Visiting an emergency room wasn’t on our Mexico itinerary. One moment Alan had a mild headache. The next, I was signing papers in Spanish to admit him into a hospital, praying our travel insurance would cover it.
It’s been a couple of weeks since this happened. I really wanted to share this story with you because we made five critical mistakes.
I’m hoping you can learn from them so you don’t end up in the same situation we did.
When a Headache Becomes a Crisis
This story spans just one week. It shows you how quickly things can spiral when you’re not prepared.
On a Sunday night around 10 PM, Alan told me he had a headache. He doesn’t drink and had been drinking plenty of water. I thought maybe he was just complaining. Where were we going to go on a Sunday night anyway?
By 11 PM, he felt worse. He said he was very dizzy. I remembered that La Jolla Medical Services sat below our apartment. They’re open 24 hours.
Alan vomited right at the front door. The staff immediately took him in and checked his blood pressure. We were shocked. It was 155 over 100, which is stage 2 hypertension.
What made this so surprising was that we’d just done a full health panel in Vietnam. His blood pressure had been completely normal.
The consultation cost only $27 USD. The doctor prescribed medication to get his blood pressure under control. He told us to come back the next day.
Over the next three days, we went back to the clinic for free blood pressure checks. Everything seemed fine. The medication was working. Dr. Ruben, who speaks English, was incredibly kind. He never charged us for those follow-up visits.
Alan had a lot of questions because this was his first medical emergency outside of Asia. Dr. Ruben took the time to reassure him.
We thought we were past the worst of it.
When Things Got Serious
We moved on to Puerto Vallarta feeling relieved. We went down to the beach for sunset. I noticed Alan seemed a bit off. He could barely manage a smile in our photos. He shrugged it off.
Four hours later, he was vomiting in our bathroom and couldn’t stop.
I brought him back downstairs to the clinic. I had to hold him up with my arms. He had no energy. We had to stop several times because he kept throwing up. He collapsed at the front doors.
The staff came out immediately. They checked his blood pressure first. It was totally normal. The medication had worked. But we had no idea what was causing this.
They gave him an IV to help with the nausea. He could barely sit up. He was just vomiting bile.
Dr. Ruben had a difficult conversation with me. He said we might be able to resolve it at the clinic. But he also said we might need to go to the hospital to find out what was really wrong.
We decided to go to La Jolla Hospital. We didn’t know anything about it. But we knew Dr. Ruben and the clinic staff. We trusted them.
The Ambulance Ride
No Uber wants to pick up a man with an IV attached to him who can barely sit up. We had to call an ambulance for a 10-minute ride to the hospital.
That ride cost us our first chunk of money.
In those moments, I realized something important. When you get travel insurance, you always think about accidents. You think about breaking an arm or a leg. You never think about getting sick. That’s supposed to happen when you’re older, not when you’re still relatively young.
But here we were, taking an ambulance to the emergency room.
Inside the Hospital
The paramedics took Alan directly into the emergency room. I hung back to fill out paperwork. They put a $3,700 USD hold on my credit card. Then I went to the waiting room and paid the paramedics another $740 for that 10-minute ride.
They were lovely people. We got to know them well. But that was the most expensive ride I’ve ever taken.
I stayed in the waiting room and waited for news. They had free wifi, which was something. But no news came. That worried me.
I went to reception and asked if I could see him. They said absolutely. It was as easy as that.
When I got there, Alan was passed out. He was hooked up to several machines and an IV. A doctor came over as he was waking up. She told me he was stable. That was good news.
But they still didn’t know what had happened to him. They wanted to admit him into the hospital. She said it would be fully staffed in the morning. It would be faster to figure things out. And it would be cheaper.
I put another $3,700 USD hold on my credit card.
The Long Night
In Mexico, it’s standard to have someone stay with you when you’re admitted to the hospital. This is very different from Canada, where there are strict visitor hours.
He needed me there. When people saw Alan’s face, they thought he was Mexican. Not everyone spoke English.
We had a steady stream of people coming in. Nutritionists, residents, nurses refilling his IV. They tried to make him comfortable.
When they came to get his medical history, it was 4 AM. He was exhausted. He couldn’t remember all the times and dates and medications he’d taken.
Thankfully, I’d been with him long enough that I knew most of it.
The next day, just before noon, we met the real doctor who was supposed to be taking care of him. She wanted to do more tests. She said she thought we’d need to keep him overnight again.
I thought I’d just get out my credit card again.
The Billing Reality
Alan took a nap and encouraged me to get some fresh air outside the hospital. I called our insurance company, Safety Wing.
That’s when I discovered something important. I’d bought the type of plan where I pay first and claim later. If they don’t agree with something the hospital did, we could be on the hook for it.
Then Alan called me. Someone from billing had dropped off an itemized bill. We were almost at $7,400 USD. We’d burned through two credit card holds in 12 hours.
I was overwhelmed. I’m Canadian. I’m not used to making healthcare decisions based on cost. We go to the hospital and say fix me. It gets done.
I called Safety Wing back to explain what was happening. Alan had been on an IV for 12 hours and said he felt fantastic. He wanted to be immediately discharged.
They gave me really great advice. They couldn’t tell me exactly what to do because they don’t know our situation. But they said maybe we should talk to the doctor. Could he continue as an outpatient? Did he need to be in the hospital?
This was such helpful advice. We wanted to go back to the medical clinic. We wanted to see Dr. Ruben. We had trust in the clinic. Things were dealt with right away. But the hospital was like every hospital around the world. You sit there waiting for the doctor to come back every four to six hours.
