When traveling abroad, you need to be prepared for almost any eventuality, not least of all, illness or minor malady. Consider the fact that if you need a prescription, even for something minor, you would have to go to an emergency room to get it. You can’t expect your hotel to have an in-house doctor like the Villa Premiere in Puerto Vallarta! So just in case your hotel doesn’t have a doctor on site, these are the medications and health aids you should bring on your trip abroad.
Antibiotics
While not based on personal experience, one of the more common infections on a trip is a skin infection from a scratch or a urinary tract infection (UTI). You can’t bring a whole pharmacy with you but there’s a group of antibiotics that can cover many potential infections. They’re called fluroquinolones.
You may know them better as Cipro or Levaquin. They also go by the generic names of ciprofloxacin and levofloxacin, respectively. The reason I go into such detail about their trade and generic names is because all of the drugs in this class have ‘flox’ in the name. So regardless of what country you’re in, and if you forgot to bring your own Cipro or Levaquin with you, you’ll know you’re getting the right medication because ‘flox’ will be part of the name on the bottle, even if the rest of name doesn’t look familiar.
DripDrop for Dehydration
If it was realistic to bring a bag of IV fluids along with your own IV tubing and needle, I would. But since this is difficult for a host of reasons – such as you may not be a nurse or a doctor and the TSA would probably question you – DripDrop is the next best thing. It’s a powder formulation that you add to a bottle of water to replace lost sodium and potassium and other essentials elements that you need in addition to water. It won’t treat your diarrhea but it’ll keep your diarrhea from leading to your dehydration! DripDrop is available without a prescription.
Nausea
I’ve got one word for you: Zofran. This is the greatest anti-nausea medication ever created. It comes in a dissolvable tablet. So even if you’re vomiting, this will be absorbed under your tongue. No need to swallow. It’s available in a generic form as ondansetron.
Enjoy your next trip abroad. And the best way to guarantee it is to bring along this trusty pack of meds.
