“You never think it’ll happen to you until it does” is the thought I kept repeating to myself over and over as I laid in bed in the hospital in Cancun, MX.
How did I end up there?
I was dancing on a table as one does when a woman in her 20s is trying to have some “elevated” fun with her friends in Mexico. At roughly 11PM on a Saturday night in 2020, my left foot slipped off the table, while my right foot stayed on.
Obi-Wan Kenobi would have been proud of the force used during my fall. My hip slammed against the corner of the table and the next thing I knew, I was on the ground.
I laughed at my fall, not thinking much of it. I was on a company incentive trip and felt like I had just embarrassed myself in front of everyone, but I thought that was the worst of it.
Similar to a stubbed toe, I thought once I got up and walked around, I would be just dandy.
However, I knew something was very wrong when I started walking around and continued to be in pain. It was then I decided I needed to go back to the resort where I was staying and lay down for the rest of the night.
My friends and I hailed a cab back, and I could not even sit down at a 90-degree angle. I realized I had taken just sitting down for granted (little did I know it would be a month before I would be able to properly sit down properly again).
Once we were back at the resort, I called my company supervisors into my room to check on me and help me determine if I needed to get additional treatment.
After some back and forth, we realized it made sense to go to the hospital and hopefully get some pain medication. While I do not speak any Spanish, we had a volunteer on site who helped our company staff translate Spanish for a multitude of reasons including this one.
I felt terrible, as we had to wake her at 4AM the next day to take me to the hospital. At this point, I had no idea where I was being carted to, but our angel of a volunteer drove me to a bilingual hospital in downtown Cancun that was meant to treat people who got into accidents like myself.
I will never forget what the nurses told me when I got to the hospital early Sunday morning:
“This will be a funny story for your grandkids.”
I am sure they were trying to make me laugh in a trying situation, but I was so tired and in pain that it was hard to even let out a smile at that point.
I was delirious, hungover, and in so much pain all at the same time which was not a recipe for comfort at any point. All I wanted was to go to sleep and wake up and forget this ever happened and just continue with my fun trip with my friends.
Instead, I was being X-Rayed at 5AM while my family was sound asleep in the US with no indication this was happening.
After being carted to my hospital room, I waited for the results of my X-Ray to come back. What I thought would be a bruise on my hip bone turned out to be a hematoma and a piece of bone actually chipped off of my hip.
Nothing in the world could have prepared me for that diagnosis. This was a scenario I had never played out in my head before going on the trip.
I learned very quickly that day that freak accidents do happen and they can quickly change your whole way of living. This injury was the universe’s way of telling me to slow down and refocus my energy, but this was a lesson I would only learn a year or so later.
At the time, all I could focus on was how much I was missing out on, how alone I felt, and how expensive this hospital trip was going to be for an injury I felt was so idiotic and preventable. I felt like a failure and that I should’ve been smarter.
The next day after my initial injury, one of my other company supervisors visited me in the hospital and stayed with me the entire day. She filled out all of my hospital paperwork and relieved the stress of having to do it myself.
She also let me know that I had purchased accident insurance at the beginning of my work season. This insurance covered any accidents that would happen during the selling season of my work, as well as any accidents that happened on this trip!
A $100 purchase of this accident insurance months before saved me years of medical bills (roughly a $25,000 bill). I ended up needing to be in the hospital for seven nights, and even fly back with a travel nurse back to the United States.
My insurance plan covered all of it, even though the accident happened outside of the US.
For one, I knew absolutely nothing about foreign health care as I assumed it was just as expensive as hospital visits were in America. Fortunately, the hospital stay was much cheaper in Mexico than it would’ve been in the US.
The care was just as attentive, if not better than the care I’ve received in America. With that being said, without insurance, the cost would have still been about $25,000 or so.
Many insurance plans in America do not cover foreign medical visits, including the plan I was on at the time. The accident insurance I decided to get impulsively did cover foreign medical care and saved me from paying back medical bills for a long time.
I could focus on healing, which was stressful enough on its own.
Flying back to America with the travel nurse selected for me by the hospital, I came back with a whole new perspective and appreciation for life.
While this is definitely the most painful injury I have ever had to heal from, I felt extremely lucky that it was not worse. I healed 100% over the course of a few years (was able to sit and walk normally after a month or two).
I did not have to worry about the medical bills and other headaches caused by healthcare. I received great care from the doctors and nurses in Mexico and was able to move forward with my life.
This injury caused me to look into healthcare as a whole and realize how unfair it is to many people living with chronic illnesses and injuries currently.
While I dipped my hip into it (haha puns) I was able to walk away with full strength and no negative balances in my bank account. I have since looked into insurance carefully and thought twice about ignoring the purchase button.
While I am not here to discuss how insurance works and which plan is right for you, I hope to encourage everyone with this story to take a second look at getting insurance when presented with the opportunity and protect themselves as best as they can from incidents beyond their control.
Select a plan that covers you and is worth the money, you never know when it’ll save you $25,000 after falling off a table while drunk in Mexico.
Featured image and second image stock photos from Pexels, third image stock photo from WordPress
