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What happens when you dial the BMC emergency number
It pays to buy an insurance when you go abroad to cover medical and repatriation expenses in case you are taken ill, have an accident or your carrier goes belly up. For those of us in the hill walking and climbing fraternity, the most common provider for these services is the BMC.
When I went out to Norway for two months of mountain ski touring this last February, I upgraded my standard BMC membership to Alpine Ski and bought the annual policy.
Like all insurance policies, I never expected to have to use it, but it was good to know that it was there just in case I needed it.
As it turned out whilst training in temperatures as low as -40 I was taken seriously ill with influenza and pneumonia and was jolly pleased that I had the support of the BMC and its associate company Assistance International, to help me through a difficult time in a foreign country.
At first I had a private room
I have often looked at that long black number on the back of my BMC insurance card and wondered what would happen if I, or someone else needed to call it. My experiences of insurance have not always been happy ones and have left me feeling that I should have done better. Some have left me feeling angry and down right peed off with the way I have been treated, but in this regard the BMC were as ever, right there in my corner from the moment I dialled the number.
This routed, not to the BMC office in Manchester, but to a call centre in their associate company Assistance International.
I thought that they would just fly me home, but not a bit of it. First they said they would get me checked out and then if I was fit to fly, they would medevac me home.
I was in pretty bad shape with a high fever, when I made the call and for some reason I asked for International Rescue, which as we all know was the name used by Thunderbirds. Having got over my mistake I was assigned a case officer who was very helpful and arranged with the local doctor, the ski lodge and the travel company, to have me taken by ambulance to the hospital emergency in Lillehammer, about an hour distant. Events moved fairly quickly after that and I passed through Triage and was admitted to a ward that afternoon, hooked up to oxygen and plugged into some fairly aggressive intravenous antibiotics and connected to some high tech machines. It turned out that I had a bad case of influenza which I had either caught on the plane, or when I was stuck for several hours on a freezing platform at Oslo airport. Either way the flu had a vice like grip and to make matters worse both lungs had filled with pneumonia. This gave me the cough from hell and left me gasping for breath and totally dependent on oxygen.That meant flying home at that time was out of the question. The tour company who I was staying with had a doctor on the team, but she failed to spot any of my symptoms, which the Norwegian doctors were very surprised at as they said that they would have been very obvious to a trained professional. Each day the ward doctors came to call and assess me and later that day I would receive a call on my mobile from Assistance International to update me on events. Depending on the time and day, the case officers changed over, so you never knew from one call to the next who you would get. My original case officer was kind and helpful and his manner put me immediately at ease. Unfortunately not all who called to discuss my case were as pleasant and some, in my vulnerable state, left me feeling rather uneasy, but I suppose that’s big companies for you with staff always changing. The main thing is they took the trouble to call and keep in touch. The hospital let me use my mobile throughout and had no restrictions about its use, as is the case in the UK. I was very grateful for this as the tour company had pretty much abandoned me and this being my first time in Norway I didn’t have anyone who I could call for morale support. I had to keep my calls home to a minimum as mobile rates from Norway are pretty steep. I spent just over two weeks on the ward and was very impressed with the level of health care in Norway. I think if you have to be ill then Norway is the place to do it. The staff are all dedicated to their work. They are polite, caring and generous with their time. The hospital I was in in Lillehammer was state of the art. Each ward had its own cafeteria and at first the nurses would bring a cold plate or a selection of smorgasbord to eat from a tray. Once I was fit enough to get up, I could choose my own food and take it down to a dining area outside the ward, which had a small library and a flat screen television. There was always a good brew of real coffee on the go and hot meals served at lunchtime included meat , fish and vegetables, including smoked salmon and elk! You could eat as much as you wanted. So no complaints there then. In fact the hospital food was much better than many hotels I have stayed in. As soon as I was able to move around without oxygen, the doctors told me that I could probably fly home. I was offered a further couple of weeks stay on the ward just to make sure, but I was keen to get home and start work on my recovery, so I asked if I could leave sooner than later. I was officially discharged three days later and moved two floors down into the Hospital Hotel, which was a ward converted with private rooms with en-suite facilities, for relatives of patients who lived a long way away and needed to stay close to their loved ones. By Norwegian standards it was incredibly cheap, just £40 for full board compared to a local hotel which cost upwards of £90 a night. Can you imagine the NHS having a hotel in the hospital.....get out of here. Once I was discharged Assistance International began the arrangements to get me a flight home. I had a couple of days to kill, so they let me take the train back to the ski lodge and paid my costs. They also arranged for me to fly home with all my kit , by booking a BA flight with a 100kg cargo allowance. This consisted of three large holdalls which included my skis, pulk, dried food, crampons, ice axe, 2xtents, sleeping bag, liquid fuel stove and all the gear needed for a month’s expedition. When it came time to leave the ski lodge they arranged a taxi to take me the 300 odd miles to Oslo airport. Looking at the meter, I was very glad that I wasn’t paying. Once at the airport, I was moved by wheelchair with all my kit to a priority check in and then wheeled up to a lounge by an attendant, to wait for the flight. From there I was wheeled through customs and security to the gate and helped onto the aircraft. Whilst I was very happy to be back in the UK, it was a bit of a culture shock to arrive at Terminal 3 where the security staff were dead hostile and made it clear that anyone in a wheelchair was a potential terrorist. When it came time to board the shuttle to Manchester, Assistance International had booked a special lorry to move me in my wheelchair out to the aircraft. This then lifted the lorry body level with the chair so that I could be wheeled aboard. Very snazzy but rather embarrassing. After a smooth flight to Manchester, I was met by a private ambulance for the drive back to North Wales. I was very lucky that I just missed the chaos caused by the volcanic eruption in Iceland and my repatriation went pretty smoothly right to my door. Was I impressed - you bet I was. Dawn Smith - Ed.
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The doctors and nurses were always smiling
View from the ward
