How to Travel with Disabilities featuring Jen Hardy

Travel Gluten Free Podcast

Season 09 Episode 10

How to Travel with Disabilities featuring Jen Hardy

What does it mean to travel with disabilities? What is a disability and what do you need to know if you’re traveling with disabilities? My friend and fellow female podcaster Jen Hardy from the Fabulous Over Fifty podcast (formerly the Hardy Moms Podcast) also has multiple disabilities, including an auto-immune disease which leaves her without energy and the ability to walk or stand on her own. Traveling with a walker, Jen is here to give us tips on how to travel when you have to carry medical devices as a result of your disability. She also tells her story with her experience on United Airlines and how they left her in the terminal, alone, after forgetting to order her a wheelchair and not assisting her off the airplane with a walking aide.

What Does it Mean to Travel with a Disability?

A disability is when a person has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities, a person who has a history or record of such an impairment, or a person who is perceived by others as having such an impairment. These include auto-immune disease, cancer, anxiety, PTSD, depression, and other impairments. It's very common that if you have one disability, you have another. For me, I have 10 disabilities - some of them physical, some mental such as my PTSD I have from being raised in an abusive household. Although you can’t see most disabilities in physical form, they are there. When others can’t see our disabilities, it makes it hard for them to understand how we have to adjust in our daily life and especially when we travel.

Always Take Your Medication on the Plane with You

Depending on your disability, you may have to use a walker, diabetic medication, cane, brace or support, and most likely you are traveling with medication. Always, always, always take your medication with you on the plane. Take a medical bag because this can be your extra third bag that is excluded from your two you can take on the plane because of medical reasons. While you don’t have to have a doctor’s letter or note, I would highly recommend geting a medical bag for your medications. 

When flying gluten-free, you want to know about this not-well-known piece of information. If you have a disability, and any auto-immune disease is considered a disability, you have the right to carry one extra bag for medical supplies. In addition to the two bags you can carry on, you get one extra. Here’s the link to the TSA article, which explains in detail what you can bring and what they allow on the airplane when you travel with a medical bag. 

Don’t have a medical bag? Get the PracMedic Travel Medicine Bag. I just picked one up from Amazon, and I’m very excited to travel with this handy medical bag. I’ve been able to stuff lots of supplements and all my prescriptions, along with my spray hand sanitizer, into this convenient bag that has a shoulder strap for easy carrying through the airport. 

And if you need a clear, quart-sized travel case for your toiletries because the TSA agent took yours the last time you went through security (like the rude agent who I encountered at the St. Louis airport), then grab this amazing deal from CBGE! Three TSA-approved quart-sized toiletry bags for men or women for under $11.

Podcast Resources

Journey safely with The Guide to Traveling Gluten Free which walks you through planning your next gluten-free travel adventure!

Get the best tool for traveling gluten free with Equal Eats Cards

Looking for a warm getaway this year? Find your next vacation on Airbnb! Get Your Travel Gluten Free discount with a $40 credit towards your stay!

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