Getting Sick on Vacation

Getting Sick on Vacation

It's something that will inevitably happen! And it's not fun! But if it happens, what should you do? Today, we share our insights on the situation.

Transcript

We're the Essary family and we're exploring America one destination at a time. On today's episode of TravelEssary we're going to discuss getting sick on vacation. Let's chat. 

Welcome and thank you for joining us on this episode. As we talk about a topic that not a whole lot of people are talking about, but something that if you do a lot of traveling or you go on vacation, There's a chance that you're going to run into this situation. And to know a little tips and tricks about how to deal with that situation and how to take care of yourself while you're traveling or to take care of loved ones. 

 We're going to be talking about.  How would it take care of yourself or how to deal with being sick on vacation?  It doesn't matter if you catch the flu. If you've got the stomach bug, if you have other elements or things that are going to keep you from doing the activities that you have on your trip or anything like that. So let's jump into this. If you go on Google and you're like, Hey, if I get sick on vacation, what do I do? You're not going to find a whole bunch of stuff. That's going to give you a good detailed list or to give you good ideas. Besides your everyday. Just go get medicine type thing. Now, although that is definitely one of them, but there are so many other things that you can do to not only continue. Your vacation, but also help. Keep yourself in good health while you're on vacation.  And it's definitely easier when it's just adults and someone gets sick. But once you throw a child into the mix, when it's one of your children that gets sick on vacation. It makes everything 10 times worse. I hate when my children get sick, when we're at home, like it's always a stressful experience and you just don't like seeing your kids sick, but when they get sick on vacation, . It really kind of throws everything off if you're not prepared for that. 

It does. And it's just one of those things that,  especially, if your kid goes to public schools, And the wintertime comes in. You know, all the kids pass around all their germs and everything, and then they're missing school and they're at home. And you're having to deal with that are taken off work and that there is an inconvenience to that.  But not as  inconvenience as getting sick while you're on vacation, that just takes it to a whole new level, because usually you have a schedule, usually have something that you're trying to do while you're not at home. 

Something that  you're trying to do while you're on vacation. And then. This monkey ranch gets thrown into it 

yeah. The first tip that I can give is if someone in your family is prone to some sort of sickness, go ahead and bring the medicines that you know, they're going to need. For example, when we go to east Texas or into Louisiana, I know that Justin's allergies our 17 year old. They're going to go insane. 

There's something in the air that he's allergic to. I don't know. But I know for a fact, every single time we drive through that area, it's not going to be good. And so I pack allergy medicine for him when we are traveling. Through east Texas or through Louisiana, so that we can go ahead and nip that in the bud. 

I give it to him before we leave. I give it to him while we're traveling. That way it's not such a big deal, because let me tell you how many times we have went through the area and he was young and he got the allergies that turned into an ear infection or sinus infection or something awful during one of our trips.  

And not only allergies, there's other things  like, for me, Yeah, whenever we go to a theme park, especially six flags over Texas. I get motion sickness. It's going to happen. I go ahead and prepare. I go ahead and get trauma. I mean, I get drawn with me and I take my medicine before we even leave. 

I might pop another one, you know, whenever it's safer for me to have another one, because I know that if I ride certain rides or if it's too hot or if I'm not hydrated, That it's definitely going to flare up. And at that point I am stuck riding  the log ride or the river raft ride, which isn't a bad, it's really great. 

But if it's kind of cold or if you're going for, in the wintertime, whenever those rods are shut down, it makes for a miserable time while everyone else is having a good time. And you could be enjoying that time with them and making memories, but you're stuck because you didn't. Prepare for things that you knew. Was a possibility. , 

so if you can prepare for it. Then absolutely  prepare as much as possible. Yeah. Especially if it's something, you know, someone in your family is prone to. And then on the backside of that, if anyone in your house. Has been sick recently. Go ahead and prepare for everyone else to catch that. Well, you're on your trip. So we actually just experienced that. , we took a trip to Carlsbad, New Mexico. 

And the day before we left,  our daughter, our 15 year old got sick. She had a 24 hour stomach bug.  And then she was fine by the time we left and the next day. Yeah, we thought it was cool that like, Hey, this is over and just hit her. We're just gonna continue on our trip as normal. Yeah. And no one else was feeling sick at the time. 

