The Reality of Traveling With Addison's
The Things Nobody Tells You
Nobody warned me that being anxious about traveling with Addison’s would actually make the Addison’s worse. Like that’s the whole problem. The stress about managing it becomes its own medical variable you have to account for, which then stresses you out more, which means more medication, which means more anxiety about whether you dosed right. It’s a loop and it took me a few trips to even understand that was happening.
For context: I was diagnosed in January 2023 after six years of being told I was fine. My adrenal glands don’t produce cortisol, which means my body can’t regulate its own stress response. A long travel day can tip the scales. A delayed flight. A sprint between terminals. Even just the anxiety leading up to the trip. Psychological stress requires the same physical response as being sick, so I sometimes have to stress-dose for nervousness the same way I would for a fever. Research actually backs this up: people with adrenal insufficiency are more than four times more vulnerable to crisis from emotional stress than from something like surgery or infection. So when I say I manage my anxiety like a medical variable, I mean that literally.
The Trips
My first real trip after my diagnosis was Ireland in 2024. My sister and I took my dad for his 70th birthday and I was nervous in a way I hadn’t been about travel before. I flew over with my dad and my sister met us there. I remember being so relieved when the hotel let us check in immediately. I took a three hour nap before we did anything else. That nap was everything. I woke up feeling human and the trip ended up being one of the best of my life. That was the lesson I came home with: the first day is not for sightseeing. The first day is for landing.
Italy in 2025 was for my mom, her 60th birthday and her retirement. Longer flight, all of us together, which helped emotionally but was harder logistically. We couldn’t get into the room right away so I couldn’t nap, and I felt it the whole first day. The trip itself was beautiful. The flight home is what got me. I wasn’t in crisis but I was taking more medication than usual trying to get my heart rate down and it just wasn’t cooperating. I got home and didn’t move for a full day. That was the lesson from Italy: the return trip is part of the trip. You have to save something for it.
Oregon was the most complicated one yet and it wasn’t even transatlantic.
I had moved into my first owned place about a month before. Started a new role at work around the same time, one where I have people reporting to me now, so there’s this pressure to be useful immediately even when you’re still figuring everything out. I was already running elevated before I even got to the airport. On top of that I was staying at my boyfriend’s family’s house for the first time, which is its own kind of stress even when you genuinely want to be there. And it was my first trip with Addison’s involving a connecting flight. DCA to Chicago, hour and a half layover, Chicago to Eugene. We landed, had lunch, stopped at a waterfall on the way, got out of the car because I get carsick and two plus hours in a car is hard on my body. The water and the trees actually helped. But honestly if it had been a choice between that and laying down, I would have picked laying down. It wasn’t that choice though. It was between the car and getting out of the car, and getting out won. By the time I got horizontal that night it had been somewhere between sixteen and eighteen hours since I started my day.
I did everything right and it was still a lot.
What's in My Bag
This took me trips to figure out. Here's what I don't leave home without:
Emergency injection kit (non-negotiable, always in my carry-on)
Hydrocortisone tablets, way more than I think I'll need
Salt tablets
All thyroid medication and anything else condition-specific
Waterboy packets and a real water bottle
Compression socks for flights
A prescription I have for anxiety spikes, because when the Addison's gets activated and anxiety spikes at the same time they feed each other fast and sometimes you need to interrupt the cycle
Medication for significantly more days than I'm actually going to be there, because if something goes wrong and I get stuck, I need to have it
I also look up the nearest hospital before I go anywhere. Not to scare myself, just to know. That's part of the prep now.
The Mental Load Is Real
The anxiety before a trip costs me before I even get to the airport. The worry about whether I packed enough, whether I’ll be able to rest when I need to, whether something will go sideways. That runs in the background from the moment I book the flight. And with Addison’s, sustained anxiety can push you toward the exact thing you’re trying to avoid. So I’ve had to start treating pre-trip stress like a physical variable, because it is one.
What helps is having your people.
My boyfriend was with me on the way out to Oregon and that helped more than I expected, not because he did anything medical, just because having someone there who knew what I was dealing with took some of the edge off. The return I did alone and it was rough. Construction delays at O’Hare meant we sat on the runway long enough that my 45 minute layover got a lot shorter. Then I had to sprint an actual mile between terminals, same ticket, same airline, still a mile, and by the time I made it to the gate I was out of breath with my heart rate completely spiked. Exactly what I’d been trying to avoid the whole trip. I made the flight. I was a mess for a minute, but I made it.
And then there’s my sister. She tracks me when I travel and she will not stop looking at my location until she knows I’m okay. She’s texting, she’s checking in, she’s on it in a way I can’t fully put into words. I hate that it’s a source of stress for her. I genuinely do. But I am so lucky she’s that person for me. Having someone who takes it as seriously as you do without you ever having to ask them to is something I don’t take for granted.
What I'm Still Learning
Three years in and I’m honestly still figuring this out. Oregon was a win and I’m proud of that, but it’s not always going to be a win and I know that. Some trips are going to be harder. Some days you do everything right and your body still doesn’t cooperate. That’s just the reality of this disease and I’m still making peace with it.
What I do know is that the Addison’s community online has kept me sane in a way that doctors couldn’t. It’s a lonely diagnosis. Most people have never heard of it, and explaining why a travel day that’s exhausting for anyone is genuinely dangerous for you gets old fast. Finding people who just get it has been everything and probably saved my life.
I’m still going places. I’m just going prepared, going with people who know what I need, and being honest with myself about what my body can handle on any given day.
If you have Addison’s or another chronic disease and you’ve been scared to travel, I get it. Start somewhere manageable, build your kit, protect that first day, and don’t underestimate the anxiety leading up to it. That part counts too.