring has already been done for us.  Thanks to a list from our good friends on Hello World, some old fashioned internet queries and an hour or so with our doctor, we now have an assortment of antibiotics, creams, pills and injectables to hopefully see us through any number of horrible maladies.  Sure, we’ll be within a reasonable distance of skilled medical care in many cases (AKA not Nurse Nicole), but what about the times when we’re out hiking or beachcombing or bushwhacking?

Additionally, we made a trip to the downtown Seattle travel clinic and got ourselves shot full of vaccines for hepatitis A, hepatitis B, tetanus and yellow fever.  At $900 for the two of us, we passed on the rabies vaccination, although Aaron is a sucker for cute, fuzzy dogs in need of a pet, so I’m second-guessing that decision a bit.  The pill form of the typhoid vaccine actually affords longer protection, so we opted for that over more shots (Aaron was pleased).

So with our various vaccinations, ream of prescriptions, stockpile of Band-aids and enrollment in a two-day wilderness first aid course coming up in a few weeks, we should be just as well prepared for sprains, hypothermia and the old “beaver fever” as we can be.