I’ve always kept my insulin in the refrigerator. Whether the bottle is open or not, I keep it there. When I travel, I always look for hotels rooms with a refrigerator. If we’re camping, I make sure we’re never short on ice.

With our upcoming tour, we’re going to be on the road for about eight months. We’ll be using a mixture of camping and hotels, but the budget for hotel rooms is tight and we’re probably not going to be in hotels where getting a refrigerator is an option.

So how do I keep my supply of insulin cold for eight months straight?

Well, first, I suppose I don’t need to take an eight month supply with me. A couple bottles — about 2 months supply for me — should be easy enough to keep fairly cool plus the bottle that’s currently open, I don’t really have to keep cool. It will be OK at room temperatures for up to a month (see 1 and 2), but I do have to make sure to keep it out of extreme temperatures.

The budget for this tour includes some money for a thermoelectric refrigerator. Koolatron and Coleman make them, but there might be other manufacturers as well. They’re reasonably priced, $75 to $200, depending on size. Unfortunately, what I recently discovered is that they’re not thermostatically controlled. That is, once plugged-in, these things operate at maximum cooling at all times. The advertised cooling capacity of the Koolatron and Coleman units is 40-45 degrees Fahrenheit below the surrounding ambient temperature. So, if the ambient temperature is 85°F Fahrenheit, the refrigerator is keeping the insulin at a comfortable 40-45°F. However, if the ambient temperature drops to, say, 50°F, then you’re in serious danger of having your insulin freeze.

So what are the alternatives? Well, we could rely on a good, well-insulated cooler that we keep stocked with ice. We’ll probably need a cooler with us anyway, so rather than using the 10-year old cooler that we already have, we’ll probably purchase a newer, better insulated one.

I’m also tempted to purchase a couple of these cooling wallets, make specifically for carrying insulin. They’re made by Frio UK Ltd. They also have a US distributor, Wise Choice Nursing Consultants FRIO Division. You immerse the cooling wallet in cold water for 15 minutes or so and that makes the crystals in the panels of the wallet expand into a gel that will remain cool for several days with Frio’s patented process. They’re claim is that the wallets will keep insulin cool for 48 hours even when the outside temperature is 100°F.

This is a long enough tour that I might actually rely on a combination of these devices in case one of them fails.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 6th, 2006 at 9:30 pm and is filed under The Dream Tour, Diabetes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.