Talk to me about flying with medicine

[MomTo4+more]

I have never flown with children who need meds and medical equipment. How do you do it? If I check the bags, I am concerned about the luggage getting lost and not having the meds. Can I carry them on? What about the liquid ones - penicillin, motrin, tylenol 3, and benadryl? I have the single dose benadryl pack, so that would probably work, right? My son's epipens absolutely need to be immediately accessable. Then there are the inhalers and the nebulizer. The chemo meds should not be handled without gloves and a mask - do I put some sort of warning on the luggage in case they want to search it? I could just see them searching us extra carefully if I tell them I have cytotoxic meds packed!

 

[videogal1]

Put it all in a carry-on and designate it as medical equipment. It won't count against your carry-on allowance. Do not mention toxic or biohazard unless you want to invite problems. Keep it in a carry on bag that will fit under the seat, if possible, or it could get mashed...I had two, count 'em TWO hand braces broken in carry-on bags. In an on-board emergency it will be an item more precious than gold...treat it that way and don't let any agent tell you otherwise. It would probably make the security TSA people happy if all the containers were collected together in a see-through plastic bag with all prescription info attached. As an extra measure get a prescription printout from the pharmacy to wave around.
Do NOT put the prescription drug stuff in checked luggage labeled as such or otherwise!
Any equipment too large to fit in a carry-on and unable to be broken down into multiple carry-ons should be packed in a well-padded plain cardboard shipping box and labeled inside and out with your contact info, including both vacation destination and home addresses. Proceed as though it will be lost or stolen the minute you let it out of your sight. Request a check-in hand search, if possible.

 

[SueM in MN]

videogal1 gave a pretty thorough overview.
If you follow the link in my signature to the disABILITIES FAQs thread and look in post #15, you will find links to the Transportation Security Administration website pages that talk about this and give the specifics.

As was mentioned, don't put anything in the checked bags unless you can so without it if it is lost for a while. Try to group all your medical equipment together - they will transport it free of charge, but with the arlines charging for bags, some people on other boards have tried to get around the charge by scattering a piece of medical equipment here and there in the luggage (one person posted he put one piece in each bag and then declared all his luggage as Medical). Anyway, people doing things like that are making the airlines look at everyone, even the honest people who are just trying to pack their medical supplies the way it makes most sense.