Now that I really have your attention, let me say that no, this isn’t how to hide things from law enforcement officers! But how many of us take medications daily? Most of us in the “mature” age bracket would have to raise our hands. I always say I can’t be too unhealthy, I only take two colors of pills! But trying to be serious (I always tell my kids I am at least as funny as any comedian, they don’t laugh either), do you know how to take care of your medications when you are camping?
I find most people don’t know how to take care of medications. First off, medications are required to have on the label (or if a prescription printed on the information sheet) what temperature they should be stored at. Often the range is about 40 to 88 degrees, but it can vary widely. But your camper medicine cabinet is often a bad place. Your bathroom is often little and stuffy, prone to overheating in the summer with the door closed or with hot showers and high humidity. Your refrigerator is too cold for some. Some Medications can handle more heat or colder temperatures. But all have limits. Often the best place is the refrigerator as most medications do better in cold than warm. One very good example of this is Nitroglycerin which many heart patients carry. If you have Nitro pills or similar pills, the best place you can keep them in is the fridge in a sealed plastic bag or container.
If your pills won’t take the cold of the refrigerator, often the best thing for your pills is in a plastic bag in a small cooler in a low cabinet with a bottle of water inside. The small cooler with the bottle of water will help stop temperature extremes; the low cabinet is to also protect against temperature extremes. Higher cabinets often overheat in the summer and floor cabinets can be too hot or too cold. Also what ever the medications are in they need to be waterproof or sealed in waterproof bags or containers as liquids and humidity are as damaging as heat.
The best medication carrier I ever saw was one of the 12-volt plug-in coolers about the size of a six pack for your favorite liquid beverage. It can be set to either warm or cool and uses very little energy to do it.
Now, as you are moving your medications to a better place, please also look at them and weed out the outdated medications and throw them away. Make sure to replace them with new medications and count them to make sure you have enough to last you during your trip! You may need your Doctor to write out extra scripts for you to take along if you are going on long trips, and don’t forget a script for oxygen if you need that too. Better safe than sorry!
Now is also the time to think about how they look, yes it is a sad fact of life that some people will try to steal medications. A Plain storage container that doesn’t have Drugs written all over it or is easily seen through and can be easily hidden from plain sight will be safer from the casual thief. Nothing will stop the determined thief but, if he can’t find them easily, he might move on to someone that is less prepared!
Now, when you leave on your trip, you will have fresh, properly stored medications to help guard your health.
Your obedient servant,
Gary C. Smith, Jr.