The Aftermath of Being Hospitalized in Peru: My SafetyWing Experience

While I was hospitalized in Cusco, I had a lot of time to ponder what led me there and why I wasn’t worried at all, despite the tubes in my nose, IV in my elbow, and monitors glued to my chest. I decided to share what was going on with many of you on my Instagram stories: what went wrong, the trigger that made me call up the clinic, my diagnosis and why it was so important that we had travel insurance.

Jason and I never really thought we needed travel insurance. Isn’t that how the story goes? You don’t see the importance in something until the one time you actually need it? We had already travelled nearly an accumulated year together, not once thinking we needed to insure ourselves. But when we finally looked into our credit cards’ insurance policies and learned that they only cover the first 21 days of travel, we knew that going multiple month stretches outside Canada without any travel insurance was taking a risk.

And am I glad we listened to that nagging voice in us telling us to sign up for SafetyWing’s policy! It was the best money we’d ever spent considering how much it saved us in the end. $4,523 USD to be exact! Don’t worry, I’ll tell you all about what landed me in the Cusco private travel clinic in just a minute, although you probably already have an inkling as to what went wrong! When in Peru, right?

In this post, I’ll briefly talk about why we chose SafetyWing as our go-to digital nomad insurance, what it was like getting treated in Peru and how SafetyWing came through in the end.

Signing Up for SafetyWing

As digital nomads in the travel content creator sphere, there are a few names that get passed around in regards to travel insurance. World Nomads is huge among our peers, and you may have even heard of Atlas, Seven Corners, Travelex and others. Allianz is also a big one that many Americans may go with, though they don’t specifically tailor to nomads, but to all travellers.

I’ll tell the four things we were looking for when weighing our options:

• Affordable policy, as cheap as it can be
• Simple registration and online self-management
• Coverage for the countries we visited and the activities we did
• The policy could be set for the date range we wanted, even though we were already travelling
• Did I already say cheap too?

SafetyWing Nomad Insurance met all of our criteria with their one simple policy. We could include add-ons for stolen items, more adventure sports and activities, or a visit to the US, but their basic policy was just what we needed. At $46.50 USD for 4 weeks per insured adult (now $56 but with a $0 deductible), we were sold.

There was nothing that could beat it. AND we could easily toggle the date range to start and end exactly when we needed to! Coincidentally, the arbitrary date we picked to end the policy ended up being the perfect date for us to fly back home, which we booked a couple of months later.

You can see for yourself just how easy it was to register and signup for the policy, and you can either choose an ongoing subscription or a one-time policy with specific dates!

Not even ten minutes of us opening the window to signup, we were fully insured and a weight was lifted from our shoulders. For about $215 USD, the two of us were covered for the next ten weeks until we came home!

Altitude in Americas

It was during our 4.5-month trip to Latin America that we finally decided to pull the trigger on getting insured. Our three weeks of credit card insurance had long past. We had already gone hiking in the valleys of Colombia and the Andes in Patagonia, been up past 4,000 m in elevation in Bolivia, and had visited six countries already.

That little voice inside us was starting to get louder and we finally listened. It was the morning of our hike up the volcano Acatenango in Guatemala. We might have been pondering a few “what ifs” and just wanted the peace of mind knowing that if something were to happen, at least we’d be covered financially.

My First Glimpse of Altitude Sickness

Hiking Acatenango was gruelling and crowded. From about 2,400 m at the base, we made it to an altitude of 3,700 m at camp where we slept the night. Throughout the night, I started getting nausea and insomnia—symptoms of altitude sickness. I hadn’t experienced anything like it when we were in Chile and Bolivia, but this was the first we climbed such a height in such a short timespan, after sleeping being at 1,500 m that morning in Antigua.

This was but a foreshadowing of what my body might go through when climbing too high too fast.

How I Ended Up with Pulmonary Edema

Six weeks later, we were leaving Brazil back for Bolivia. Flying from sea level in Salvador to El Alto/La Paz, the airport being at 4,062 m, you can see where this is going. We had a couple of short layovers in São Paulo and Santiago de Chile, but over the 18 hour span of flying, this apparently wasn’t enough time to go up 4,000 m.

We had been in La Paz two months prior, so we thought it was no biggie. Just sleep it off, eat and hydrate well, rest the next couple of days and chew on some coca leaves. I had a little bit of nausea when we first landed, only struggled to sleep at night a smidge, and walking up hills wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t hard either. It was the morning of day 3 that it all went downhill.

I woke up with a sore throat and a cold virus hit me with full force the day we were travelling from La Paz to Copacabana, near the border of Peru. When we got to Copacabana, I couldn’t walk up the hill dragging my suitcase without needing a break every few steps. I was near the point of passing out most times and could not catch my breath.

