Drews Note: When I first heard about Myles cycle crash, I cringed. A broken hip that needed to be replaced in a foreign country. As someone who has travelled and cycled a lot I thought this would be a must read story for PB and I hope you agree. A big thanks to Myles for sharing.
In this post:
Tell us a little about yourself? e.g. travel habits sports…
My family and I definitely enjoy our holidays and trips abroad, unfortunately, my 11 year old son has come to expect that there will be a big overseas trip each year and thinks this is normal. He has been to more countries in his 11 years than I had visited by the age of 25.
Our trips generally involve a reasonable amount of physical activity, whether that be participating in a Marathon in Stockholm, Parkrun events in the UK, doing cycle tours of Sardinia, or staying in Bike Hotels in Italy.
Indeed from the age of 3 our son had become accustomed to being abandoned with baby-sitters in foreign countries while his parents would pop out for a few hours cycling in the hills of France or Italy.
Tell us about your trip?
This most recent trip to Europe was a little different to usual in that for the first time since I have been married I wasn’t travelling with my family and was enjoying a boy’s trip away cycling in Spain and France. We were flying in and out of Barcelona and spending 6 days cycling through Spain from Girona up to the French border before crossing into France for the last 4 days before finishing the tour in Toulouse.
The bike tour was organised through Punto Tours who had done a great job of organising some great routes and where possible incorporating some flexibility in the difficulty of the days to cater for the range of fitness of the cyclists who were in our group of 10.
Punto Tours had supplied us with Cipollini bikes that I found fitted perfectly based on the measurements that we had supplied in advance, and they even catered for our preferences with having the brakes configured the Australian way around (right hand activating the front wheel brake) as opposed to the standard European configuration which is the reverse. It seems like a small thing but it’s surprising how it makes a difference when descending big mountains and breaking on the tight corners, and very difficult to unlearn 30 years of habit.
A couple of our group had thought that they could get a better deal on their rental bikes by hiring some nice looking Pinarellos from Barcelona, but they were regretting this by the second day when they discovered that you get what you pay for. While they may have saved a few Euros their bike had clearly not been maintained quite as well as one would like. Encountering some seat issues, disc brake issues, worn rotors and brake pads and then on one bike the entire left crank detached itself from the bike while riding up a small rise!
Not to mention the extra money that had to be spent on a last minute rental car booking when they weren’t allowed to take the bikes on the TGV from Narbonne to Barcelona. Whereas most of the other trains allowed you to just wheel the bikes on with you, to take a bike on the TGV you have to pack it into a box or bag, and poor Thomas and Mike didn’t have a box or a bag and were on a time limit to get back to Barcelona to return the bikes and make their flight, so they had to resort to an expensive one way car hire from Narbonne in France, to Barcelona (only a 3 hour drive but a very expensive car rental!).
What Travel Insurance did you use?
I had travel insurance with 1Cover.
Why did you choose that and not free standard credit card insurance?
We had used 1Cover many times before, largely because of the price. And the one time I had needed to make a claim for medical reasons (fractured wrist snow boarding in Austria) they had been pretty good.
Although I had discovered the previous year that you can’t rely on them to cover you for any damage to your bike while travelling. My bike had been pretty badly damaged on an Emirates flight to Italy (cracked frame, broken wheel and seat damaged). But luckily the CycleCover insurance we have as our Home Contents Insurance did cover the damage to the bike in that instance (they provide coverage for bike racing locally and internationally as well as any damage to the bikes while travelling).
Regarding the free standard credit card insurance, I often forget that this exists and it is many years since I have looked into how comprehensive it actually would be.
How did the crash happen?
I had been riding down one of the mountains on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees to a town called Vielha where we were going to be spending the night. I was just entering the outskirts of town, about 4km from the hotel after about 120km of riding.
I had been navigating using a Wahoo element which had the course mapped on it, and I thought the route was straight through a roundabout, but as i entered the roundabout I discovered that I had to do a sharp left and then right turn. I braked reasonably hard and was about to make the turn when by back wheel hit some gravel throwing me straight onto the ground, hard. I took almost all the impact on my hip, with just a minor graze on my elbow and I didn’t even lose any skin on my hip.
What happened next?
I initially thought that I was just going to hop straight up and hop back on the bike but discovered that I couldn’t get up. Luckily I had two friends behind me who stopped and made sure that I was moved off the road and then organised for an ambulance to come and pick me up. It was only a 5 minute ambulance trip to the hospital in Vielha and they were very quick to get me x-rayed and diagnose that I had broken my hip pretty badly.
There was a bit of a debate as to whether they would be able to use pins to help the neck of my femur mend naturally but in the end they decided that the degree of displacement was too big and that I would need to have a total hip replacement. There was only one traumatologist/orthopedic specialist in Vielha and he was of the view that the operation would need at least two surgeons so they organised for me to be transferred to a bigger hotel in a town called Tremp.
