Travel Insurance
Travel Insurance
Never ever travel without it. Here’s 5 true stories [all my own] of why you need it and shouldn’t travel without it.
Travel insurance might cost you $100 for a 2 week package deal or £100 or €100. It’s worth it. If you’re a global nomad, get an annual ‘all-continents’ package [USA will probably be covered separately but make sure you check]. If you are injured, sick, hospitalised whilst traveling or on holiday, this could cost you a colossal sum of money. How does US$750,000 sound?
True Story 1 – Mum in Mongolia:
My mum came to stay with us in Mongolia. She’s in her 80’s and she was flying UK > Amsterdam > Seoul [2 nights with my wife] > Mongolia for 3 weeks, then > Hong Kong 4 nights then home. She paid £350 premium and disclosed whatever previous conditions she’d had [not much].
After 2 weeks she fell and badly broke her wrist. The doctor in the clinic in Mongolia said she could only stay 1 more week before she’d have to return home for surgery if she was to retain full use of the wrist. The following day and completely unrelated she was taken ill with cholongitis [infection of bile duct]. Back to hospital and admitted to ICU. The clinic was the best I’ve ever seen in 20 years of expatting but it was a frontline clinic not a hospital. The doc’ said although she was getting the best care in the country, if her conditioned worsened she would have nowhere to go and they as doctors would have no more medical care to offer and there was only one option which was medical evacuation by Air Ambulance. As an HR Manager of international mega-projects, I’ve done dozens of medivacs from remote parts of the world – but never my own mother. The medical insurance / evacuation company were dreadful and I mean dreadful, utterly useless, careless and thoughtless. The two key memories I have of them are:
1) Avoid incurring cost;
2) Those I spoke to in the call centre were probably on minimum wage, zero hour contracts – because they were useless;
They probably tried with me what they had been doing for years ‘tell the next of kin we are doing everything they possibly can’ and they’ve been getting away with it, because the next of kin, has never been an expert in this activity. Then they came across me and I have likely conducted more medivacs than every single person I spoke to or dealt with in that company. I am, unfortunately for them, a subject matter expert in medivacs from remote locations. I also carried two mobile phones, one I used for talking to them, with the other phone I recorded every conversation [as they do for training and quality purposes].
Sometimes they were just incompetent, sometimes they outright lied but they never knew I was recording them. The doctors and myself wanted my mother medivac’d to Hong Kong because we’ve used it many times and we know exactly what goes on and where. The insurance co refused HK because it was a lot more expensive than China. It got to the point where our treating doctor in-country shouted at them “if you do not casevac this patient immediately, she is going to die and you will be responsible for this!”
Reluctantly they ordered an Air Ambulance [which I think cost US$90,000]. The insurance co called them in from China to return to China against the advice of every treating physician on
the ground. They had deliberately left it so late, the doc’ said mum was unlikely to survive a 4 hour flight to Hong Kong and China would now give her a better chance of survival to a hospital on the ground. Their administration and logistics organisation was appalling, it was only when the aircraft arrived it was confirmed that I could go on the aircraft with her. Up until then they were thinking of putting a semi-conscious 80 year old female on a flight with male only doctors with very limited English language ability. Had I not gone there would have been no one to administer her passport and visa on arrival etc.
On the way to Beijing one of the Chinese doctors called me over and pointed to the heart monitors. Her heart rate was 180 beats/min and her blood pressure was 180/90. I asked him ‘is she having a heart attack?’
‘Yes’ he said.
‘How long to Beijing?’
’45 minutes’.
‘How long on the ground until we get to the hospital?’
‘1 hour’.
‘Will she make it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Is there anything else we can do?’
He put his hand on my arm, looked at me very sincerely and said ‘we can hope.’
‘Is that it, is that all we have left in the medical armoury – hope?’
‘Yes. Unless that is of course, you are religious. Then we can pray.’
Mum was unconscious so I knew it was OK to cry then when she couldn’t see me.