The entire time we were in Copa, I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t throw up when I was feeling nauseous, and my cold turned into a vicious, uncontrollable cough. It probably didn’t help that I was pushing myself to keep exploring, keep hiking up hills and stairs to viewpoints when my body was telling me no. I thought I just needed to adjust and get used to it.

I kept getting sicker, despite the endless coca tea and despite the cough medicine and altitude sickness pills. I could barely go to the bathroom without running out of breath! Two days after first getting sick, I was having back-to-back never-ending coughing fits on our night bus ride from Copacabana, Bolivia to Cusco, Peru. I slept for four hours that morning when we got to our guesthouse, yet still woke up coughing and terribly weak.

Jason and I walked around Cusco to grab brunch and run some errands and I could not eat more than two bites of what looked like an awfully delicious meal. We tried the pharmacy again and still my cough would not budge!

That morning, when we first arrived in Cusco, Jason suggested we visit a clinic for proper medical attention. My dumb self didn’t think I was that bad. But yes, yes I was. Later in the afternoon, I searched my symptoms online, and what I read made me jump. Everything, except for one symptom, I had so far. And everything pointed to “high altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE)”. What exactly was so serious about high altitude pulmonary edema? The bold and highlighted fact that if untreated, is 50% fatal. WHAT?!

The last thing I did before WhatsApp messaging the travel clinic Jason earlier suggested was check if I had that last symptom. Sure enough, I spat pinkish sputum in the sink. That was the sign I needed.

My Hospitalization in Cusco

The WhatsApp chat with the O2 Medical Network Clinic turned out to be super helpful. A medical consultation was going to cost 200 soles (yikes… that was $53 USD). But at this point, I knew I had to kick frugal Lauren to the curb for the time being. The consultation would include a visit by a medical professional to my hotel in Cusco via ambulance. So that in the case I needed to head to the hospital, I could right then and there.

My oxygen level was at a whopping 67% and my heart rate was wavering around 110 BPM at resting. No wonder I felt like I was dying. It was, at that point, imperative that I be treated in hospital and stay at least one night.

And so we went! Oxygen tank and tubes ready for me once I got in the ambulance, wheelchair prepared for me once we got to the hospital, and a nice, large room in the recovery unit with a hospital bed and a double bed for visitors to sleep in. Nurses tended to me immediately, took my blood (ouch), poked me with an IV (ouch again), and kept my vitals monitored until a doctor came.

After my CT scan, it was confirmed that I had pulmonary edema. Liquid was seeping into my lungs due to the drastic pressure change with the altitude, combined with my low immune system due to the horrendous cold virus I contracted. As the doctor explained my diagnosis, that’s when we knew it wasn’t just going to be an overnighter.

It was also at this point as well that I let go of the idea of how much this whole hospital stay was going to cost. $53 USD was nothing now. After checking my vitals again, which had improved but not enough, the doctor told me he was going to have to send me up to the ICU. $2,000-$2,500 per night in the ICU, we were told. I don’t know what I would’ve done had I not been insured.

The next two days I spent hooked up to machines, oxygen and an IV for antibiotics. I was beyond grateful I got my appetite back, but the plain hospital meals left much to be desired. But at least I was hungry again! When I wasn’t in my room, I was spending one hour sessions in the hyperbaric chamber to get my lungs back to a normal state.

Finally, on the third night, we were moved to a large recovery room downstairs, with one of the most gorgeous views of Cusco. I can’t believe I was seeing this from my hospital room!

The service I got at the O2 Travel Medical Centre was beyond the best hospital experience I could ask for. At any moment, I could ring up an attendant for help or even an update on how I’m progressing. The nurses were incredibly kind and sweet, and my Spanish got by with them really smoothly. There were interpreters onsite as well if needed, which was definitely good to have when discussing certain details, including my medication routine after being discharged. The hospital was quiet, though there were other patients admitted as well (all tourists as it was a travel clinic). And everything was so clean! Having my own room with ensuite bathroom was a nice luxury to have.

It was quite the coincidence that I was admitted to the hospital on Good Friday and discharged on Easter Monday. I couldn’t think of a better comeback period than that!

The Role of SafetyWing in My Hospital Experience

Being insured in the case of a medical emergency doesn’t give you the freedom to be carefree and not take proper precautions for your health and security. But it definitely gives you the peace of mind to know you’ll be taken care of if something does happen to you!

In my instance, I wasn’t even doing a risky activity. Just flying from city to city and contracted a common cold at the same time. And yet, my health deteriorated to the point that I needed medical treatment. It can happen to anybody. Just like the risk we knew we took driving motorcycles through Southeast Asia. The number of times we met people who either had to be hospitalized or knew others who were was no joke.

And when we’re not in our home country, we don’t have the privilege of having our own health insurance cover the costs, which can be as high as your entire lifesavings for some.