We asked the doctor if we could leave. She said yes. She told us what we needed to do next. She said we could come back to the hospital.
We were never going back to that hospital. But we would go back to the La Jolla medical services clinic.
Getting Out
Everything at the hospital took forever except when we wanted to leave. They got us to final payment and out of the hospital really fast.
We went home. That turned out to be the right decision.
The next morning, we went to see Dr. Ruben at the clinic. He’d been following our progress the entire time on the hospital computer network.
He told us what happened. Alan had gastritis from an unknown cause. His dehydration was so bad that he actually had minor kidney failure from all the vomiting.
We don’t know if that had anything to do with the high blood pressure. But with hydration and medication, it all seemed to go away.
The additional testing the hospital wanted to do? Dr. Ruben thought we didn’t need it unless Alan started feeling worse.
We kept going back to the clinic to check in with Dr. Ruben over the next few days. He was amazing. He was kind and understanding of Alan’s fear. He took the time to really listen and explain everything. He reassured Alan that he was okay.
Five Things We Learned
I want you to learn from this experience. There are a few things we’d do differently next time. And a few things we shouldn’t have done at all.
1. Don’t Set It and Forget It
I just bought the travel insurance and didn’t think about it until we needed to use it. This is a huge mistake.
Read before you buy. You want to know if it’s a plan where you pay in advance and claim later. Do you need to call your insurance company before getting admitted to the hospital? Does your insurance company have special relationships with certain hospitals?
I learned that Safety Wing has a page where people who’ve used their insurance at different hospitals leave reviews. These are verified reviews of people who made successful claims.
2. Share Insurance Information With Everyone
Are you the only person who holds the travel insurance information? This usually happens with women in relationships.
If you’re in a relationship or with a group, you need to give this information to everybody. I highly suggest having a group folder for everyone on the trip. Everyone puts in their travel insurance information.
Even couples need to share with each other. If something happens to both of you, the other people on the trip can’t help you.
In Mexico, they won’t even admit you if you don’t have insurance they recognize or a credit card to cover the hold. I had to give them my credit card for $3,700 USD just to admit Alan.
Thankfully, I was the one who bought our insurance, so I had Alan’s info. But if something had happened to me, he wouldn’t have known how to access mine.
3. Make a Medical History Document
Create a document that has all of your medical history. Include all surgeries, medications, anything. Your blood type. Would you accept a blood transfusion?
They actually asked Alan that question. I did not know the answer. We’ve talked about things like cremation. But that was the first time I’d heard someone ask about blood transfusions.
Put all of these questions on a Google Doc. Share it with the entire group. Share both the insurance folder and the medical history document with your loved ones back home. If something happens, the people back home also have that information for you.
They asked Alan these questions at 4 AM after being admitted. Of course it was difficult to remember dates. I knew his history and recent medication because I’d been there.
These answers are so important, especially if you’re not conscious and others need to speak for you. A document you keep in email makes everything easier.
4. Take Pictures of Everything
Anything you sign, any report you see, any prescription, take a picture of it.
So much is coming at you so quickly. You’re taking in all these documents and putting them in your bag. When you do the claims process, you may not have all the papers. But at least you have pictures.
I was missing one piece of paper, which was the itemized receipt. Thankfully, we were still in Mexico. I called La Jolla and they emailed it over right away.
But if you’re back home in your own country, it becomes more complicated. It delays the claims process.
5. Evaluate Your Travel Insurance After a Claim
You really learn a lot from a claim. That’s why Safety Wing reached out to me. They realized I would probably benefit from their other product.
Right now, we’re on Safety Wing Nomad Essential. It’s a great plan. You can buy it easily online whether you’re in the country or not. That’s not true with all travel insurance.
It covers a lot of things important for us. Travel delays, motorcycle travel, which is a big part of our travel style in Asia. It also covers one-way travel back to your home country due to an unforeseen event.
This could be a family member dying or damage to your home residence. These things unfortunately come up and can be very expensive.
However, they have the Complete Plan. I think it’s right for me on a couple of levels.
With this plan, instead of paying upfront and processing the claim, Safety Wing works directly with the hospital. But it’s not just an emergency plan. It’s actually a complete health plan.
I want to say upfront that I’m outside of Canada six months of the year. I don’t qualify for free healthcare from Canada. I think Canadian universal healthcare is amazing, especially as I travel to other countries and see how much things can really cost.
But unfortunately, I’m not eligible for it.
The Complete Plan includes some things that could be really good for me. It covers non-emergency mental care. That includes doctor checkups, prescriptions, chronic pain management. It also covers preventative care like annual exams and screenings. I just went and did that in Vietnam. These are things I’m doing that would be covered.
It has higher coverage limits for medical expenses overall. It has more comprehensive travel coverage, including theft and trip interruption.
In my 20s and 30s, you don’t really think about getting sick. We’re in our 40s now. We just saw what could happen.
People think the life I have, the non-stop travel, is a dream. That dream comes with a lot of instability. It can make you very vulnerable.
As I get older, I start to think I really need to lock some things down. When I was in that hospital having to make decisions based on health and cost, that was terrifying.
The Claims Process
I was concerned about whether our claim would go through. Would they approve everything? The claims department and marketing department at Safety Wing are completely separate.
I’m happy to say the claim process went through successfully. My bank account is so happy. It was actually pretty easy.
You submit everything online. There’s a little back and forth. But it was kind of easy for us. I can say that at least in my experience, it’s been very positive. I’ll continue to use Safety Wing in the future.