Tips for travelers injured overseas
Posted: June 30, 2009 Filed under: BLOG | Tags: injury, overseas injury, tips for travelers, travel insurance 2 Comments »
A friend of a friend recently wrote to me, asking for advice as he was currently in a similar predicament to mine two months ago: suffering a serious injury in a foreign country. Fingers crossed you won’t need to call on this in the future!
Before you leave
Buy travel insurance! Buying travel insurance buys peace of mind. You don’t want to be lying in a foreign hospital in pieces, telling doctors to push back on tests or treatments because you can’t afford to pay.
Be sure your travel insurance allows for unlimited costs when it comes to accidents, for the reason above. Looking after your health should be the number one reason for buying insurance, so if it doesn’t provide that better to look for another policy.
I didn’t bring my bulky travel insurance booklet/ policy with me, but I did pack the one-page travel insurance certificate, which had my policy number, a brief summary of what my policy covered and most importantly the toll-free number I could call to report my accident. If you’re really diligent you’ll also copy and paste this document into your email, so that if your stuff gets stolen you can access it there. Double points if you do the same for your policy.
This last one is optional, but I would have found handy. On a piece of paper that you should carry in your wallet, write your name (first and last), your nationality, passport number, travel insurance company, blood type, and any allergies you have, particularly to any medicines. This was the information the hospital was after, and if you’re in a non-English speaking country it may very well be easier to show them this piece of paper than nurses having to mime “allergy”.
At the time of your accident
Poor you! First piece of advice, stay calm. Are you in a developing country? Don’t assume the healthcare system sucks, you may be (if you’re lucky) pleasantly surprised, particularly in countries more socialist than our own. And if you’re in a non-English speaking country, try not to get too frustrated, and be patient. After all you’re the one who doesn’t speak their language, not the other way around.
If the police get involved ask an officer for a police report, detailing the accident. Also ask your doctor for a medical report. Be sure it is on hospital letterhead, and includes the date of the accident, the injuries suffered, and their advice regarding treatment and whether you’re fit to travel. Also ask your doc if they mind giving you their contact details so that should you find later on you need to clarify anything.
If your injury doesn’t require any further treatment beyond that day, be sure to also take home any x-rays, or scans that were taken. These are yours, and may be useful if you find there are complications down the line.
From the moment of your injury, keep every single receipt of anything you pay for. Later when you get home, you can check exactly what your policy allows you to claim, but at the very least it should include treatment, tests, medicine and travel costs.
This is a strange one, and may depend on your insurance company, but I wished I’d paid everything with card not cash. When I did my claims, I put in my bank statement, and my insurance company paid exactly the amount that turned up on my statement – including any foreign currency conversion fees! This way you won’t get gipped if the Australian dollar gains between the time of your accident and the claim, or lose out on charges for withdrawing cash overseas (a cost that I couldn’t claim.)
Returning to your hotel
Call your insurance company. If yours was anything like mine, they will have provided a toll-free number that can be called from anywhere in the world. When you call it’s best to have the following details: your policy number or customer number, which should be on your travel insurance certificate, and an address and telephone number you can be reached on. Check with your hotel if you can give their details for the last two.
The insurance company will set up a case file for you, and put you through with their medical team (their own doctors) to talk about the accident, the injuries sustained and the treatment received. If you’re in a non-English speaking country this is a great opportunity to check that the treatment correlates with what you would have received in Australia, and any further questions you have that was too difficult to ask at the hospital, or was possibly lost in translation.
If you’re asking about medicine, read to them the generic drug name – which will be same across most of the globe, rather than the brand name given by the drug company – which often differs country to country. E.g. Panadol is the drug name, “paracetamol” is the generic drug name.
Did you have to alter your travel plans due to the injury?
You should be able to claim much of the costs of any pre-booked travel plans, just check with your policy. However if plane tickets are involved your insurance company will probably ask that you attempt to get a refund through the airline first.
In my case, although I was not due to fly on the day of the accident, I was not fit to fly on the day I was to leave on my side trip to Spain. But when I called the airline, they said that I could only get a refund if I called 6 hours prior to the flight, and was in the hospital on that day! Luckily I did have an appointment as part of my ongoing treatment on the day of the flight, so I called them the morning of the flight and said I had to go to the hospital that day so I couldn’t fly.
In the evening I emailed them a doctor’s certificate verifying this, and received a full refund on this flight.
Does your injury require ongoing treatment?
Things get a bit more complicated now, and what’s best to do depends on your injury, treatment, trip and policy. It’s something that you will probably work out with your insurance company, and if you have your full policy booklet in your email read the whole thing now!
