I should mention up front that Abbott Labs has a hotline you can can call to speak to a nurse about traveling with Humira. The nurse I spoke to was super helpful and emailed me a pdf with guidelines for keeping the medicine cool, but the guidelines just weren't specific enough for someone taking a 14.5 hour plane ride with a few hours of travel/airport waiting on either side.
First, some disclaimers. I'm not a doctor, or a pharmacist, or someone who understands how Humira works. I have no affiliation with Abbott Labs (the company that makes Humira) or the companies that manufacture or sell the products I used to keep Humira cool during my journey. I was going to sign up for some ads to run alongside this blog to see if a few nickels landed in my account but my wife said I shouldn't profit from sick people and she's (almost) always right, so no ads. In short, I stand to gain nothing from this. I'm just trying to help out other people who need to travel a long way with medicine that needs to stay very cold. I can't promise these steps will work for you.
The first thing I did was order a Medication Cooler Kit and a Wireless Thermometer from Amazon. The cooler came with 2 Techni Ice reusable ice packs, a sealable tupperware container large enough to contain the box with my 2 Humira injections, and a couple foam inserts to separate the ice packs from the tupperware container. In the weeks leading up to my trip I did about 10 test runs with this equipment but without the medicine and ultimately settled on the following steps:
- I froze the ice packs in my freezer at -2ºF for 24 hours prior to my departure.
- I had my Humira in the refrigerator at 40ºF for 24 hours prior to my departure.
- When it was time to leave for the airport I placed the Humira in the room-temperature tupperware container (about 65ºF) along with the wireless thermometer sensor, and sealed the lid. I placed one Techni Ice pack on the bottom of the cooler, placed a foam insert on top, placed the tupperware container on top of the foam insert, placed another foam insert on top of the tupperware container, placed the second Techni Ice pack on top of the foam insert, and zipped up the cooler.
- Note that I did not have the tupperware container in the refrigerator before I left. I tried this during one of my test runs and saw that the temperature inside the tupperware container dropped too low (32ºF) during the first hour in the cooler if I did this.
- I grabbed 5 quart-size, sealable ziploc baggies and headed for the airport. The temperature in the cooler dropped down to 37ºF within about an hour.
- At the airport I told the TSA officer that I was traveling with refrigerated medication and they sent it through the screening machine without asking me to open anything up. I had a doctor's note with me but nobody ever asked to see it. I brought the cooler on the plane as a carry-on "personal item" and stowed it in the overhead bin.
- During my test runs, the cooler would stay in the recommended temperature range for about 10 hours before getting too warm. This is approximately how long it stayed in the recommended range on the plane, but I'd suggest starting to check the wireless thermometer regularly after about 8 hours just to be safe.
- When the temperature reading indicated that the cooler was almost too warm I took one of my ziploc baggies back to the galley, told a flight attendant that I was trying to keep some medicine cold, and asked for some ice. He happily obliged. Normally I like to pretend that I'm the healthiest person on earth (even though I'm clearly not), but I recommend specifically saying that you're trying to keep medicine cool - it makes it much less likely that you're going to have an issue getting what you want.
- With my baggie full of ice in hand I went back to my seat, quickly opened the cooler, put the bag of ice in, closed it, and stuffed it back in the overhead bin.
- Here's where things on the plane behaved differently from all my test runs. At home, adding a 1 quart ziploc baggie filled with ice brought the temperature of the cooler back down to 37ºF within about 30 minutes and kept the cooler within the recommended temperature range for another 4 hours. On the plane, adding the baggie full of ice didn't change the temperature, and neither did the second baggie full of ice. I needed to add 3 baggies of ice underneath the top Techni Ice pack to get the temperature heading south again! Why? I can't say. I'm guessing the ice from the galley on the plane isn't as cold as the ice from my freezer. Anyway, this is why the extra baggies and the wireless thermometer are both super important.
- The 3 baggies of ice were enough to keep things cool enough for the remainder of my journey. Fridge to fridge my journey was 19 hours.
As I said before, I can't promise this will work for you but it did work for me. Whatever your approach, make sure you do a bunch of test runs in advance so you're comfortable with the equipment, so you know what to expect, and so you don't freak out if things behave a bit differently in the air. Good luck, and stay healthy!
Big thanks to the fine people who make Polar Bear Coolers. Great product! And even bigger thanks to the big brains at Abbott Labs. Traveling with Humira is a hassle, but without Humira there's no way I'd have been healthy enough to take this trip in the first place so it's definitely worth the hassle.
