This year is a little more complicated when it comes to planning out vacations. The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown kinks in our family plans and usually, I feel like my own medical condition does that for me. One thing that I normally have to plan for is my ostomy and that usually comes second because I am able to pretty much go and do anything that the rest of my family can. But there are things to consider especially now with the pandemic and different kinds of travel that are involved in making a vacation with a family.
For the most part, making plans is pretty fun, but this year has been more stressful than any other year. It always seems that the stress of COVID-19 is being pressed upon us because each location we are thinking about is dealing with it differently. The pandemic took our first vacation off of its path and canceled it completely.
The first plans we had made were to go to Hawaii. This was really done because the flights were so cheap. I normally do not like the idea of long flights with an ostomy bag because of all the inflation that takes place. Any carbonation or alcohol simply makes that worse and it can be a rather uncomfortable ride. Emptying an ostomy bag on a plane is also a really complicated thing to do and I usually do not feel that it is very sanitary either. But even with the flight issues, we wanted to visit the islands because they are so cool. The reason we ended up not doing this is because of the mandatory quarantine that Hawaii put in place for all new visitors. Even if you test negative for Covid-19 the day before you are still quarantined. So that simply ended our vacation plans. The other thing that came up was that the Hotel was closed down as well. This is wild, but since no one is visiting all hotels simply closed. This meant that we needed to find another vacation for the family.
Our next idea was to visit some national parks. This is because we wanted to see some new ones and Glacier National Park was on the list. I knew that with cold weather I would have to call up my ostomy gear provider and see what could be done with the altitude and weather. I didn't want to have any stoma issues on trails out there. But the big issue is weather and timing. It turns out that the ostomy issues were secondary to the roads being closed down in that park in winter. The snow is so great in this time of year that it may simply not be worth visiting. That made us pretty sad again because we are now running low on ideas for the family. That would have been a road trip scenario. I am great with a larger ostomy bag and can drive for a very long time without stopping. But since that idea is most likely going to be canceled from the weather we are running out of options. Flights are complicated due to covid-19 and testing and locations are seeming to be less fun with all these mask regulations.
So I hope your planning of vacations this year is working out better than ours. I hope our plight has narrowed down some ideas on your list for you.