So here I’ll just give some handy tips that the insurance company may not share with you as it’s not in their interest.
My insurance company were quite explicit that if surgery would be involved in my treatment their plan would be to fly me home as soon as the doctor said I was stable enough to do so, so that the surgery could be carried out in Australia. However, they reluctantly admitted that if my doc said the injury demanded immediate attention and couldn’t wait for me to be fit to fly, they would cover this treatment in Argentina.
Another thing to take into consideration is how long your trip is for. Even if you do have to fly home for treatment, my policy covered costs for a flight back to the holiday, if there was at least one month remaining of the trip. It’s details like these that makes having your full policy booklet in your email useful. I wouldn’t trust the person on the line from your insurance company to tell or know all these details.
If it is necessary for you to fly home, your insurance company should arrange and pay for that flight. Be sure to check they organise anything extra your injury may require. My injury meant I had to have my foot elevated for the length of the flight, so I had to fly business class, and receive hotel assistance and hotel transfers.
The last thing to note is that even if the accident happens on the second last day of your trip, and your policy expires the day after, so long as the accident happens during the time of the policy, they must pay all costs incurred by the injury until the day your doctor deems you fit to fly home, and you do so. For example, I was forced to stay in Buenos Aires two weeks after my policy expired, because my Doctor had not deemed me fit to fly. But I was still covered for costs related to the injury because the accident happened during policy coverage.
Making your claim
Once you return to Australia you will probably find a letter from your insurance company asking that you send in all your receipts, certificates and other supporting material.
The package I sent them included
I kept photocopies of everything I sent them, and thanks to the list, knew roughly how much I expected to be refunded.
A few weeks later an agent from the company emailed me back with a list of everything they were willing to refund me (practically everything!) and the amounts for each item. I doubled checked that they had recorded and added correctly, and approved it. A week later I had a cheque come through the mail, yay!
If you have any additional tips, add them in the comment section.
‘Not-looking’: the strategy for love so many swear by
Posted: June 26, 2009 Filed under: BLOG | Tags: being single, dating, looking for love, love, not looking for love, sex 5 Comments »My gorgeous friend sighed with a twist of ecstasy when I asked how things were going with her boyfriend. At 8 months, her longest relationship. Suddenly the conversation flipped to me.
“That’s how I know it’s going to happen to you now! You know what the key is? You’ve got to NOT be looking for it? Remember that day we were at the races? I wasn’t expecting anything to happen that day and then I met him.”
I firmly replied with the line that I tell every person who insists it’s a matter of ‘not looking’.
“But I’m never looking for it, so that can’t be true.”
I’m never quite sure what the implication is when someone advices you to not-look. Does the act of looking actually repel love? What if it was subtle looking? Do you still give off that whiff of desperation which results to the love of your life going, “nope, not for me?” And by following their advice, and consciously choosing to not-look in the hope that one will fall in love – well doesn’t that mean you are kind of looking?
Or is it a matter of cosmic irony? Just as she least expected it …
In any case, what I said was true. I am almost always not-looking. Or should I say hardly ever looking. Perhaps, I will confess, there have been times my little heart has lifted with an inkling of hope. But at least 95% of my existence has been spent not-looking for love. And not once, in either the 95% of the time I’ve been not-looking, or that 5% that I possibly have, have I fallen in love.
And that day at the races? Falling in love, or even picking up was the last thing on my mind. Yet in the end she found her future boyfriend, and I chatted to a pretty damn cute guy who turned out to be gay. Go figure.
“It’s all luck,” I added.
Perhaps now you’re thinking the problem is that I am never looking. There’s another piece of advice: You’ve got to put yourself out there.
I like to think I’m pretty open and gregarious to everyone I meet, whether I’m attracted to them or not. The kind of person who is driven further into conversation when I recognise the potential for friendship, rather than a hook-up? Would I trade in this person for someone who is supreme at the art of seduction and has several notches – be they dates, hook-ups or boyfriends – on her belt?
Nope. And I’m trying not to make any value judgments as to which is the better kind of person to be. My point is that it’s OK to be me – someone who doesn’t have sex, who doesn’t date, and who has never been in love, just as it’s OK to be the kind of person who goes through the exciting but often emotionally draining dramas of dating. Or just as it’s OK to be a person in a loving relationship.
This is me. And not requiring improvement (at least in this area.)