We made it to China, we made it to hospital and thanks to the magnificence of Dr Erik from Sweden and the other doctors and nurses in the hospital in Beijing mum made it through a major operation with a cardiac surgeon, an anaesthetist, an infections specialist and Dr Erik the orthopaedic genius who saved her wrist. Three weeks later she was medivacced back to UK and home and made a full recovery.
The insurance co were responsible for getting me back to Mongolia and believe it or not [I do] they even screwed up my transport from Ulaanbaatar airport to my apartment. Utterly useless.
I ended writing a 58 [fifty eight] page report which I sent to their CEO. I included transcripts of the calls I had taped which were in complete contravention of what was sent in e-mails etc. I could hear the embarrassed silences as that was discussed in their boardroom.
Astonishingly, not only did they refund her entire policy, they also admitted they had failed us and they had got things wrong and they were very sorry. I actually got an insurance company to admit fault and to apologise.
I also saw her total bill for the stay and the surgery in China – US$750,000. Plus her and escorting doctor business class back to London Heathrow and ambulance home to Norfolk. Plus all my costs in the hotel in China [which they screwed up], plus our visas [which they screwed up], plus my flights home.
Everything King Midas touched turned to gold. This insurance company were like King Midas but in reverse – everything they touched, turned to shit. But they still paid and the bill all up would have bene the best part us US$1 million for £350. Don’t travel without insurance!
True Story 2 – Broken Ribs on Boracay Island
2011 my daughter and I went to Boracay Island in the Philippines. One evening I was invited onto the stage to sing with the band [this is not uncommon]. I fell off the edge of the stage and my ribs landed on the corner of a step. One rib broke, another one cracked. Although I didn’t know this at the time I just knew I was in agony and could hardly breathe.
Medical staff were summoned from somewhere, I have no idea where. My daughter was in the nightclub next door and was found and informed of my predicament and brought to the scene. An ambulance arrived and I was duly stretchered away. Boracay did not have any sealed roads which meant the ambulance bounced along from pothole to pothole with the pieces of my broken rib sticking into various parts of my insides. I’m surprised they didn’t hear me screaming in Manila.
I was taken into ICU and hooked up to drips of painkillers and oxygen and being a typical teenager the first thing my daughter did is take photos of me so she cold post them to social media. I was spitting blood and the doctors biggest fear was the broken rib had punctured my lung and allowed an ingress of blood hence my coughing up blood. There ended up being about 5 doctors / medical staff in the island clinic not including the ambulance staff. As I was on some fairly heavy painkillers, which had been preceded by some fairly heavy drinking as I was lapsing in and out of consciousness. The one thing I do remember them discussing was:
“if he’s punctured a lung he must be medivacced;”
“where to and how?”
“either Caticlan or Manila;”
“but how?”
“to Caticlan by boat or Manila by helicopter.”
“No way! If he has a punctured lung, there is no way he can go on a boat. It might puncture the lung more times, he could drown in his own blood, he won’t survive.” [This was fairly disturbing to listen to.]
‘The only option is medivac by air, they’ll have to bring in the helicopter. When will he be ready for x-ray.”
The clinic staff came and got me onto a trolley and took me for x-rays. All I could manage to say was there was no way I was going to be medivacced and leave my 16 year old daughter alone on the island. The doctor wanted me kept in the clinic overnight for observation so they gave me some more drugs and I slept soundly.
In the morning I was taken back to the hotel and almost carried up the stairs to our room. When I got there my daughter said to me “they took the money.”
“What? What money?”
“The money, all our Philippine pesos. They took it last night to pay the hospital bill.”
“How?”
“They brought me back here and asked me to open the safe and give them the money for your treatment in hospital.”
“Is there any left?’
“No. They took it all, but they gave me receipts for everything.”
Indeed receipts had been provided by whoever had done this and I was provided with full medical reports. It had not completely paid the bill in full and I was required to settle the total amount before they would let us off the island. No bill settlement – no transport.
The final score was that I had one broken rib and one cracked rib. It’s incredibly painful even trying to breathe. When we left Boracay we bounced down to the jetty in some kind of motorbike / sidecar contraption with me biting on something, then endured the banana boat ride back to Caticlan [which I had really enjoyed on the way in] which, unfortunately for me was not like the millpond I was hoping for. Then a torturous flight in a tiny Spitfire sized aircraft to the mainland and then another 8 long and painful hours flight home.
