Travelling with meds that need refrigeration

It depends on the medication and the country. Each country has different laws. Keeping it cool shouldn't be an issue, as many hotels offer rooms with mini fridges, or you can rent an apartment with a fridge. Some hotels offer refrigeration services if the room doesn't have one (Claudia recently spoke of this in her London thread).

You will get a better answer about obtaining meds in Europe if you edit your post and include the countries you will be traveling to.

I have no idea what Trulicity is, but the odds are pretty good it's available.

EDIT: JUST LOOKED IT UP. ODDS ARE NOT SO GOOD. RESEARCH. https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/documents/shortage/trulicity-dulaglutide-supply-shortage_en.pdf

EDIT 2: Looks like the price in Europe is about $200 a dose.

I would contact an expat clinic in each of your stops and ask. Then, you are going to have to set up a consultation with a local doctor and get a prescription. Bring your diagnosis and your current prescription.

I know a little of this cause it's what I have been doing for my extended stays in Budspest for many, many years. Sounds like a lot, but it's easy.

If you rely on any medication, it's a good idea to do the research in advance. Things do get lost, luggage goes missing the taxi drove off with your ... and a hundred other things. Not every US medication is available in every or any European country. My heart meds have to be purchased in Austria, for instance. So even if Plan A is to carry refrigerated bags all over Europe, you might want to have a Plan B in place for the unexpected.

Talk to your Pharmacist. Your best bet will be to have a small cooler bag with packs that can be refrigerated or frozen, supplemented as needed with packets of ice. Learn from your Pharmacist what tolerance the medication has to exposure to room temperatures. Trulicity, for example, is fine at room temperature for up to two weeks, so being able to keep it cool, most of the time, should be fine, if you have a small stretch above 40 Deg, it may not be a big issue. Of course, you also want to look at the expiration dates, and getting a 90 day supply might be tough.

You almost likely can not get it there. To get a prescribed medication requires going to a Doctor there, and having them prescribe it, and then hoping there is availability. Depending on the reason for prescribing, the Doctor may or may not allow that (People have been getting Trulicity for a number of reasons and conditions).

If this is critical to your health, I would have your Doctor write a letter explaining why you were prescribed the medication, tests that might have been done, and contact info for your doctor, so in case you need to replace doses, you have some documentation for a doctor there. For that matter, your Doctor may be able to prescribe a more shelf stable product.

There's a thread about this issue under Covid. Also I can share my experience traveling with a twice-weekly injectable. Ordering mine in Europe is out of the question due to out of pocket cost - I get them from a specialty pharm in the US, mostly covered by my insurance.
In the UK, hotels are required to provide refrigeration and/or freezing if medically necessary. So plan A is to reserve in hotels with a room refrigerator. Backup plan is to contact those hotels in advance and ensure they are aware of the laws, and when you arrive, package your meds clearly labelled with your info, take to front desk, and have them refrigerate. I'm not sure about all countries but this also worked in Italy.
The other issue is transport between refrigerators. I bring an insulated bag and 4 refreezable gel ice packs. Have hotel refreeze them when you get there. This also works fine when flying as long as the gel packs are frozen. If they are mushy, they get thrown out.
The final thing is ensuring your medical insurance will provide you enough doses in advance.

Thanks for the quick replies. Looks li9ke medication supply will determine how long we can be out of country.

Just returned from 14 days in Greece and turkey. One woman in our group had a med that had to be kept refrigerated . We changed hotels everyday. I don't know what she kept it in during the day, but hotel rooms that did not have a fridge found another place to keep it for her. My sense is that her dosage schedule was every 12 hours, which would make having it NOT in yr hotel room possible. Good luck

Some hotels that don't have refrigerators in every room, may have a few for those who request (Such as people who have medications that need to be refrigerated.)

You would not be the first person to need this. Contact the hotels to see if they have fridges or a way to store your meds in their fridge. If they serve breakfast, they have a fridge.

There are also specially designed pouches made for travel that keep meds cool. Many are made for insulin users.

I think the chances of you being able to keep meds at 4C while travelling over the long haul is very low.

Looking at the European Medicines Agency website, it say that Trulicity is recommended in cases where Metformin can't be used. I use Metformin, it comes in tablet form, so keep it cool is not any issue. I'd suggest you have a talk with your healthcare professionals and see what they think is possible. You can use this European site to see what is available etc: https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/medicines

we use a cooler from 4AllFamily.com They have a variety. The one we have works off a cooler pack that you freeze or off a wall plug or off a battery. We needed two batteries for flights to/from US to Europe. If the hotel did not have a fridge we plugged it in and put a note, in the local language, that a medical device was in use, please leave electric on. One note was on the light switch and another on the cooler.

There's a post under COVID 19 and travel "keeping medications refrigerated" that may help

Another option that worked for me is switching meds. When Trulicity became very limited last year I couldn’t get it at any pharmacy in our area. After discussing with my dr I switched from Trulicity ( been on it for 5 years) to Ozempic. Each injector holds 4 doses and can stay at room temp for 56 days. So much less to carry around and keep refrigerated. I would talk to your dr and see if you might want to try. As a note, my fasting sugars haven’t been this good in years and I lost about 10 lbs.

Thanks for the tips on refrigerated carriers and possibly switching meds. Going to talk to Dr about switching since carriers I was looking at hold significantly more Ozempic pens than Trulicity.