So the following day they loaded me into an ambulance and drove me the 2.5 hours along the windy mountain roads to Tremp where they performed surgery the following day to give me a new titanium and ceramic hip.
How was the insurance company to deal with?
The people on the phone at 1Cover were always very friendly but it was generally difficult to get them to interact well with the hospital. The hospital wanted an email from the insurance company saying that they were going to cover my costs, but 1Cover seemed to take an eternity to provide it.
Luckily the hospital still went ahead and performed the surgery without the email, and eventually the email from 1Cover did arrive (several days later), I think the 1Cover wanted to understand the costs before they committed to anything.
We also had challenges with getting them to provide us with answers to what they would or wouldn’t cover. My wonderful wife, Alise, dropped everything and flew over to join me almost as soon as the accident occurred, we didn’t have confirmation at the time that the insurance company would pay for her travel and accommodation and the same thing when I was discharged.
We were keen to get out of Tremp as quickly as possible (there isn’t much there) and head to Girona where a friend of ours had put us in contact with an excellent Australian physio (Kathryn Stene) who is based there. But we couldn’t get 1Cover to say if they would cover the travel, physio treatment or accommodation in Girona. It also wasn’t clear when I was going to be able to fly home, the surgeon in Tremp had signed a fit to fly form saying
I would not be fit to fly on a long haul flight until 6 weeks after surgery (standard protocol post hip surgery due to the risk of blood clots), but the travel insurance company was obviously keen to get me back to Sydney as quickly as possible, as I stop being their burden as soon as I land in Sydney.
About a week after surgery and after we have moved to Girona we finally get confirmation from 1Cover that their medical officer will sign a fit to fly form for 14 days post surgery and that they will book me on a business class flight back to Sydney. Initially they were going to book me in business class and Alise in economy but after hassling them we eventually both got business class tickets.
Did you have your insurance policy handy?
Yes, I generally travel with a copy of the insurance policy on my phone and on my iPad.
How did you make sure you had the best possible treatment?
I found it a bit difficult to get confidence that a particular hospital or a particular surgeon was good while I was overseas, although I was tempted to ask to be relocated to Girona as we at least knew someone there who had received good treatment from one of their orthopedic surgeons. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to talk with one of the Sydney based hip specialists (Dr Nick Vertzyas) and he was brilliant in talking both Alise and I through what to expect with a total hip replacement, and upon seeing the x-rays he agreed with the decisions that were being made by the Spanish doctors.
But we did have several Australian medical professionals tell us that their opinion was that the Spanish doctors are very well trained and that total hip replacements are fairly common (not so common for people under the age of 50 but the surgeons at least have plenty of practise).
The specialist in Tremp certainly inspired confidence from the first meeting and it certainly helped that she spoke excellent English as neither my Spanish nor my Catalan were very good.
How many hospitals did you visit?
I only saw the two hospitals, the small one in Vielha that appeared very modern but didn’t have enough specialists to perform the operation and the one in Tremp which was an older hospital, reasonably run-down but with excellent staff and a lot of hip replacement patients (most of whom seemed to be 70-80 years old)
How much did your policy cost and how much was your treatment?
We had paid $459 for 12 months of global cover (excluding the Americas) for myself, Alise and our son Toby. It provides cover for a maximum period of 21 days for any one journey.
I am not sure what the cost of the treatment was because we never saw the hospital bills. I am assuming the ambulance transfer would have been expensive and my guess is that the surgery and hospital stay would have been $10,000-$20,000 but I really don’t have much idea.
Did you have any out of pocket expenses?
Eventually after I submitted all of the claim information they paid for everything that I had included in the claim. And they paid it within about 2 weeks. This included all of Alise’s flights and accommodation as well as our stay in Girona, physio treatment, food and car hire. I did forget to claim for the clothes that got damaged in the accident, which was silly of me!
How long until you can ride or run again?
I was able to start riding on a stationary bike within about 3 weeks from surgery and I have been able to ride outside from about 9 weeks. Running, however, is a different matter, the hip specialists are not very keen on running and are concerned about the joint wearing out faster if I am to run on hard surfaces. They are ok with soft sand running but not much else.
At 10 weeks I am now able to do running up sets of stairs, and this is deemed ok because it doesn’t put as much load on the joint while going up (I then just walk slowly down the stairs), and I will hopefully start doing some sand running soon.
What would you do differently?
I certainly will be more cautious riding on roads I don’t know in future, in particular not using the maps on the GPS devices as an indication of how fast I can go into corners!
And obviously with the insurance claim, be thorough with keeping receipts for everything, suggest using your phone to take photos of receipts and categorising them straight away, definitely saves the pain of trying to find things afterwards.
Has this stopped you cycling overseas?
No, I am sure I will be cycling overseas again within the next few years.
A huge thanks to Myles for sharing his experience with us. I plan to look carefully at my insurance policies and make sure I have a photo of them on my phone. A great tip.
