Tacos, burritos con vegetales, taquitos con carne or mariscos, dried grasshoppers, blue corn mush with cactus and cheese, optional beans and chilli and other more or less known delicious Mexican food. I wanted to try it all when visiting Mexico City, Mexico.
Then one evening, after a feast of Mexican food, I wasn’t felling too well.
During the night I vomited, got high fever, stomach ache and diarrhea. I spend almost whole night in the bathroom. In the morning we called doctor’s office. We got his number at the hostel’s reception. Dr. Rosellón come to visit me in the hostel and was a nice old doctor, speaking half Spanish half English and mixing the languages all the time. When he learned, I spoke Spanish, he was trilled. However, with all the symptoms the last thing on my mind was practicing my Spanish skills. He gave me an injection for my pain and some medicine for my stomach ache. Then the first bill came! Although we could imagined the costs of home visit and the medicine in a foreign country aren’t low, we were shocked by the price.
So my father called our travel insurance company Assistance CORIS.
Their assistance is impeccable! You can call them 24 hours 7 days a week and they will help you with your medical emergency. Firstly, they asked us if we need help with getting a doctor or if they can provide us with another doctor, if we weren’t satisfied with ours. But we liked Dr. Rosellón. Then they told us we have to collect all the invoices from the doctor and medicine we bought as well as all the medical test results. Upon our return home, we had to send or bring them all the documentation. Luckily we had enough money to pay the medical bills. And Assistance CORIS also paid for the phone call. We were relieved in an instance!
But my health wasn’t getting any better. During the night my fever spiked and the next day we had to call Dr. Rosellón again. He took me to the hospital Hospital Español. There they took my blood and mud smear. In an hour I received test results – I got salmonella infection from food poisoning. You can get salmonella with eating meat, eggs, milk and diary products, it can be also found in water you drink.
They gave me three injections and prescription for antibiotic. And they gave us huge invoice for all the medical treatment and medicine we received at the hospital. The next days I had to rest, drink camomile tea, eat chicken soup, rice and toast. Luckily I got better soon and we were able to continue our trip.
I was very lucky and getting sick didn’t ruin my travels or my love for Mexican food.
I still eat and adore it. But if I wouldn’t have great travel insurance, this trip would definitely stay in my mind as a bad memory. You never know when you will have an accident or get sick. So my sincere travel advice to you would be: “Get yourself a great travel insurance that will help you in the moment of need and cover your medical costs!” When we returned home to Slovenia a few weeks later, we send all the documents and filled form for reimbursement of our costs to Assistance CORIS. We got all our medical costs returned without any troubles very quickly. And Mexico is still one of my favorite Latin American destinations also thanks to Assistance CORIS!
My family and me have Assistance CORIS’s travel insurance since 1999.
They didn’t only save my salmonella food poisoning, they helped us when my father got sick in New Zealand, when I had flu in Canada and when my mother had high fewer in Egypt. Because I am travelling quite a lot during the whole year, I use their annual travel insurance. However, they also offer touristic travel insurance which you make for a limited duration of your trip. So no matter how long you are travelling, make sure you have travel insurance. If something goes wrong with your health, you will be definitely relieved you can get help with getting a doctor and your costs reimbursed.
Assistance CORIS offers travel insurance for individuals, whole family or group of more than nine persons. You can choose between basic, double or triple travel insurance. They differ in the amount of money they cover at a certain event. Their travel insurance covers costs in the case of emergency medical help with incidents or sickness, costs of medicine prescripted by the doctor, urgent dental cots up to a stated amount, your transportation home, transportation of family member in the case of hospitalization, transportation of human remains, accompany of under age child or transportation home in the case of death of a family member.
You can also upgrade your insurance with Multirisk, which covers costs like loss of luggage, theft of your documents, legal help, flight cancellation by the airline companies etc. You can get more detailed information about Assistance CORIS travel insurance on their web page www.coris.si. And the best part is that you can arrange your travel insurance online and it will only take you five minutes.
So don’t forget to get travel insurance and stay safe and healthy on your travels!
Visited: June & July 2007
