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Freedom to fly!...
My name is Hayley Jordan, I have an autoimmune disorder (HLA-B27) and two different autoimmune diseases – Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis, (a liver disease), and Ankylosing Spondylitis, (arthritis of the spine and hips) – These affect my day-today wellbeing and ability to travel... Despite this, I’ve moved from my home country of New Zealand to live and work in Manchester in the UK, and solo travel around Europe as much as I possibly can... Here are some of my travelling experiences... My arthritis is managed by injecting medication that requires refrigeration at all times: This has caused issues at airports and at some accommodations.
visit and let them know that I need to use the staff fridge for the medication (sometimes a bit of a struggle to explain with nonEnglish speaking countries). I can’t share a ‘community’ fridge as my medication costs six-hundred pounds per injection and I can’t risk someone taking it out or playing around with it.
Going through security is anxietyinducing, especially American airports.
I have to use a special insulated travel bag that cost me more money than I’d like to admit – I had to buy a special one that would keep medication at a temperature between two-eight degrees Celsius for twenty-four hours. I have to prepare the ice-coolers two days in advance, and then I have to have evidence from my doctors that it’s my medication and I need to carry it on board. When I moved to the UK I had a ‘stockpile’ of medication from New Zealand – Twelve injections in one cold bag, and because the travel time is around thirty hours I still needed to buy temperature monitors to keep everything in check and even ask for bags of ice from the flight attendants to keep my medication at the right temperature. Going through security is anxiety-inducing, especially American airports. I never have a ‘normal’ security experience, I’m always pulled to the side and interrogated, usually for five minutes while they go through my travel bag and do extra x-rays or swabs. Strangely enough, it was in Iceland, where I was held back for fifteen minutes while the security person called over her supervisor and they both searched and swabbed everything, asking me question after question like I was up to something suspicious. In accommodations such as hostels I have to email ahead of my
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