It sounds terrible to define myself in the ‘absence of’ like that: “who doesn’t have ….” And yes, there is an element of feeling like you’re missing out on something. I wouldn’t mind having love, at some point. Yes I enjoy sex and kissing and touching. But if getting those things requires me to ‘play the field’ – which for me, being so unaccustomed comes out as disingenuous as ‘networking’, or attempt to trick the cosmic, ironic universe, then love, dating and all that jazz is not something I want.
And if that means a lifetime of not having it. So be it.
There are so many, many, many other things I would rather channel my energy into, before acquiring dating skills. The life I have now – single and sexless (well sex without someone else’s participation, ha!) – is it so bad? No, in fact it’s not only bearable, it’s awesome.
Occasionally I do become blue about being single. (I’d say, on average, for a couple of weeks every six months – still a very small minority of the time). And no doubt some of you reading this have been privy to the way I like to play up my perpetual singleness. The thing is, I want to stop all that. Because I think, when I do get bogged down like that, it’s better not to indulge. In fact it’s quite against my nature to mull over these elements in my life that I have sacrificed control of.
It’s much better, in fact, to say to me: hey, instead of fruitlessly wishing you could fall in love, why don’t you take all that pent-up sexual-romantic-frustration, and direct it to answering the question, how can you love the people already in your life, even more? Because trust me, those friends and family need it more than your completely abstract, non-existent problems.
Who you gonna call? (And are your friends on that list?)
Posted: June 25, 2009 Filed under: BLOG | Tags: family, friends, nuclear family, who can you rely on? 7 Comments »When the chips are down, who’s really there for you?
It’s a question Kylie and I were discussing, and the answer should have been obvious. After all, Kylie is the friend who nursed me for two whole weeks in Buenos Aires, following my accident. (Read the last post for that story.)
And for many of you reading this perhaps the answer is obvious.
Well duh, my parents. Of course most of you are young enough that your parents could look after you, and live in the same country. But what about my mum, whose father passed away many years ago, and whose mother is very elderly and lives in Malaysia? It’s an eventual, possible scenario for me too, as I make my plans to live overseas.
OK it’s still duh, what about her husband? Well, my parents are divorced, and I think my mum would rather ask help from the postman than my dad and his new wife. And let’s face it, if my track record is anything to go by, marriage is not a sure thing in my life.
Well JESUS, you say, what about you, her child. OK so in this instance I am the one who would look after her. But lucky I’m old enough to look after her, and that she had kids at all. As I said previously, marriage and kids is no sure thing in my life.
And if you don’t have a husband, and you don’t have kids (the new family), and you’re living in a different country to your parents and siblings (the old family) can you rely on your friends in the city you are living in? Would they get out of bed at 4 in the morning to take you to the emergency hospital? Would they invite you to their home and nurse you for 3 months if your foot was busted?
It’s a question that is pertinent to Kylie who is single and living in a different country to her family and a question this wonderful blogger put to her audience.
At the heart and soul of the question is exposing the depth of your friendships. Is it unconditional love, made up of mutual support and responsibility? Or is it more a case of fun, accompaniment … convenience?
I thanked Kylie profusely for her help those two weeks, but she shrugged it off with typical humility, “you would do the same for me.” Which is true (although like I said to her, that doesn’t take away from what an amazing thing she’s done for me.) But months later as I was talking about the topic with her, I wondered if it was easier for us to find friends “who would” now while we were young and almost all of them aren’t married or with kids. What happens in 10 years time when most of our good friends will be married and have young kids to look after?
I like to believe that I will always take Kylie in, no matter what my familial status is. That what I have is hers. And I have a few friends with whom I have that kind of relationship. But truth is, I don’t really know. In fact I won’t really know until the chips actually go down, and you see which friends pull through for you. And that’s where the crucial difference lies.
With family, and your partner, you know. With friends, you must ask.
As you might have noticed before I grouped husband/kids as “new family” and parents/siblings as “old family.” As the perpetually single person in my group of friends, I have learned not to resent my friends when I see them less because they’ve started dating someone. The best way to see it is that new guy in their life represents the possibility of the “new family”. And he is going, or possibly going to give her something I can never: the promise of concrete, unconditional love.
Don’t get me wrong, some of my friendships are extraordinarily close. But with your best friend, if you find out she wants to move to, let’s say, Rawanda. Do you automatically begin having that conversation if you should move too? The answer is “no”, but the answer for a boyfriend/ girlfriend is “yes”.
