Transcript
Speaker: Hey, before we get into today's episode, I wanted to take a moment to thank our gold sponsor, Omnipod. The Type 1 Club is all about sharing real stories, creating connections and helping families feel less alone as they navigate life with Type 1.
Speaker: Support from organisations like Omnipod to help us to continue these conversations and bring more stories from the Type 1 community to you. So thank you to Omnipod for supporting the Type 1 Club and helping us to keep these important conversations going.
Speaker: Thank you Omnipod. The content provided in this podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Reliance on any information provided by this podcast is solely at your own risk.
Speaker: Welcome to the Type 1 Club. Whether you're a parent grappling with a new diagnosis, a caregiver seeking guidance, or simply someone wanting to learn more about type 1 diabetes, this podcast is for you.
Speaker: Together, let's dispel myths, break down barriers, and build a community of understanding and resilience. Join us as we embark on this journey together, because with knowledge, compassion, and support, no one should ever feel alone in managing type 1 diabetes.
Speaker: Welcome to the Type 1 Club. Hello and welcome. I am your host, Jackie Kidman. I am a type 1 mum to a boy named Harvey who was diagnosed with type 1 when he was 7 in June 2022.
Speaker: in june twenty twenty two Normally I have a guest on this podcast, but we've just recently returned from a family trip to Bali. And i thought I would share with you what the things that I did in order to prepare for that trip and also the part of the airport and the plane and what we did while we were traveling in Bali. Some of them is a lot of trial and error. And I guess I'm hoping that this might help you guys to inspire you to get out there and travel. I know that a lot of people quite often I will get messages saying you know how do you do it.
Speaker: We love traveling in my family so it's something that I really want to instill with Harvey but then it also inspire others to see that yeah it's totally possible just with a little bit of preparation. So I guess to start with I am just going to kind of share what we do few weeks beforehand. So I contact our DE, diabetes educator, and I ask for a travel letter. And in that travel letter, it will list that all the things that you need to take. So that's kind of a really good idea for when you're packing of what things you you will need to take. We were in Bali for 12 days. I packed just as an idea to help you. I actually packed a whole box of Harvey's on the Omnipod 5. I packed a whole box of pods and I packed three
Speaker: Dexicon G7s, the CGMs, and I put it in a container that is a clear container, which is probably about, I don't know, 40 centimetres long. It's quite deep, so it fits in all that stuff that it can stand up. And that's where all of our supplies go for that trip.
Speaker: And it just gets put into the backpack, which will then go on the plane with us. It's in a bag that I know I have control of and I can see it pretty much the whole time. In that box, I would put the CGMs. I would put the the pods.
Speaker: I would put the insulin, spare insulin. The spare insulin actually goes in. I have another little container that with an ice block that the insulin will go in into that. We travel with that.
Speaker: Then I have extra tapes. The finger prick kit and the strips will go, spares will go in there. And yeah extra tapes, sugars, the glucagon syringe, that you know that orange syringe that you hope you never have to use.
Speaker: Just anything that I think like chargers, will do with the charger. I will have a like ah ah power board that has ah one where I can plug in The charge and also the USB options there as well. So that's all I need then is the converter at the at one end rather than having to have several. So, you know, we know that overnight you need to be charging like a controller for me anyway, a controller and a and an iPhone. or a phone and quite often harvey's ipad will be there as well and then maybe my phone or whatever depending on where we're where we are so it's kind of handy to have a lot of those extra usb chargers and the one that i've got is has got four and then it's also got a one that you can plug in a power plug option to
Speaker: So all that stuff comes on into the travel bag with us. I believe as a medical supplies, you can take around, I think it's between, I think it's about three kilos of medical supplies. So this doesn't generally go into your, like the baggage sort of part. You kind of got three kilos to work with. We didn't have a problem with that because we were checking in bags. It wasn't like we were working with say seven kilos that we had to take. So that wasn't a problem for us anyway.
Speaker: Then we have another separate little bum bag that Harvey will tend to carry. That in that is his Omnipod controller, his phone and his, and sugars. And I'll also put the finger prick kit into that. So that's that the clear box that has like all the excess supplies that will go up up the top above our heads in the cabin. And then the bum bag will stay with next to us when we're seated.
Speaker: So going through security, this I know that this one tends to be a little bit of a stressful scenario. So with the travel letter that we get from the diabetes educators, that I print a copy off and I put that with our passports.
Speaker: I then text a copy to my husband and I'll a copy it in my phone. Just in case, you know, my husband's got to take Harvey through and it's and then they're like, have look at the letter? I'm not there. You know, sometimes you get separated.
