There's more to planning an amazing vacation than shelling out beaucoup bucks for first-class plane tickets and a 5-night stay at a resort hotel. Aside from the major points of getting yourself from here to there and securing a place to rest your head, there are all kinds of details that must be attended to if you're going to enjoy a worry-free vacation. And one of the things that people often neglect to consider is the possibility of illness or injury. While most vacations won't take you too far from the pharmacies and hospitals that can offer medical solutions to such problems, you might want to prepare yourself for the fact that you could face additional difficulties securing care, especially when you travel to foreign countries. Your insurance may not be accepted, you might have trouble getting prescription refills forwarded to a new pharmacy, and you may not be able to find exactly what you're looking for. So here are a few precautions you should take on the health front before you head to the airport.

1. Stock up on prescription meds. This is an absolute must. If there's a chance you could run out of necessary prescriptions during your vacation, don't count on being able to refill them at your destination. Instead, make sure you're stocked up before you go so that you don't have to deal with this unfortunate hassle during your trip.

2. Bring your EpiPen. If you suffer from severe allergies, it's important to make sure that you have proper countermeasures on hand, mainly in the form of an EpiPen. The reason for this is that you could face a language barrier with your caregivers in a foreign country, and a situation where you're going into anaphylactic shock is not one where you want to be flipping through your language guide to find the right translation.

3. Order a medic alert bracelet. Anyone with a serious medical condition should not travel without some kind of identification that will impart essential data to medical professionals in the event of injury or accident that leads to unconsciousness. Suppose you're allergic to penicillin or iodine, both common to hospital settings. You could
end up in even worse trouble if you have an accident and you aren't wearing a bracelet to let medical professionals know.

4. Bring a first-aid kit. You might not think that having first-aid supplies on hand is necessary, but even a small cut can turn into a major problem if you don't disinfect it and cover it with a bandage. Travel kits will take up hardly any space in your luggage and they'll ensure that minute medical concerns don't turn into far bigger issues.


5. Don't forget the basics. You don't have to be enrolled in an MHA program to know that when you're in a foreign country you may face some barriers to finding items that are easy to procure at home. For example, suppose you need some aspirin or antacid (drugs that are readily available in most places). You might not think they'd be difficult to procure, until you find yourself in a drug store facing shelves of packages printed in another language. Of course, you can always ask the pharmacist to help you, unless you don't speak a common language. You get the picture. Instead of dealing with this headache (while dealing with an actual headache) simply bring any of the basic, OTC items you think you might need during your trip.