Geezer Travel

I described my trip preparations to my friend, Helen, who had recently traveled to Paris. She dubbed my efforts "Geezer Travel". I wanted to be prepared for medical emergencies, so thought of the chronic health problems Larry and I had been having. First, both of us have had a history of floaters in our eyes. This is a common problem with age, and nothing much can be done about it. Our eye doctors have emphasized that if they get too bad, someone should take a look at our eyes to make sure our retinas are OK. I started getting floaters the week before we left, so I had my eyes examined. My retina looked good, so the eye doctor told me to go and not worry. He did say it was good to have had him check out my eye. I decided that I should prep for other things that could go wrong. I made a photocopy of my last colonoscopy results, since I get diverticulitis on rare occasions. If I were to travel far again, I think I would also ask my doctor for the names of the medications she treated me with the last time I had it and even see if she would think I should travel with those prescriptions. I also have a kidney stone and have a DVD of my last imaging and statement from my urologist about it in case I have trouble. I also contacted my health insurance company to see what I should do if either of us needs medical attention overseas. I found out we would be covered, but should call immediately for advice.

I would add a few things to my preparations for our next trip. I would make a master list of my chronic health problems (medical history), the doctors I see, the medications I take, and my health plan numbers. I would include with the doctors' names, their emails and phone numbers. If I didn't have their emails, I would call them and request them since it can be easier to communicate via email from Europe than to try to call, considering the time change and difficulty getting through to a person not machine when calling. I would have a print out of this information to give to a local doctor who might be able to read English better than speak it. Plus, if the problem were serious, it would be less stressful to have the information available than to try to create such lists. I would make sure I had this information for Larry also.

It turns out that I did have a situation come up early in our trip that could have been serious. I emailed my doctor, who got back to me right away. He felt I could delay getting medical treatment as long as I didn't exhibit certain symptoms. I did as he suggested and made an appointment for the day after we get back. Being able to contact him easily saved our trip, or at least a big chunk of time we would have spend trying to get an evaluation in Europe.

Larry and I had easy access to Wi-fi, but not cell phones. We promptly got a Skype account so that we could potentially call people and we could receive voicemail. We have been getting by fine without a regular cell phone.

Larry and I found emergency medical clinic information in our guidebooks for each city. We could have asked our apartment hosts for help also. At any rate, these preparations have given me some peace of mind and confidence that I could handle potentially difficult situations that I know can occur. You might wonder why with all of this preparation we didn't get trip interruption insurance. I thought about it and decided that we could get by in an emergency fairly well in the cities where we were. In addition, I had had a bad experience with trip insurance over preexisting conditions. The problems Larry and I are most likely to have could be argued as being preexisting and trip insurance may not cover them anyway. So I didn't check out that type of insurance.