Speaker: Who knows? I find the clear box is really handy because that just gets taken out and you can actually quick really quickly pull out the things that you don't want to go through the x-rays. So, you know, the CGMs and the pods are the only things that we, I don't send through.
Speaker: And I will straight away say, my son is a type one diabetic. He cannot go through these scanners or the x-rays. Can you do an ah an alternative check on him? And they normally they'll just say, just grab my supervisor. And the supervisor then sort of will either want to see the travel letter and then you hand them those x those supplies that you also said, these can't go through the x-ray. Can you scan them separately in ah another way? And then that's, I haven't had...
Speaker: too much drama with that harvey where will also wear the lanyard that's the the sunflower lanyard which you can just pick up from like a i just think i got mine from a westfield shopping center so he'll wear that he i don't know whether that highlights to anybody that there's something but we just pop it on and then we just take it off after we've gone through the security check we've gotten much better at this. I always allow extra time because sometimes it's super busy and they're waiting for that supervisor to come over. You could be waiting there for 10, 15 minutes. And if you've got, you've already got that little bit of a stress of having to kind of advocate for your child to be screened differently or, you know, or yourself, I always just allow extra time.
Speaker: when it comes to getting through the airport security, like, and even if you can allow it to an hour, that's even better. i know everybody's different with how long they like to allow, but this trip, we definitely allowed an hour to get through that part.
Speaker: So you'll hand them your CGMs and the the pods and they'll just meet around the other side and they'll be able to give that back to you. Most of the time i leave mine in the box, the CGMs in the box, and they'll just, they just ask if it's okay if we open them. I don't see a big problem with them opening the box. I know with a lot of that stuff they want it to be in the original box so i just leave it in the box and it just works with the space that we've got anyway and they're not unsealing it the actual cgm they're just opening the box so that's completely fine and it's that they keep it in there so i'm happy with that
Speaker: When we got to Bali, I took the sugar pixel and which is that clock kind of thing that will be able to tell you your blood sugar levels. But you're relying on Wi-Fi for that to work. And at certain places, it didn't work. I think it only worked in one place. We moved around a little. We stayed at in four different places. for this trip and it only worked i think on the third place where we stayed.
Speaker: So if you're relying on that maybe don't. And also don't rely on Wi-Fi. We normally put our phones in aeroplane mode and we just access Wi-Fi when needed.
Speaker: That obviously limits the follow-up if you, if Harvey's say not in Wi-Fi I can't see what's happening. you could probably get ah and an alternative SIM card for the phone or we just opted to pay that extra on our monthly plan that we pay the extra to cover that. So Harvey's phone mainly at night was on data and so was my phone.
Speaker: The Wi-Fi is just not reliable so it can cut in and out. I trust the data more than I do trust the Wi-Fi and sometimes the Wi-Fi can try and overtake the data so particularly at night, if I'm trying to listen out for Lowe's, that is my main kind of concern with that. So I would turn off the Wi-Fi and i would just have the data running at night on both both my phone and Harvey's phone. We stayed in a villa, so Harvey was sort of across the pool in a room there and then I was in another room. So It wasn't like we were right we we were right next door to each other where we could get the distance, you know, like I could keep the phone and the controller in my room.
Speaker: It needed to be near him. And I do during the day, i do a little bit of a test of hey hey how I'm feeling about this Wi-Fi, you know, that sort of stuff. I don't necessarily do it at night when I'm tired or you know, i don't want to do the trial and error at night.
Speaker: And yeah, that's just a choice that we've made is to flick it onto data for the night times when just for extra security for us. So that's maybe something that you want to look into as well as whether you look at getting a SIM card. It probably would be a lot cheaper than probably the options that that I did, but I think it's like $10 a day or something like that additional. So that's something that you would need to to look at. I'm also very conscious around having...
Speaker: in the room or in the villa where we are making sure we've got the sugars but also full sugar lemonade. I think that if Harvey got sick and he was throwing up that I would that that's something that I would probably encourage him to drink. So i would either go to the little mini-mart thing there and stock up on a couple of cans of lemonade. I quite often will carry one in ah in a bag while I'm away in sort of those sort of countries. um i I mean, you could so easily just grab it. like it's There's mini marts and stuff everywhere, where we were anyway in Bali. No one got sick in our families. I'm very, very grateful to have a trip where there was no Bali Bali.