And she, she woke up feeling great the next morning. And low and behold during the trip, a couple of ours started getting knocked down. In fact, we had to cut , our excursion. Through the Catherine's Carlsbad caverns. Because Justin was starting to get sick and then Jasper was starting to get sick and.  If you'd like to hear more about that, please go check out our Patrion. 

We have a whole podcast. , our December. Podcast is all about the woes we faced with our little baby on that trip. . We did not know at the time that he was becoming ill, but prepare for that. I wished I would have thought of that when we were on our last trip, I could have went ahead and start handing out like Pepto-Bismol or something. Just just to make everyone feel a little bit better while we were on our trip. 

And then of course, by the time we got home, we were all in full blown sickness and it was not fun. But if someone has been sick where they've had the flu. Or a stomach bug or just a cold go ahead and prepare for everyone else , in your family to. Possibly catch that, bring whatever cold medicines or fever reducers that you need, especially if you have small children, just go ahead and bring it with you because.  More likely than not. 

You're going to need it on your trip.  And this would be my first tip into preventive, trying to stay as healthy as possible while you're on your trips is I, I'm not a big advocate and I don't really push him. My wife will attest this, any kind of medication whatsoever. If I get sick, I try to keep it as natural as possible that my body do the work. You know, stay home a couple of days and it'll figure itself out. Uh, there is a few times where , it's been bad and I'm like, I've got to take some type of medicine. So if you know that. Someone in your household or someone that you're traveling with has been sick. 

I would, I would even say in the last 48 hours. So the last two days that they've been sick before you go on is go ahead and take a little bit of medicine. Because if it can prevent it or it can prolonging it. Especially if it's just like a weekend thing or if it's just a week, then there's a good chance that you're going to get through it before you get sick, or you might not even catch it as bad as the person previously did. 

So. I definitely take some preventive medicines. , if that's even kind of impossible, but you know, if you know that someone's been running fevers, then go ahead and take,  some aspirin or some Advil or some fever or NyQuil or something, , to just try to get ahead of that, because you're going to be wearing your body out on vacation. You're going to be moving. 

You're going to be going.  Your routine that you normally keep, whether you're at the house or you're at work is going to be thrown off just a little bit. And that's enough for your body to recognize something is going on. And it's trying to. Figure out  what's really happening. And then on top of that, it's fighting sickness and sickness can hit you a whole lot harder when you're on vacation than whenever you're at home, because your routines don't off and you're not taking those preventive maintenance type things. Yeah, I think also because you're not in the comfort of your own home and you're, you have a schedule you're trying to stick to, so it seems so much more stressful. I tend to bring along. , fever reducers. 

Whenever my kids are four years . Younger, anytime we travel. Because little kids are prone to getting sick. If you have a child, you understand this, whether it's through school or daycare or family, you know, they're going to catch every single thing that comes around. And when you're traveling, you're putting your whole family at a higher risk of getting sick. 

That's just part of what comes with traveling. And it almost never fails. If we take a week vacation, at least the one of my kids  do you get sick? And now that we have another one, that's under four again, but at least one of my kids there, they're probably going to get sick during that time, especially Jasper.  He's in this stage, he's 17 months and he's in the stage where he wants to lick everything. 

Yes.  Or put it in his mouth. Good. Good to taste. And I do mean everything he wants to lick. Everything. And it Glick rocks.  Trees. I mean the table of a restaurant and we're sitting in the shopping cart. The bottom of a shoe, the door knobs. , anytime he picks up something new, one of the first thing he does is he licks it.  And that drives me crazy and it makes me so queasy. But.  That just means he's probably going to pick something up whenever it works. Traveling, because unless I put a mouth guard on him, there's no way to stop.  

So just as a precaution. While he's so young, I go ahead and bring fever, reducers or items that I think would be necessary in case he picks up a little bug while we're traveling. If you do have younger ones, I do recommend that they're so easily prone to ear infections and. They catch every little thing because their immune systems are still so new. 

So , if you have children under the age of four, Uh, and you're going to be gone for more than two or three days. I automatically would just recommend bringing a fever reducer and some sort of cold medicine. And of course, most of the time, you know what season you're going to go in. If you're going around Christmas, you're going around the flu season. 

You may not notice it a whole lot.  We notice it mainly because we're in Texas. 

