We're home

We made it home last night on the same Taipei-Seattle flight we'd planned on. David's wound looks pretty good. It's still open. We're going to get it checked out today through Group Health, now that we can actually contact them. One of my unposted blog rants was the inadequancy of Group Health's contact means when one is travelling internationally. More on that rant later. Bottom line, Group Health does not have a readily accessible direct means of contacting them when you're out of the U.S.


Dave was taken off of IV antibiotics on the morning of Thursday, March 19th. Yes, that was two days ago. He was let out of the hospital after 3 or 4 days in, but had to be hooked up to IVs 2x a day for drips & wound cleaning which lasted 3 or 4 hours each time. It turns out that something like 8 out of 12 strains of bacteria were resistent to the antibiotics he'd been given, so they changed their IV drip around the 12th or 13th. Then the clean up really began. We'd go in for his morning IVs & dressing change / wound care, then head out & explore Saigon and he'd go back to the hospital in the evening for more drips. I did a variety of things waiting for him. Blogging was obviously NOT one of them.

He was released for travel last Monday, however, it was actually cheaper for us to simply change our booked flights & upgrade the Taipei Seattle return flight home than to use the travel insurance evacuation. I would have had to pay for a whole new ticket. I was not included in Dave's medical evacuation according to the insurance.

Basically, once the insurance dust is settled, there will be a "What I Learned About Travel Insurance - the Hard Way & While in a Third World Country". Bottom line: Always ensure you have $$ on your credit card to pay for hospitalization and return flights. Neither Group Health or the Travel Insurance would guarantee payment to the hospital, so Dave & I paid the whole bill out of pocket. And, as I mentioned before, travelling companions may not be "medically necessary" to travel with the evacuee and so have to be able to come up with the $$ to cover either their own new return ticket, or continue the trip sans the evacuee.