Back in July I wrote a blog about Greig Trout and his 101 Things to do when you survive challenge. Well he is now over 3 month in to his challenge so I thought I would update you on his progress.
I am so pleased to report that Greig has been ticking off a good few things on his list over the last 3 months. He started out in Costa Rica volunteering for Raleigh International. He worked on a couple of projects. The first one was in Guayabo National Park, which is a national monument in Costa Rica. He was building fences and clearing old aqua ducts, which are over 3000 years old! The next project involved building a community centre in a remote village in northern Nicaragua. The work Greig and the rest of the volunteers did was hard and manual. But, as he reported, exhilarating.
The Raleigh aspect of Grieg’s trip finished in September. He headed off to San Jose in Costa Rica to have his bloods checked for his 6 month check-up. He was understandably a bit nervous. Firstly, he had to explain his complex medical history in Spanish.
That coupled with the usual nerves I and many of my cancer travel insurance customers experience before the dreaded checkups. However, he needn’t of worried. His bloods were great and Greig is now celebrating 3 years clear of cancer. What an amazing place to do it in.
After the 3 months of hard work on Raleigh International, Greig is now kicking back, relaxing and carrying on his travels through South America. I for one am very jealous! However, I look forward to and thoroughly enjoy the video updates of his travels.
To find out more about Greig and his trip visit his web site 101 Things to do when you survive, you can have a look at his list and see how many of the items he has already ticked off. I find what he is doing so inspiring and I hope you will too.
If you have taken out an Insurancewith policy for cancer travel insurance this year, you may have come across the term 1-2-1 medical screening.
You may have wondered what exactly this is. Like most products on the market, we use a bespoke medical screening programme driven by a computer. This offers travel insurance for those with pre-existing medical conditions. However, experience tells us that many of our customers do not fit neatly into little tick boxes. The outcome may not always be a fair reflection of the risk presented for cover.
We have given this careful thought and set up a new method of assessing the risks related to travelling. This is for those who are living with a life limiting medical condition. There will always be some combinations of duration, destination and medical risk which are regrettably unacceptable to our underwriting team. However, there are also those who are currently stable despite a serious illness. They may be finding it difficult or very expensive to obtain travel insurance for that all important holiday.
Now when they are screened certain questions instead of just saying “No” to cover, will suggest a 1-2-1 referral to a medical underwriter instead.
Also if you feel that the questions you have been asked are not apt for your particular condition then you can ask if you can speak to a medical underwriter.
How does this work? Well, whether you have asked for a quote online or via a call centre, you may be advised that you need a 1-2-1 screening. This may happen if your situation does not quite fit the tick-boxes. All you need to do is give us a contact telephone number. You can also provide some preferred dates and times. A medical underwriter can then call you to discuss your medical history with a view to offering a quote.
There is no obligation to take up this offer of an individual quote if you would prefer not to talk about your medical history. We understand that some may find it distressing. Often, a little more detail can help. This may include what treatment you have had recently, any test or scan results and your lifestyle. Underwriters will then have more information about your health during the planned trip. They may be happy to cover you. We do not charge you an additional fee for this unique individual service. So far, most of our clients have been positive about the process and pleased with the outcome.
Thank you to Tricia Pearson-Tietema our Head of Medical Underwriting for this blog.
The FACT Team
One of the unique points about the Insurancewith travel insurance policies with cancer cover is the £1 donation to charity for every policy sold. We support a couple of charities through the sales of our policies, one of which is Fighting All Cancers Together (FACT). Today we have a guest blog from Joanne Smith the CEO and founder of FACT. Joanne explains the importance the money Insurancewith donates has to the work FACT does and explains a little bit about what the money is used for.
FACT is a charity, set up after the founders personal experience of cancer. And as a charity we are delighted to have the support of Insurancewith, made possible by people choosing our charity to benefit from a donation at the time they buy their travel insurance.
Insurancewith have been supporting FACT through the sale of their cancer travel insurance policies for over 3 years now. The donations from Insurancewith enable FACT to address a range of cancer related issues, from the varying perspectives of ‘support’, ‘awareness’ and ‘education’. We offer a range of advice, support and coping mechanisms, delivered in a gentle, non clinical environment. These sessions and events give the cancer patient the opportunity to bring with them a guest for support, and also family, carers or friends who also need support due to a diagnosis of cancer.
Topics covered in the support sessions include the practical impacts of cancer, such as financial/employment/benefit advice. Some sessions are gentle social events, and some are more targeted towards specific clinical issues such as treatment and side effects for particular cancers such as breast, lung or prostate (but not exclusively). Emotional issues such as ‘talking to your children’, ‘coping with terminal illness ‘ and ‘bereavement’ are also addressed.
Sessions are primarily delivered by FACT representatives staff, who, where relevant are accompanied by professionals in the fields of counseling/ psychology/ nutrition/ fitness/ medicine etc. In addition to this, sessions also address lifestyle implicated cancer prevention, mental health/wellbeing, healthy living, signs and symptoms of various cancers. The sessions encourage appropriate screening, and seeking medical advice where necessary.
These education and awareness sessions are offered to the wider community, engaging people of all ages’ disabilities and backgrounds in the program. Sessions are be delivered in appropriate ways in respect of age, ability to take in and process information and social background, to ensure that they are accessible and understood by those attending. All sessions are delivered using teaching information workbooks and aids, and are delivered interactively with those attending. The FACT team delivering the events have all had first hand experience of cancer, and experience of helping others through the cancer journey. Through this they fully appreciate how delicate a situation this can be, and how the gaps in the current provision can affect the sufferers and those around them.
Cancer affects so many people in so many different ways, it is vital that support is bespoke and relevant to the people needing it – either as an individual, family, or group. It is also important that we recognise and react to the wider implications of a cancer diagnosis, and provide support opportunities to EVERYONE that needs it.
This is a huge task – but it is made possible by the support of the generous people who donate to us, such as Insurancewith. Thank you!
The day of our award lunch finally dawned yesterday. As many of our medical travel insurance customers will know, we have been running an award in association with Genetic Alliance UK. We created the award to find the UK’s most extraordinary carer, and yesterday, we held the celebration lunch.
The nominations we received were of the highest calibre. Our judge, Andrew Holt, Editor of Charity Times, had a very difficult job picking a winner and runner up. But pick them he did. We welcomed our winner Richard Sutton and our runner up Suzanne Addison and their families to The Little Ship Club on the Thames. It is in the heart of the City of London. We held the awards presentation and celebration lunch there.
Our judge Andrew Holt and Genetic Alliance UK’s Director, Alistair Kent, both commented on how welcome these awards were. They recognise the efforts of carers, who people can very easily forget. Carers generally just quietly get on with caring. They do what they do for love, not recognition. This is the very reason we wanted to launch these awards. We feel very strongly that we should recognise and celebrate the work carers do all day, every day.
Our winner Richard had had a very busy week. Last weekend, he staged the Disability Rocks festival, which is now in its second year. Richard set up and runs Disability Rocks, whilst also being his son Max’s full time carer. Richard set up Disability Rocks to help people living with a disability have a positive experience of music and the arts.
Our runner up Suzanne cares for her husband Keith and their daughter. Her daughter has an undiagnosed condition, SWAN (Syndromes Without A Name). Coupled with being a fulltime carer, she also spends her time fundraising for charity. She also raises awareness of Swan UK. This charity supports people who have children with undiagnosed conditions.
This award was initially instigated through my own experience of being cared for when I was diagnoses with cancer. However, I have been completely overwhelmed by the nominations we received for this award. They included people caring fulltime for their loved ones. They were also reaching out to help others through their experiences. Truly humbling.