So if we go. Up north into the panhandle. It could be 30 degrees difference. If we go down south, it could be 2015 degrees difference. And just by traveling five or six hours in any direction.  The temperature change. And so therefore it throws your body off, throws your body off. The possibility of getting sick at that time. Goes up exponentially. Be aware of where you're going and how far you're traveling and the changes of,  temperature. Because I know, especially at Texas, whenever we go up and we go skiing, or we go somewhere up north , mountain area that. 

Like we have to get more rest. We need to drink more. We need to keep our core body temperature at a certain thing, because if not,  that's whenever we're prone to getting the sniffles or getting head colds or something like that. And I actually know a lot of people that when they know they're about to go, especially on a cruise that the two weeks before they leave, they'll start taking up their vitamin C or taking those emergency vitamins that you can just get over the counter. Oh, right. The ones that like the school teachers take during flu season and stuff like that. 

So we have a lot of friends and family that they do that before they go on a big trip or before they go on a cruise, because cruise ships are like little bacteria hubs. Like if one person gets sick on that cruise, everyone's getting sick, but I've never done that. Not because I don't agree with it, but because I never think of it until after we've already left and someone gets sick on a vacation. I'm really bad. I'm so bad about taking vitamins in general or giving them to our kids. I'll be like, oh, we're going to start taking vitamins. And then I'll buy them. 

Then I can't find the vitamin bottle after a few days.  That's another way that you can prepare before you're going on. A long trip is , build up your immunities in your body with some vitamins and some vitamin C. And real quickly, I want to go back to bringing medicine for anyone under four, or if people have been sick, just kind of carrying a little bit of emergency thing, especially for anyone who has ever woken up. At one, two o'clock in the morning. And there is a young one that is, or a certificate other that is in the bathroom throwing up. And you have no medicine, you're in a place that you do not know. You are in a place that . 

The pharmacy is probably closed 

and so even getting, you know, to a Walmart or CVS or Walgreens, that's kind of in our area. Whenever you're looking for a drug store or someplace, that's going to have a medicines to combat things that are going on. They're probably all closed around that time. Depending on where you are. And if you don't have it, it's miserable for four to five hours before they open. 

And then you can go out  and get the medicine that you need to combat it. So if. Like Misty said, if they're under four or people have around you, I've been sick before you go, just go ahead and start taking that medicine and just be prepared to kind of fight that. Because if you do get sick, and this is the worst part about it, if you do get sick, it's going to change your plans. 

And you're not going to have the experience that you planned on. Yes, but it doesn't mean that it has to run a vacation. So like I said, many times our children have gotten sick on one of our trips, many.  

Um, during one of our trips to Disney world. We had kids running fever over a hundred degrees for almost three days. He's one of our kids got sick and then the next day the other kid was sick and it took us a few days to.  To get that under control and get it wrapped up. And we did end up changing some of our plans a little bit.  It doesn't necessarily mean you have to stop. 

It means that your vacation may look different for awhile. And I do highly suggest that you take your health and your family's health, make that the priority over your vacation. Um, you don't want someone sick at a theme park on a hot day getting dehydrated because their body's already dealing with so much.  Depending on the severity of the sickness. And.  What kind of sickness it is, will depend on what kind of changes you have to make. 

So what we did is.  One of our times that Disney world, it was right before lunch, we realized one of our children was burning up, like on fire. They were acting totally normal. Totally normal. They just see it in their eyes. Around everything like.  And there were so young. I don't think that it, it registered it to them. That I think she was six at the time. It wasn't like, she noticed that, Hey, I need to keep this sickness to myself because I don't want to ruin it for everyone else. But it was just to the point where she was having a good time and she didn't want to go back to the hotel or she didn't want to deal with it until we looked at her, it was like,  Ariel, there's something wrong. 

Are you okay? Is everything. Your eyes, your face. I mean, you can tell, especially people that you've been around with a long time, if they don't feel good, or if they're tired, You can, you, you can just tell it by their facial expressions. And.  We looked at her and it wasn't right. And so we checked her and we're like, oh my goodness, you've got a fever. 

There's some things going on. And we came up with a plan. Yeah, we went ahead and finished our lunch. Cause I think we were actually in line for lunch at the quick service. Like we had just put in our order, we were in line, something like that. I don't remember. And we sat down and we finished our lunch. 

We were at animal kingdom that day , and we still had a fast pass that was left. We still had things to do, but we were like, no.   One, I didn't want her fever like skyrocketing and I did have fever reducers with me.  And so we went back to the hotel. I gave her a warm bath and I gave her some medicine and put her down for a nap. 