Pilgrim Soul has a unique proposition to this modern day dilemma:
I am calling for a destabilization of the rules that surround who we can and should be able to rely on in this culture. That, like it or not, does involve removing the family from its current position at either the top of the pyramid or the center of the Venn diagram (take your pick of visual metaphors) of your treasured personal relationships. And I think the best way for us to encourage this is to advocate the changing of the law to allow people to choose anyone, regardless of affiliation to themselves, to enter into a legally recognized relationship of mutual support.
It’s a nice idea, marrying a best friend. (And as the comments in that post show, does exist in some places, including, apparently Tasmania.) But for me, I can’t help but think that for a lot of people, even if you were to enter one of these platonic marriages, the number one spot will always be reserved for that special someone. And if that special someone comes along, can that first marriage really be maintained, at its original intensity?
For me this whole issue is connected to a social construct I’ve always had a problem with: the nuclear family. Let’s face it, it doesn’t work. How do I know that? Look at the insanely high divorce rate. Look at my family. It’s ridiculous to expect one mum, and one dad, to carry all that pressure of earning all the dough, and keeping all the members happy.
Sometimes I wish we could go back to the days of old. Like back when we use to live in tribes and the entire tribe would raise the next generation of children. Then it wouldn’t even really matter if you didn’t have kids, there would always be kids around for you to help raise.
Or if we can’t do that, to at least go back to Jane Austen style village life, where everyone took care of each other. The mornings were spent calling on each other’s homes, asking about each other’s business. When Mrs So-and-so was sick everybody would bring fresh eggs, or homemade cake. Everybody would visit the Whoevers when there was a new baby. I mean geez, I had been back for two months before a neighbour dropped by (and even then it was to tell us our tap was leaking.)
Yes, this is a question of community. If we still lived in tight communities this need to get married, and quickly breed your own support system, wouldn’t be so pertinent. If we implicitly knew the entire neighbourhood would be ready to shoulder the responsibility of care, we’d probably have a whole lot less angst about who would be there for us. (And no one would have to worry about “dying alone”.)
So … anyone want to start commune?
The kindness of friends, new and old
Posted: June 25, 2009 Filed under: BLOG | Tags: argentina, bike accidents, friends, kindness of strangers, mendoza, overseas accidents 2 Comments »
Yesterday I brought you a rather heart-warming tale of my selfless mother, but today I wanted to dedicate some space to a few other people who helped me out since the accident.
To give you some back story, it happened in Mendoza, about 14 hours away from Argentina’s main city, Buenos Aires. On this particular day I was doing what many tourists do in Mendoza: going on a “wine and bike” tour, with a bunch of friends I’d made at my hostel.
Sounds like a dangerous combination right? The thing is, we hadn’t even bicycled to the first winery – so I hadn’t had a drop to drink – before I ploughed straight into the truck. What can I say … I’m just really, really bad at riding. As I lay down on the road, screaming at the sight of my muscle peering back at me through the giant rip in my foot, my friends came to my rescue and comforted me as we waited for an ambulance.
Three of those friends, just days into our acquaintance, accompanied me through the 7 hours I spent at the hospital getting x-rayed and stitched up. They helped me buy medicine and crutches, and shared their hostel-cooked dinner later that evening. The kindness of (virtual) strangers is amazing.
But the next day I faced a daunting day alone. I dreaded the idea of having to hobble on my crutches down to the busy main street, somehow hail down a taxi, go to the police station to file a medical report, head to the hospital again for a bandage change, get back to the hostel (and tackle the many stairs there) and even more dubiously find some food. All in a country where I spoke barely any Spanish.
I couldn’t sleep that night from the stress (and the pain). I kept imagining falling down onto my foot, which was already seeping blood into the bandage. Never had I felt so very alone.
Thankfully the next day one of my friends from the day before, Jenna, offered to sacrifice yet another day from her holiday to accompany me (my phrasing, not hers). With some guilt, and a lot of relief I accepted her help, even though the day before I had insisted that I would be fine by myself.
But I couldn’t endlessly rely on these backpackers. Clearly I had to get back to Buenos Aires where one of my oldest and best friends lived. There was just a 14 hour bus ride standing in my way.
Up to this point I hadn’t cried once. But halfway into the bus journey, with my foot dripping into a plastic bag that I had stuffed with tissue paper to absorb all the blood, it all became too much. I managed to get it together a couple of hours before Buenos Aires, but as soon as I got off the bus, and saw Kylie standing right there, waiting to pick me up, I began bawling, bawling, bawling again.
I had this immense sense of relief seeing her, and I think in anticipation on the bus. I didn’t have to keep it together anymore, I could just cry and without guilt, let this dear old friend help me.
