travel – Natalie Abbott

Packing with PillSuite (sponsored post)

Packing medicine for trips can be kind of a pain. So many choices: to bring the bottles or not? to sort by med or sort by date? how much extra to bring?
As part of the Chronic Illness Bloggers Network I was given the opportunity to test out a product called PillSuite which aims to help with some of these issues.

PillSuite comes with three things: a pill sorter, baggies, and a sealer for the baggies (along with batteries for the dealer, which are included).

I’m going on a short weekend trip, so I sorted my pills into 5 daily slots – I took out the two things full of vitamins as I realized I take one a day so that didn’t make much sense to sort them together!

From the sorter I used the funnel to put each evening’s pills in one Baggie, then sealed it using the cute green sealer (I love the colors they chose!)
The process of dealing them took a bit of getting used to – thankfully you can re-do it to get the seal complete if you don’t get it right the first time.

I made a Baggie for each evening of my trip, and only have one thing to think about – I need to take one pill half an hour before the other two so will need to carefully store the other pills for a bit.

I’m interested in testing out the baggies during this trip, and will edit this post in a few days with a review of how they work in practice!

I think this will be great for some trips but won’t replace my trusty resealable tiny baggies for some uses.

UPDATE: I used the PillPacks for my 4 day trip, mostly with success! I had a few that didn’t really close al the way, but I think that was really user error instead of an issue with the sealer itself! It was a little tricky with my medicine regime, since I take them at two times per night and the PillPacks aren’t resealable – but I made it work! Overall this is a fascinating and useful product. Love that they’re biodegradable, too!

2015 in Thoughts

I don’t do New Year’s Resolutions. Just not worth the pressure one puts on oneself. But of course I have lessons from 2014 and hopes for 2015.

Managed to start 2 new jobs in 2014, which I hope doesn’t happen again! Both good moves on my part and I learned a lot from both, but a little too much newness for my liking. I’m nearing the 6-month mark at work, and my instances of “oh %#^+ I have no clue what to do!” are (thankfully) rapidly decreasing. I like the feeling of going into work and basically feeling competent at what I’m doing. I applied to be on the list for a promotion… so, we’ll see.

Non-work things were sometimes great, often tough this year. My grandmother fell in the summer and passed away in the fall. That was rough for my mother and my extended family – even though she was not particularly grandmotherly in that stereotypical way, she was still family. I had 2 horses I was riding become lame and un-rideable. A looked-forward-to trip to New York City had to be cancelled. But, of course, those things are trivial when compared to family.

There was good stuff too – Friends at the Moebius Syndrome Conference, learning how to ride a big 18hh sweetie of a draft horse, a wonderful weekend on the beach at my favorite west coast hotel. In everything, I learned a lot about myself and about life (yeah, that sounds overwrought!)

But 2015 is looking promising… moving to an apartment closer to work and to the barn (and away from some of the anxiety-producing civil unrest) this month, traveling to NYC in February (yes, I will be freezing!), going to a really interesting conference in September. And hopefully moving up in my career.

We shall see what 2015 holds for me.

Travels (with dog)

I just got back from a wonderful first “real” vacation-with-service dog. Not that I expected anything different, but Cassius was wonderful and (nearly) perfect.

We went to my favorite West Coast hotel, the Hotel Del Coronado. It’s helpful to go somewhere where you are very familiar with for a first major vacation, just because it takes the unknown away from the humans and let me both relax and work on giving Cassius a good experience.

Besides the fact that I really think Cassius missed his big bed (!) he took everything in stride. He enjoyed (human) sunbathing/doggie sleeping, was mildly confused when I went into the pool without him, and rather offended when I left him with my mom to go to yoga class. And don’t get me started on the look on his face when I went down to the water with him…

We had no access issues whatsoever, although I think we attracted nearly every toddler in the resort. Apparently the “get” command is exciting… there was an audible gasp in the airport baggage line when he picked up my glass case on command!

Our flights were both good, we were lucky to pre-board on Southwest and get bulkhead.

Although I have been away on a few short trips (Carmel-By-The-Sea, Ashland twice)… this trip felt like a nice milestone to reach with Cassius.