We let Justin who was eight at the time, just play with the toys that he had purchased. Um, while we were there at Disney world, I think Jeremy, we went and took him and got him some toys. Because they had money to spend. So he went and spent some of his money and got some toys and we took the rest of the night, just chilling our hotel room. 

I think that's the night we ordered pizza and our hotel room and we just, we just hung out there and had her take it easy. And I kept giving her fever reducers. And by the next morning, She was fine. She didn't have a fever anymore, but we completely stopped what we were doing.  And slowed down so that the rest of the time we were there, we can enjoy it because if we would've kept going. What would have happened more than likely, especially, you know, in Ariel and you know, like she's very prone to ear infections and things like that is. Her body would not have been able to recoup and we would have pushed her. And she would've gotten even more sick and we may not have even been able to stay. For the rest of our time and Disney world. 

And not only that while she's running fever and I don't know what she has, she could be spreading that to everyone helps in the park. Which I definitely don't recommend it's full of children and people. So, , take what you need to take as far as slowing down. And if you have to cancel things or postpone things, it's not the end of the world. 

And this brings up so many different points in so many things that , we're about to get into. And. The first thing that I want to do is I want to go back because there is a crucial detail that was missing during that whole conversation. We were with family. We were with a large group. It just wasn't our family. There's like 12 of us. And so what we did is  we said, okay, Hey look, we're going to go back. 

Y'all continue to have a great and wonderful time. We're not going to ruin it for everyone. Those that are sick or those that need to go back , to handle the situation. We're going to isolate ourselves. We're going to remove ourselves And like, Missy, say this, we didn't want to spread it. I mean specifically not to the people in our group, because we want them to have a great, wonderful time. 

They just spend all this money to go to Disney world. They spent money on a vacation  and so we just took the time , we stopped, we separate ourselves. 

We didn't want to get them sick. And so.  That is definitely. One thing that you need to be conscious of whenever you're talking about your health. Is the health of other people be conscious of.  The places that you're going Disney world. On the time that we went, it was packed. . And there was a lot of other kids there, and of course you're in queue lines waiting for rides or for other things. And it's just one of those things that there's a lot of people there and it could be easily spread through everything. So be cautious of not only your group or the people that you're with, but other people that are around you and you don't want to get them sick as well, just like they don't want to get you sick. 

So if it means taking a half a day, if it means taking a little bit of time away from all the wonderful things that you want to do.  To get better. To them, everyone being able to enjoy the rest of the trip. It's worth the time to just slow down.

Get hydrated. Hydration is.  Probably the biggest tip I could give anyone on any vacation, no matter where you go is hydration, because it's not your normal routine. You're not going to be drinking water. But take the time.  Let your body recuperate, let your body get well, get back to its health, and then you can enjoy the rest of your trip.

And if it's just a super quick trip, like a day or two  it's gonna suck, but you're probably just going to have to.  Cut short, most of what you had planned. Because your sickness is going to take up most, if not all of that. If it's longer than that. ,  It's not the end of the world. Just take the day, take the half the day. 

Take the two days that you need to. This is one of the reasons why Jeremy and I are huge advocates of slow travel, which we have mentioned many times on this podcast is because when you slow travel one, your body is not as prone to getting sick as it is whenever you're pushing it to its limits. And to that gives you planned downtime that you can have to rest and recoup. Like whenever we stay a week somewhere or two weeks somewhere, and we're in an Airbnb, , we do not have our days plan from sunup to sundown. 

We have. Parts of each day planned where we're doing things. And then we have the rest of those days where we're, we're chilling and we're recuperating and we're resting and we're taking it slow. And because we have a lot of downtime planned and even in our Disney world vacation, we had two days of downtime.  And so, because we plan for downtime.  We can take that time. 

If someone gets sick. And we don't really have to change too much or cancel too much. And , there's different ways of handling. So on. The particular situation.  We as a family, all went back to the hotel. Now. It's happened after that it's happened in different situations. And either.  You know, Misty was with the child or, , actually one of the grandparents was like, Hey, I'm a little tired myself. 

I'll go back to the hotel so they could have downtime and relax a little bit. And then watch over the children as well. We've done that. And so it doesn't mean that everyone has to stop what they're doing, right. Or you can't do anything. Whenever someone gets sick.  It does make it really difficult and it does make it where , you have to plan and then sacrifices have to be made. 