Final Score:
– Ambulance to hospital on the island;
– Medical staff;
– Painkillers, anti-inflammatories and oxygen;
– X-rays;
– Bandages [around the ribcage];
All covered – don’t go without travel insurance!
True Story 3 – A torn quad muscle on a cruise ship
Christmas 2012 found my daughter and I on a cruise round the South Pacific for Christmas. Being the energetic cruiser that I am, I was up for fitness club every morning. I was sprinting down the deck when suddenly I felt a hammer blow in right thigh and I nose dived face first into the deck. I had seen a couple in front of me down the deck and I could hear the man say ‘call the doctor, I think he’s had a heart attack.’ I didn’t think I’d had a heart attack but I had collapsed so quickly, a few folks thought I was dead before I hit the ground.
A few seconds of lying on the deck and the pain kicked in. It was like someone was shoving a red-hot poker down the front of my thigh. The medical staff arrived and I was promptly stretchered off to the sickbay. I was jabbed with painkillers and something else which numbed my senses and I drifted off to sleep. A couple of hours later the ships Chief Doctor came in to see me and asked me what I had been doing?
‘Running.’
‘Where?’
‘Down the deck.’
‘How did you do this?’
‘Do what?’
‘Tear your quad muscle in half.’
‘What?’
I’d never heard of a torn quad before, it is the biggest muscle in the body. But I had. On the inside of the thigh, the strip of muscle there had simply parted in the middle and the top part of the muscle had retracted towards the top of my thigh and the bottom part of the muscle had fallen down to the bottom of my thigh. I still have a large hollow there to this day and if it is ever to be fixed, it will mean cutting my thigh open, pulling the two parts out from where they have retracted to and sowing them back together. But it is unlikely they will reach each other now. So I’ll have hollow in my thigh for life.
None of the medical staff had ever come across a torn quad before and no one was really quite sure what to do. All I wanted was pain killing drugs. After another couple of hours of drugs and sleep the doc said there was nothing more they could do onboard but they needed to consider whether I should be put ashore and sent to hospital for a look and possibly flown back to Brisbane. I told them that wasn’t even up for discussion and there was no way I was getting off. So they put a tight support stocking on, gave me a walking stick and let me go to hobble back up to my cabin.
My daughter was still in bed and as I stumbled and staggered into the cabin, she gazed blurry-eyed at me and burst out laughing. As I was in extreme pain, I was less than pleased and asked what she thought was so funny.
She stopped laughing and said ‘hey dad, you’ve turned into grandpa.’ My dad walked with a stick.
For the rest of the cruise, they gave me painkilling drugs, injections and anti-inflammatories. When we got back onshore I submitted the claim [including the walking stick I’d been charged for] via insurance, it was not cheap, easily 10x the premium.
If they’d put me ashore for hospital review and flight back to Brisbane, you could easily triple or quadruple that.
Don’t travel without insurance.
True Story 4 – The Rat Bite in Thailand and hospital in Singapore
May 2013 had seen our annual excursion to Hua Hin in Thailand and I was then going to r/v with my daughter in Singapore. The morning before I was due to leave HH I was having a shower getting ready for our last all day piss-up and when I washed my shin, had a massive shooting pain up my shin. Upon closer examination I found a bright red swollen lump on the shin bone, very tender to the touch but with no broken skin. On the way to the pub I called in at the chemist and showed the pharmacist, she gave me some over the counter antibiotics and painkillers which you would need a doctors appointment and prescription for in Brisbane. Gotta love Thailand. The only advice she gave me was ‘don’t mix them with alcohol.’ Yeah right, fat chance.
I took the drugs and got on the piss. Throughout the day I kept feeling twinges, stings and pain up and down my shin and I probably didn’t pay as much attention to it or take it as seriously as I should have and just irresponsibly took more drugs and drank more beer. Eventually the skin split and it started to weep white puss. Then I fell into a drunken stupor. When I woke up the following morning, my leg was in agony and it was bright red below the knee and swollen, very swollen. I could hardly put any weight on it to walk on it without getting shooting pains from the ankle to the knee.