Knowing I had travel insurance that covered my circumstance was the deciding factor for whether I sought medical attention or not. Additionally, SafetyWing allowed me to seek treatment at either a public health facility or a private one. This made such a difference in my hospital experience and the service we got throughout.

Had I not gone ahead to be hospitalized, and at least paid for the consultation with O2 Medical Network out of pocket, I would’ve definitely had to cut our trip short and fly home to get treated. And who knows how that might’ve worsened my condition.

Having SafetyWing’s Nomad Insurance to back me, I was confident that the most I’d have to pay was the $250 USD deductible. And now, with the updated policy, there is no more deductible! As of March 19th, 2024, you won’t have to pay anything extra if your claim is approved and fully covered by Nomad Insurance, as long as you’re insured by the new policy.

From thinking I needed just one night at the hospital with oxygen and antibiotics, to actually needing to be admitted to the ICU along with hyperbaric treatments, we were now looking at costs well over the few hundred dollars we originally thought. At least $2,000 a night, possibly needing to stay up to three nights?

Yikes! But Jason was constantly in a live chat with SafetyWing’s customer support who knew of my situation. We were also fine combing through our policy to make sure that, yes, I was in fact covered. So the thousands of dollars we expected to pay weren’t also giving me a heart attack. All I needed to concern myself with was getting better. And knowing SafetyWing would have me covered may have attributed to my heart rate and blood pressure staying at a healthy level.

Once the doctors signed me off and I was good to be discharged, the bill came out to be $4,773 USD. Which was definitely less than we anticipated! But now that we paid it off on a credit card, it was time to send off the documents and bills to SafetyWing.

SafetyWing’s Claims Process

As soon as we got back to our guesthouse on April 1st, Jason filed the insurance claim on my behalf. SafetyWing’s platform is very user friendly, much like how you might see the rest of their website. We were able to submit some of the documents the system prompted us for easily by uploading them to our claim. Once we completed the steps and the claim was pending approval, we waited until a representative got back to us.

There was a decent amount of back and forth across a few email threads. A few additional documents, including our banking info, was needed to be submitted in a secure manner. Across a little over two weeks, we provided what was needed. Thankfully, we still had fluid contact with the clinic’s reception in order to receive any additional documents, including my full medical report written or translated in English. The benefits of being able to go to a private medical centre designed for tourists made our lives so much easier during this process!

The claims team did a decent job, though sometimes requested files we had already sent. Customer support via the 24/7 live chat were our saving grace whenever there was miscommunication with the claims team.

But after those two weeks, our claim was fully approved! Wooh! A few business days later, the amount on our receipt, minus the $250 deductible, was sent to our account. Three weeks turnover for a claims approval is pretty unheard of. We managed to pay off the credit card we used at the hospital without having to dip into our own checking account. The timing worked out perfectly.

Conclusion

We had heard of the nightmares people go through when submitting insurance claims. None of those worries came into the fold with our experience dealing with SafetyWing. Though there were bumps here and there, I was super grateful it all got dealt with relatively quickly and let out that breath we had been holding it with this $5k bill hanging over our heads.

With an easy online signup and very clear fine print of their policy, we were off to a great start with our experience with SafetyWing. We honestly didn’t think we’d ever have to utilize our insurance for a claim. But even though I did, I’m glad that the smooth experience was reflected in the handling of our situation. Being sick and having to be stuck in a hospital is worse enough. Having an insurance company help take care of your worries and concerns about the financial side of it makes all the difference.

I’m so beyond grateful my hubby managed to not only be there for me, take care of me and feed me when I couldn’t feed myself. But I am even more so knowing that he dealt with our insurance without me having to worry about it one bit. I hope that, if you ever need to hospitalized during your travels or even at home, that you have someone who can help lift that burden off you!

And if high altitude places are on your travel itinerary in the future, I hope you learn a little something from me to help prevent you from getting sick!

Get yourself some altitude sickness pills—usually over the counter you’ll find acetazolamide. Take them at the onset of any of the symptoms you might feel.

Water, water, water! Drink it often and plenty, as hydration is important at high elevation. Avoid heavy and fried foods until you’ve acclimatized.

Drink coca tea and buy yourself a bag of flavoured coca leaves to chew on. But keep in mind that they might show up on a drug test if you have to take one in the next couple of days!

And lastly, try to slow down your acclimatization as best you can. The CDC has its recommendation for how much elevation you should gain for every night of sleep. Read it!

At the end of my hospital experience, I recovered fairly quickly, my appetite came back in full swing and Jason and I still managed to make it to Machu Picchu! We had to cancel our Salkantay Trek, which we were very much looking forward to. But we still got to witness this incredible, majestic wonder of the world in all its glory without having to do a multi-day hike to get there. It was the rebound I needed to know that I made the right decision in being admitted for treatment, and I was beyond grateful that the world was going to always be out there for me to explore when I was ready!