Going Camping With Drugs

Planning getaways and vacations while in a drug study or on treatment can be a bit of a challenge. As a primary concern, you need to plan your vacation around your dosing regimen, particularly if you have a regular cycle of side effects. For instance, if you have nausea or muscle pain or killer headaches at a predictable time after injecting your interferon you might want to wait to start your getaway until those effects have settled down. Who wants to be in a beautiful location feeling crappy if you can avoid that by timing your trip appropriately?

You also need to plan how you will ensure that you maintain your drug-dosing schedule. Depending on how long your trip will be and the number of drugs you are currently taking, you need to make sure you have the necessary amounts of drugs and the equipment to store them properly. If I am going to be gone for more than one week, I need to bring along (and have the proper coolers or refrigeration for) 2 doses of pegasys, 2 doses of neupogen and 2 doses of procrit. That is 6 syringes and enough cold packs to keep it cool for the necessary time frame as well as the appropriate number of ribavirin, celexa, folic acid and levothyroxine pills. And of course, the necessary sleep aids and painkillers should something flare up; do you really want to have insomnia in a tent, after all?

This is perhaps an over elaborate lead-in to our two day “camping” trip this past weekend. My wife and I met a number of old friends at a location called the “Coastanoan” on the San Mateo County coast south and west of San Francisco. It is a “low-impact” lodge development that has a couple of lodge buildings, a small number of wooden cabins and about 80 tent-cabins. A tent cabin, in this case, is a 10 by 12 foot (3 by 4 meter) wood-frame structure covered with waterproof, reinforced tent material. It has a bed, an electrical outlet, windows and a door. The facilities are in centrally located areas scattered throughout the campground and are the only heated buildings outside of the lodge structures. So, you have an unheated, semi-permanent tent like structure that you sleep in and you walk to the bathrooms and showers. They have outdoor fireplaces near the bath facilities and the usual barbeque and picnic areas. It is a short walk (crossing the highway carefully) to the beach.

I am describing all this so you realize that while it is called a campground you are not lying in a small tent, huddled in a sleeping bag with only a thin pad between your tender bottom and the cold ground. Oh no, you are on a futon in a full-sized bed with a HEATED mattress pad to keep you toasty through the chilly night. We were not exactly roughing it, but all those caveats I mentioned earlier apply.

I had to make sure I had injected 36 hours previous to leaving to make sure the majority of the interferon symptoms would be past. I had to bring all my other drugs and make sure I took them on schedule, not always easily when you are running around with old friends and their children. I also had to develop a plan of action to deal with the 3 to 4 trips to the bathroom I would be taking each night, and walking through the cold, foggy, damp night to the bathroom was not the plan I had in mind.

It all went remarkably well and served as a dress rehearsal for our 6 day trip next month to the higher and colder area around Yosemite. It all seems doable, but it requires extra planning and lots of extra blankets because the last thing you want is to catch a chill with a low white blood count.

I wonder if bears will break into cars to get Hep C meds…