Our regular taxi driver Mr Pepsi picked me up at the hotel door and drove round the corner to the chemist, he went inside and brought the pharmacist out, she recognised me or more likely the wound from the day before. She came out with antiseptic cleanser and dressed and bandaged the now open and weeping wound. All she said was ‘you must go to hospital immediately.’ Mr Pepsi whisked me off to Bangkok airport for the short jaunt down to Singers. He put my bag on the luggage trolley, told me to sit on top and pushed me to the check-in desk. What a top bloke, this is why he’s been our regular taxi driver for years. The check-in staff called the airport medical staff who took me into their medical centre. They took the dressing off and for the first time I could smell it and it smelt foul. The airport medical staff cleaned and dressed the wound and said as soon as I reached Singapore, I should go straight to hospital. I was ready to because I was in agony. They loaded me up with more painkillers and antibiotics and on the plus side I got a wheelchair to the plane and straight to the front of the queue and the same on arrival at Singapore.
As soon as I’d checked into the hotel in Singers and dumped my bag, the hotel organised a taxi straight to Raffles Medical Centre which was 0.5km down the Bras Basah Road on Raffles Boulevard. By the time I got there my leg was about 3 times the size it should be and bright purple and weeping foul smelling puss. I was also starting to feel really shitty, hot and sweaty yet cold and clammy and I knew the infection was taking a hold of me. As soon as the first nurse saw me she ran [literally ran] off and got a doctor. The doctor spoke to her in local language and although I don’t know what he said, I know he was taking it fairly seriously. He shouted something to a person over there and to another person over there and there was a lot of movement with a lot of urgency. They laid me down on a bed and brought in two drips and prepared the backs of both hands with cannulas. Two drips? I’d never had two drips before. Just as I was about to ask the question the doctor said ‘one is painkillers, one is antibiotics, you’re in a bad way.’ That cheered me up.
I fell asleep immediately. When I woke up about 3 hours had passed and a nurse was waiting and she called the doctor over. He asked me if I knew how I had got the infection on my leg, which I didn’t. He told me they had cut away some of the dead flesh and skin [WTF – dead flesh and skin?] and they were running tests to see if they could identify the source of the infection, ie what had bitten me [I presumed]. I was taxied the 0.5km home with instructions to return the following morning which I did feeling marginally less like death.
The following morning in the hospital, the most bizarre conversation took place:
‘Do you know when the rat bit you, did you actually see it?’
‘Rat?’
‘Yes rat. The test results have come back and the samples were contaminated with rat urine and faeces.’
‘WTF? I think I would have noticed if a rat had run up my leg and bitten me. Are you sure it was a rat.’
‘Yes 100%, there is no mistake. If you weren’t physically bitten by a rodent then maybe something like a mosquito has been paddling about in a rats nest and when it bit you, it has also infected you with everything it picked up in the rats nest. But rat faeces and urine has been injected into you’
‘Brilliant, fantastic. That’s a lovely thought and it’s cheered me up no end.’
‘For the next 3 mornings, we want to see you down here for intravenous antibiotics and to inspect and re-dress the wounds. We are going to leave the cannulas in your hands rather than pull them out each day and stick you again the following day, for 3 days. Don’t get the cannulas or the bandages around them wet.’
‘How am I supposed to shower?
‘You’ll have to get your wife to wash you.’
‘I’m not married, I’m here with my daughter.’
‘Then she’ll have to wash you.’
‘You haven’t met my daughter have you!’
So for the next 3 days I attended the Raffles Medical Centre for drugs and dressings. After the last session the doctor said he wanted to do one final ‘trim’ of the wound. This basically entailed cutting out about one inch of flesh and skin to ensure all the dead tissue had been removed. However, this wasn’t a small procedure and I would need a weeks rest prior to traveling.