Speaker: I have had one in the past and it was very, very scary and awful just to be sick on a holiday like that. So Yeah, I would quite often just keep a lemonade, a can of lemonade around and just in case as a bit of a precaution there. Obviously, if you have a super low load, then that's kind of handy as well. And I just get a bit of a kind of idea of where the medical sort of center is around. stayed in Seminyak and Leggians, they're very close by, very accessible. A lot of the hotels, one of the hotels we stayed at actually had their own doctor there. So, you know, if I was at all concerned, if Harvey did get very sick and was throwing up and stuff like that, i would that would probably be my first call. I wouldn't even, I don't know, i think I would probably just...
Speaker: I've, would it be my first call? I don't know, but I would definitely, there is some comfort there in knowing that there are doctors very close by and it's very accessible. So I'm aware of where the medical centers are and any numbers that I need to be aware of if I had to call a doctor to come in.
Speaker: But thankfully we didn't need that this trip. You know, it was, it was pretty smooth sailing except for one of the nights where we did have a wifi phone kind of connection issue. and Harvey did go low and i didn't, wasn't aware for a good 45 minutes to an hour. Like it wasn't a low, low. It was just sort of tracking kind of like at about 3.8. And I didn't hear any alarms. I was certainly panicked when I sort of rolled over in the middle of the night and saw my phone and saw that it was low and saw that it was low for a while. But thankfully we kind of
Speaker: ironed out any of those other issues and it's just like yeah you just can't rely on the wi-fi just go to data at night that's my kind of key takeaway from that and my piece it certainly was peace of mind with that aspect the other things that i will always take as well is hand sanitizer to try and limit any of that like gastro or bali bali or anything like that so you know, when touching money or just if you had can't wash your hands before eating, you know, that sort of stuff, use the hand sanitizer. So I'm very kind of like strict with that, obviously not using the water and particularly with you brushing your teeth. My tip is when you're brushing your teeth, hold the water bottle in your other hand. So you both hands are busy.
Speaker: and you actually can't turn on the tap and never put that bottle down. Just hold it there and that just triggers you of like, oh yeah, that's right, I can't actually, I can't turn on the tap because I've got the water and then I don't need turn on tap because I've got the water. I don't use the overhead showers. I use the handheld ones that, you know, the,
Speaker: I use the nozzle for that so that I'm not necessarily letting the water run in and dropping to our mouth. So we have a bit of a bit of a policy on that in our family when we go to Bali. And it seems to have worked the last couple of times. So I'm pretty pretty proud about that.
Speaker: Yeah, so they're kind of like the main things that I wanted to share. you know i feel like every time we go on a trip, whether it's overseas or it's interstate, that it just gets easier. Harvey's 11 now and he is much more confident in managing his own diabetes care and i'm we're we're all probably just a bit more confident four years in. I do encourage you to Take mini trips if you if this is something that you want to work towards. Take those mini trips and test it out and and just, yeah, don't try not to let it hold you back.
Speaker: I would also love to hear what what things you would recommend or take on your trips. You know, this is just some of the stuff that I've sort of suggested and what I've kind of worked on. Definitely, we probably keep on adding stuff along the way and taking off stuff, but I find... ah The other thing we did take was I took Travel Calm. So even if you feel a little bit queasy, that's really good for, it's got like a ginger in it that can help calm your tummy. I took Imodium or like Gastro Stop, the ones that dissolve under the tongue. My kids are, Harvey is a bit hit and miss with it being able to swallow a tablet. And I can imagine if he's throwing up, he wouldn't want to swallow a tablet. The ones that can dissolve under the tongue, get those ones. And look, we didn't need to use any, which is great, but it's always good to have have them there and just for just in case. The chemists in Bali are actually really well stocked as well. So, you know, even if you got there and you're like, oh, we didn't have stuff, you could easily find stuff to support you with that as well when you're actually in in Bali. So, yeah, so that was, that's sort of my update on our little trip to Bali. I'd love to hear what your sort of thoughts and feedbacks, you know, and advice would be for anybody else traveling overseas or through airports or things like that. And yeah, i hope that you found this useful and I look forward to bringing you another episode of the Type 1 Club very, very soon. Take care.
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Speaker: Hey, before we get into today's episode, I wanted to take a moment to thank our gold sponsor, Omnipod. The Type 1 Club is all about sharing real stories, creating connections, and helping families feel less alone as they navigate life with Type 1.
Speaker: Support from organisations like Omnipod to help us to continue these conversations and bring more stories from the Type 1 community to you. So thank you to Omnipod for supporting the Type 1 Club and helping us to keep these important conversations going.
Speaker: Thank you, Omnipod.