 But that doesn't stop the trip.  It's just the way and the planning that. You initially had.  Has changed a little bit now. You just have to.  Be okay with that. It may be disappointing, but you know, be okay with that.

Okay, so that is.  Minor sicknesses we're talking about. That is fevers that my children got, that were easily handled under control by fever reducers. Those are things where your stomach bugs. Like little bitty 24 hour, maybe 48 hour. Bugs cold bugs or stomach bugs or something that we had allergies that turned into, you know, sinus issues. Those were not serious, serious things. If someone in your family gets seriously sick, we heard you to seek an ER or an urgent care to get antibiotics or whatever kind of treatment you need. 

If your child is. You know, running fever for a significant amount of time and nothing's helping it take that child to an urgent care. Absolutely. I'm seeing. Whether your insurance covers that place or not, you, you have to take your health and your family's health and make that the priority on your trip. 

. . Seek, whatever you need to seek in order to, to get better, because you could always go on more vacations. . You don't get a second life.  So take care of yourself. 

 Postpone your vacation, not going to say cancel because they're going to get back out there and , we're going to do it again. So. Absolutely. Postpone that vacation until a later time. I try to always.  Book things that if something like that happens, I can get my money back. But I do understand there are a lot of times where you can't.  Like, if you.  Pay for  hotels and advance and you do the no return because you get such a significant discount, which I do. I have done that. Lots of times. 

I understand you're not going to get that money back, but like Jeremy said, this is your health we're talking about. And especially if it's a child.  And it can be disappointing. And can it be a bummer, but it doesn't mean that.  You can't do it again. Right. Um, I'm specifically talking about adults. That want to push their bodies that want to go and do things. I don't want to stop. And it's like bad about that. It's like, you know, oh, I don't feel good today, but you keep on going. 

And then, , you make a small sickness into a much larger sickness because you didn't take care of yourself. Yeah.  I can totally see us doing that. 

Like,  I feel like we have done it in the past. We have, we have. I've pushed ourselves,  especially  maybe during one of my pregnancies, I have terrible pregnancies. I deal with extreme sickness and issues and complications. I actually got put on bedrest with all three of my pregnancies. , but I think that  in the beginning before I learned, Hey, my body doesn't handle this really well. 

I pushed myself to some extent. , when it came to that,  Wouldn't do that. Now I've learned that lesson because it takes so much longer to recoup after your body has been pushed than it does. If you slow down and give it the rest it needs. And no, this is not a medical podcast.  And I'm sure most of our listeners totally understand this when it comes to health and sickness. But.  We know so many people that have. Let it totally affect them and their, the way they travel because someone got sick on vacation, they just gave up. Right. 

Like it happened that one time. They're like, okay. We're never going to the mountains. Again, we had the worst experience while we're there. I'm never doing that again. So-and-so got sick. Like, I've heard that before. Oh, , we've traveled east, Texas, and Justin get sick all the time. We're going to stop going to east Texas. I'm not going to happen.  I'm not going to have. I have family members. That when they go to Colorado and go up in the mountains, like one of my relatives, lungs collapsed while they were there. And it's not like they're going to say I'm never going there again. 

Instead. They're just going to take the precautions that they need in order to prevent that from happening. As far as like slowly acclimating themselves to lack of oxygen. Because,  especially if it's your first time ever doing that or ever going to a place.  

. You. I have no idea , how your body's going to react to it.  So that one time where something  went off kilter or, , you had a bad experience because of some type of sickness, either number one, you can prepare for it now, or number two, you know, the season that had happened, you can always travel in another season.   

And also if it's, you know, something super minor and you still have an extended vacation, don't just pack everyone up and leave. Just slow down for a little bit. And then continue your trip. Continue your vacation. Right. Because a lot of the things that you do.  Can be rescheduled. It can be put off to another time, or if you just miss it , on that trip.  There's a good chance that you're going to go on another trip and you'll be able to experience at another time. But it doesn't stop your trip. 

So sickness does not mean the end of traveling. It doesn't mean the end of vacation. It may mean slowing down. , there are tips and tricks, like we said, at the beginning of the podcast that you can take to prevent those kinds of things from happening. ,  you never know when emergencies are gonna pop up. 

And that wraps up. This week.

So join us next 

week. We are going to be talking about. Booking trips and taking advantage of passes and memberships. And things like that.