I told the doc’ I just couldn’t do this as I was returning to work in Kazakhstan on Sunday. He accepted I wouldn’t do it but asked that I sign a release of medical indemnity to exonerate the hospital of any malpractice. I signed it with no qualms, they’d been great.
I returned to Kazakhstan and collated all my receipts and submitted them to the insurance company.
– Antibiotics, painkillers and dressings and bandages in Hua Hin, Thailand;
– The same in Bangkok airport;
– Admission to Raffles Medical Centre with a half day stay, charges for the attending doctors and nurses, treatment(s), drugs, dressings and bandages every morning for 4 days;
– All the drugs and dressings they gave me to take away back to Kazakhstan with me.
The bill was astronomical. But it was all covered by Insurance. Don’t travel without insurance.
Singapore Slings on Clarke Quay complete with cannula.
True Story 5 – Parasailing without wind – and the knee paid for it
August 2013, the first leave after the rat bite incident. I rendezvoused with my daughter in Malaysian Borneo at an absolutely 5-star resort.
Determining that I couldn’t possibly be so unlucky as to get injured on the cruise, then be hospitalised in Singapore and then have something happen to me in Borneo, we decided we should go parasailing as we’d never done it before. Parasailing isn’t difficult, you start at the bottom and go up, rather than parachuting where you start at the top and come down. For parasailing you stand on the back of the boat and as they pick up speed, they unwind the cable your attached to and the parachute inflates and up you go. All that is required is forward motion and you’ll stay up as the wind inflates the ‘chute. The idea to get you down is to slow the boat but keep the forward motion as they reel you in and you land back on the rear of the boat. You aren’t ever supposed to plummet into the water beneath a collapsed parachute.
Clearly the driver of our boat, hadn’t read that last part.
We got harnessed in side by side, hooked on and away the boat went as we were unwound and started to ascend. Everything was going well and we had great views over the resort, the bay and the nearby islands. The boat was moving at high speed but when I looked ahead it was down a narrow channel which came to a dead stop a few hundred yards ahead. It was obvious that the boat was going to have to turn 180 degrees but it wasn’t wide enough to do it at high speed because it would run into the bank. This meant they were going to have to reduce speed to very slow during the turn. Grade 1 laws of physics were already telling me that as we slowed to turn we were going to descend, quickly. I already knew they should be reeling us in and as they weren’t, there was no way they were going to be able to keep us airborne or prevent us from dropping in the water along way astern of the boat.
As expected as the boat slowed to turn 180 degrees we started to drop far quicker than we should have or was safe. Just as the boat completed the turn and we started in the opposite direction a large gust of wind came from behind us and completely collapsed the parachute and we plummeted into the sea. For reasons never explained it was at this point the boat driver rammed the throttles open. I don’t know why he thought a waterlogged parachute in the sea would inflate and take us up but that was never going to happen. What did happen was that he dragged us through the water – head first – face down, and we were drowning. Literally. We were forced underwater by the pressure and even our lifejackets couldn’t push us above the pressure wave. The harness was attached to a solid steel bar across both of us so we couldn’t even flip ourselves over, couldn’t shout out, wave or do anything to rescue ourselves. We were totally at the mercy of a blind and incompetent crew.
Eventually the boat stopped and we manage to surface in our lifejackets spewing and coughing saltwater. The boat reversed up and luckily didn’t chew us up in the propellers. The crew dragged my daughter aboard first and I was going to try and climb into the boat up the ladder on the side but I had an excruciating pain in my knee. I had to lay out on the back of the boat with my leg out straight and couldn’t move or bend my knee at all.
The boat went back to the jetty at full speed without the crew saying so much as sorry. Some of the hotel staff were waiting for us on the jetty so the crew had obviously radioed ahead that they had a casualty onboard. The resort staff helped me to the medical centre and gave me painkillers and anti-inflammatories then took me back to my room. The following day they took me to the local hospital for x-rays and a review with a doctor and more drugs. The day before we left I had another visit to the hospital and a replenishment of painkillers to return to work with.
Once again, I collated all the receipts and submitted the claim. I was sure that this insurance company would never provide me cover again.
Don’t travel without insurance!