Keeping medication cool in a hot car

[alphamommy]

We are leaving on 8/2 for vacation. On the first day, we will drive to Niagara Falls, but won't check in to our hotel until the evening.

I take several different medications, and just realized that they will be in the car all day while we sightsee. We will be taking a small cooler with us for snacks, but I don't think it will keep my medicine bottles cool enough.

I've poked around online, and there are lots of medicine coolers, but they seem to be tailored to insulin. I have three large pill bottles that I need to take (we're driving through Canada, so I want to keep them in their original bottles).

I have flexible cold packs that can be frozen, but I'm concerned about them staying cold all day. I don't care if my beverages get a little warm, but one of the pills is a geltab, and I don't want them to melt together in their bottle!

Does anyone have any ideas? Am I just being overly worried? :confused:

Thanks!

[beksy]

I can sympathize with you...between my mom and me we have as much medicine as a small pharmacy! Over the years we haven't had a lot of issues with keeping medicine cool. Generally we just put it in a ziplock baggie and put it in a cooler filled with ice (we're old school and don't have those nice little ice packs!) I think that as long as you use plenty of ice you should be fine. Another discovery we made a few years ago when mom could still do car trips was a cooler that actually plugs in to a cigarette lighter in the car and then acts like a small refrigerator. It would hold all of our drinks and medicine and keep things nice and cool. Have a great trip! :mickey:

[WDWFanatic]

How about those ice packs you crack and then they get cold? They don't last as long but you could bring a couple incase your icepacks get warm.

[gmgdisneymom]

I agree with the above - you can buy a plug in cooler (it plugs into the cig lighter) and it holds a lot of stuff - I believe you can also use them to keep stuff hot if you flip the switch the other way

we have one and it is great for long trips - you do not have to worry about water leakage, running out of ice or the cold packs melting

They cost about 100

[alphamommy]

My sister has one of the plug in coolers, but it our car shuts the power off to the cig lighter when the car is turned off. :mad: The cooler would only have power when we're in the car.

I'm thinking our best option might be two coolers: one for our snacks, and another, smaller one for my meds. The ice/cold packs wouldn't thaw out as fast in a cooler that's not opened to retrieve beverages, etc.

Hmmm

[jrkcr]

How about taking a 2 liter coke type plastic bottle, cut off the top down to the height of your medicine bottle just under the cap. Put your (EMPTY) medicine bottle in a ziploc bag, and then set it upright in the coke bottle, and fill the coke bottle with water. Put it in the freezer. Weigh down your floating medicine bottle with a soup can-making sure the medicine bottle is standing up. The when all the water is frozen, your medicine bottle should be well insulated in ice, with just the top of the medicine bottle and the top of the zippy bag sticking out, so you can re-fill it with the meds. And the ziploc bag will make extra sure that water doesn't get into the medicine bottle. Then stick the whole block of ice into an ice chest filled with ice. Also, remember that a block of ice melts slower than ice cubes!

I hope this makes sense...

[BrerGnat]

I don't know what kind of cooler you have, but I just got one at costco that is a collapsible soft sided cooler (not huge) that claims to keep ice frozen inside for 100 HOURS! I bought two of those plastic gel filled things you put in the freezer that look like water canteens (ice packs) and we put them in the cooler and took the cooler to the beach on a hot day and they kept all our food cold for hours. I imagine an actual bag of ice would work better.

I would just try something like that. Keep all your food and stuff in there with a plain old bag o' ice. The cooler has a liner that you can remove to empty the ice/water afterwards, and then it collapses to the size of about a briefcase. It was like $20 at Costco. I would just put the medicine bottles in a large ziploc bag, at the bottom of the cooler. Problem solved!

[alphamommy]

I had a revelation late yesterday.

I've been quite obsessed about this issue, which is why I posted here. I was debating about e-mailing my physician's assistant about what to do. She's always been such a great help. As I started writing the e-mail, a small light bulb flickered over my head.

Last summer, we went south. We spent several hours at Mammoth Cave before moving on to our hotel for the night. The temp was in the high 90s, and my meds were in my suitcase in the trunk! I never even thought about the temperature last year. I was coming off a severe brain infection that affected my thoughts and actions for a long time.

I guess the fact that I have been so worried about this indicates that I am still recovering. I'm not sure that I'm glad to have the worry-wart component of my personality back!

DH and I talked about what to do, and we're just going to put my bottles in a zip bag, and put it in the cooler. We just want to keep them cool, not freeze them.

Thanks for all the ideas!
Tammy

[J9]

My dad's a diabetic and he's got a few medicines that need to be kept refrigerated, and we always drive to Florida from PA, so we've pretty much become experts on this situation! LOL!

At first we started just packing a cooler with ice. That doesn't really work because the ice will still melt and it's pretty messy. One time the cooler leaked all over our drunk and all of our clothes got messed up. It was only water, but it was still pretty annoying to wait for everything to dry out.

Now, we have a plug in cooler. It really does work very well, but yes, we do need to plug it into the cigarette lighter. You can buy them in camping section of WalMart for about $50. Ours is pretty big, so we have room for drinks and sandwiches too. It's nice because we don't have to stop and waste time for food. A rest stop does just fine!

Also, and I don't know how feasible this really is, but you could try dry ice. My dad's company went through this spurt where we had to get all the prescriptions through the mail (most annoying thing EVER!), and they would always send the refrigerated stuff in a styrofoam cooler and a few packs of dry ice. It kept everything nice and cold. It had to be at least a day worth the transit, if not more. (I don't remember where the packages originated from, unfortunately).

[Here we go again...]

We also have a vehicle that all of the plugs are dead when it is turned off... so why do you think they bothered to put 5 in there??

Anyway, here i what works best for us....
I have to keep my humira cold. I buy those gel packs that do not freeze hard, the ones that stay soft so you can bend them.
Once they are frozen, I wrap them around my meds, wrap foil then a towel around them. Use a rubberband to keep everything in place and you are good to go. If you put this in your suitcase then you have a better chance of keeping the heat away... more insulation.