travelling with medical problems
 

How easy is it for families to visit one another when ill health has raised it's head?
My husband had a heart attack and suffers from angina and diabetes. He is very wary of travelling to Canada to visit our daughter. She on the other hand, has a problem with visiting us as my grand daughter has a nut allergy(which she never had before she left) How do others manage in these circumstances or any other ill health problems?

Re: travelling with medical problems
 

Your challenge (aside from the travelling itself) is obtaining medical/travel insurance at a reasonable cost to cover your husband in the event of being taken ill in Canada. How affordable this is depends on your circumstances of course. My father is a diabetic but is able to obtain travel insurance at an acceptable cost.

The nut allergy thing I struggle to understand as preventing travel. Loads of people in the UK have nut allergies and travel all the time.

Re: travelling with medical problems
 

My father-in-law has Diabetes, High Cholesterol, Psorisis (I think that is how you spell - aka severe ezcema) high blood pressure, emphysemia and arthritis.
He also hates flying and this will be his first trip by himself ever. But he was so determined to come and see his grandson he has put that all aside.

He also recently opened up a Barclays Premier account and as a new customer for GBP 10.95 a month he gets worldwide health coverage. Now alarm bells rang when we heard about this but he had already called them and explained his long list of chronic conditions and they cover everything.

Travelling with health conditions is not the best but at least in Canada if something did happen they will treat and look for medical cover later. Don't let it be an excuse.

If he absolutely refuses still to go, you could always go by yourself, that way you still get to spend time with your grand daughter.

Re: travelling with medical problems
 

Yes, travel insurance aside, your husband perhaps just needs to speak to his GP to see if it's safe and OK for him to fly.

I agree with a previous reponse in that I don't understand why a nut allergy should prevent travel; particularly not to a country such as the UK. Food products in the UK are very well labelled with regard to nut content etc.

Re: travelling with medical problems
 

The problem is not if he takes unwell in Canada, the problem is while we are in the air for 7 hours. What happens if he has an angina attack? He does have the spray but in the past when he has used it, he has ended up in hospital as his blood pressure went too low.
I know the chances of this happening are slim, but he is wary. I wonder what would happen if he did take ill during the flight - are the airline staff trained for such emergancies?

Re: travelling with medical problems
 

I imagine they have first aid training but that probably doesn't extend past keeping him comfortable whilst the plane is diverted to the nearest airport with a major hospital nearby. (We get a lot of this in Newfoundland being the first landfall across the Atlantic). But ask yourself this - what is the risk that he is going to have an attack in that 7 hrs? If it's that high then presumably you don't travel far from a hospital anyway and you have bigger problems than coming to visit Canada.

Re: travelling with medical problems
 

My parents have various medical problems - from heart to asthma etc. . .am sure they got their annual all areas travel insurance from either PpP or axa
http://www.axa.co.uk/insurance/travel
linky

Re: travelling with medical problems
 

My daughter has various food allergies including peanut and dairy. I was very nervous about taking her on planes when she was younger, due to the chance of her touching something contaminated on the plane and having a reaction over the ocean.

For various reasons including ill health my parents are unwilling to come across from the UK like they used to. So we have been going there since my daughter was about 4, and it is doable with serious allergies.

What I do is take a LOT of wipes to totally clean my daughter''s seat, table, window etc - anything she might touch. I dress her in long sleeves and pants and take a blanket for her. Some people take a crib sheet to cover the airplane seat. If she is younger and can sit in a car seat on the plane this makes it safer.

I take a doctor's letter explaining that she needs to have Epipens and Benadryl with her on the plane, and also that she needs to be able to take food as she cannot eat anything from the airline.

I take all the food she might need for the journey in carry on, and pack a good supply of food that we are used to and comfortable with to eat while we are there. When I am in the UK I am very careful about what food she eats but it is doable - food is labeled very well there for allergens.

Also, different airlines have different policies regarding peanuts and nuts. Some no longer serve peanuts, which hugely reduces the risk of peanut contamination all over the plane and in the recycled air. If your daughter contacts the airlines they could use she may be reassured that it might not be as risky as she imagines.

Re: travelling with medical problems
 

'Is there a doctor on board?'

A woman on one of our Canada-UK flights had a similar medical history and her heart stopped three times on board. By some fluke she was sitting next to a nurse and there was a doctor on the flight. They managed to keep her alive for the hour and a half it took for us to get back to Baffin Island (of all places), where we made an emergency landing. It then took another hour and a half for them to get her off the plane as she kept crashing, with the usual to-do about who/ how to move her. I always wonder what happened to her...

Anyway, I didn't mean to scare you - my point was that, generally, they do manage, and will make their way to the nearest airfield to link up with emergency medical services. Definitely 'fit to fly' check and uber-good insurance required, to be honest, but hopefully the doc will give him the thumbs up. :fingerscrossed: