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Reply to "Traveling for surgery?"

I seem to be an old hack at this...

I lived in Toronto and traveled to N.C Duke U to have Gracillis muscle flap surgery twice (they used both legs)...the first was sort of terrifying (and painful as heck) but the second was horrific...both ended up failures. My Canadian health insurance covered both trips, family to accompany me and my whole hospital and post-op stay (6 weeks each time).

Once I moved to Paris I found myself hanging out on a limb...no one knew what a  kpouch was and no one would touch me (not counting the other diseases etc) plus I didn't speak the language...so I would pop over to London every 6 weeks, by bus.

Seems that I do that a lot because in the end I had to fly 'home' to Toronto due to k pouch complications more than once...

I travel a lot, the bottom line is to plan well, pack well and make endless lists of what you need, want and are afraid of ...Ask lots of questions, do not be afraid to repeat them if you are not getting the answers that you need and request supplies galore to take home with you just in case.

Every time that they would irrigate my pouch they would use a disposable 60cc syringe, then throw it out, I would scramble to recover it...ditto for the 'clean' blue pads that they would throw out every time, k dishes, and just about everything else that was disposable...I also asked for extras and they were very generous...I watched them do various treatments on me, took copious notes and made them watch me intubate, irrigate etc before I would allow them to discharge me.

If you are afraid of forgetting stuff that they tell you, record them! Then listen again later.

Hope that this helps

Sharon

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