And what an absolute angel she was. For the next two weeks I settled into my little nest, that was her couch with all my belongings in arms-reach. She would cook delicious meals for me, put on the bath for me (with loving smelling bath salts), pick-up my medicine from the pharmacy, and when she could she accompany me to the hospital. And juggling this with work and university.
But when it became clear to the doctors that the recovery time would be months, not weeks, I knew I had to go home. Even though Kylie insisted I wasn’t a burden, she loved having me stay, the fact of the matter was it simply wasn’t fair on her, when the person at home who could look after me (mum) neither worked nor studied.
And let’s face it, if I felt less guilt as I transferred from hostel friends to Kylie (a very good, long-time friend), there’s even less guilt when you transfer to your family.
Love is a perfectly edited piece of toast
Posted: June 24, 2009 Filed under: BLOG | Tags: love, mother daughter relationships, parents, toast 6 Comments »
I am so glad I slammed my bicycle into a fast-moving semi-trailer two months ago.
Despite the fact that I had to have 30 stitches and a skin graft on my very damaged foot, which, will never look the same again. Despite the fact that I had to cancel my trip to Spain and return home to Sydney. Despite the fact that it’s meant 2 months of staying at home, hobbling on crutches. Despite all of this, I am so unbelievably grateful it happened because it meant one thing:
I’ve realised my mum loves me.
Most of us, sort of implicitly know our parents love us. But there are less of us who are really close to our parents, who are friends with them, and do get to experience that rush of love. I don’t fall into that category of the lucky.
My mum rarely shows much emotion. Nor is she much of a conversationalist, and we share very few interests. Often (almost always) we seem to see the world in completely different ways. So I had always read into the lack of intimacy in our relationship as a very poor sign. Were we to forevermore be these alienated beings, living side by side, never connecting?
But perhaps I was wrong, or confused.
In these last couple of months in which I’ve been recovering my mum has tirelessly cared for me; bringing me meals to my room, driving me to doctor’s appointments, washing my clothes and reminding me to do my foot exercises. All without a word of complaint, or any hint that she’s at all sick of it.
And for me this expression of unconditional love was crystallised in my breakfast yesterday morning.
You see the day before my mum brought me breakfast and apologised for how the toast was burnt. Apparently the slice was too long so it couldn’t go in the toaster length ways. But when she toasted it sidewards, there was so much sticking out at the top, she thought she’d re-toast it again upside down, but which consequently burnt it.
The next day’s bread was toasted to perfection. As I bit into it, slathered in peanut butter and honey (my favourite), I realised she had carefully cut off two of the ends so now the bread had fit into the toaster. Beautiful.
My time here has made me realise that I had been looking for my mother’s love in all the wrong places. Her love can’t be found in non-existent kisses and cuddles, or long conversation. But in the way she has cooked, cleaned, driven us around, and just generally cared for us and been there for us kids, all these many years. Even in the sometimes wise, sometimes crazy nagging, has been love.
Similarly, I had been looking to express my love for her in all the wrong ways. She doesn’t want to talk (she doesn’t understand anything in my life, it’s all nonsensical to her), she doesn’t want me to take over the household chores, she doesn’t want to hear my lectures about various problems in her life. All she wants is an obedient and respectful daughter. I can handle that.
And I have also remembered one piece of common ground … craft! When I was in school I use to love doing craft. Ever year I had a new thing I was interested in; friendship bands, beaded jewelry, cross-stitch and so-on. It was the one interest my mum and I shared. The one thing we could talk about and she could depart her expertise.
And despite the fact that in my later years of school and post-school I lost interest in craft, my mum would continue to buy me books on scrap-booking, or painting watercolours, or making Christmas decorations. She would take me to school fetes and quietly appreciate the homemade craft and amateur art (but rarely did she buy anything for herself). And the only present from me where she really seemed excited was this elephant cross-stitch I made, and that my sister sewed onto a pillow.
With nothing to do all day these last couple of months, my mum encouraged me to take up knitting. At first I was reluctant – my first attempt many years ago seemed to prove it was not something I had a natural ability with. But I gave it another go and am now onto my fourth scarf! Mum’s even shown me some more elaborate stitch patterns which I’m about to get stuck into.
This whole experience has taught me that you can’t always expect things in your life to follow convention. And sometimes it can still be alright when they don’t.
For a truly wonderful look at the complicated relationship between sons and fathers, listen to this heartbreaking episode called “Go Ask Your Father”, from radio show “This American Life”. From the website you have to pay, but if you email me I can send you a copy.
