Emucom, my mother had no problems with insurance paying once she returned home, but we live in Canada. Alberta Blue Cross, which is mandatory for every resident of our Province paid for much of her treatment.

She also had seperate travel insurance so between the 2, everything was covered. I'm not sure if it would work the same way in the U.S. I suppose the best advice is to buy travel insurance and read the policy carefully.

Dear Fodorville Ladies: Thought I would pass on a cure I discovered for JJ5's delicate dilemma while myself
on vacation -
Probiotic Acidophilus - in a travel ready "bead" form. Natrol makes a good one called BioBeads. One a day keeps the pharmacist away.
I think I took 2 or 3 a day during the worst of it and by the time I got home to my DR. she found no trace of said
'problem'.
R5

I cam so relate to that scary sounding cough. I got a wicked upper respiratory infection that progressed to bronchitis and complete laryngitis just before going to Negril this July. I ended up on 10 days of antibiotics and received a steroid to get the voice back. I was feeling somewhat better before we left and in spite of even sleeping in a different room for a few nights, gave it to DH right before we left. He felt like you know what the first few days and it was definitely coughing up a lung type sound. You know what all of the people on the plane were thinking. We even had his dad roll down all of the windows in the truck on the way to the airport to air out the germs. I ended up giving him my last few days of antibiotics. His cough was so disgusting that I felt like the air in the hotel room was toxic (we had the AC on and windows closed at night). We both had laryngitis the better part of the week.

After being on antibiotics, steroids, and a week in the Jamacian heat, I came down with the other dreaded affliction. Thankfully, it was on the day we were traveling home.

Kathyh, That plane trip with food poisoning sounds like a nightmare. It would be bad enough on a cruise ship, but on a plane with the person next to you and others all puking in a bag... shudders!

I think it's a hoot that we all like to tell our horror stories of illness! My kid's fondest vacation memory is of 3 out of 4 in the family getting food poisoning in London. We all have memories of playing musical chairs with the one toilet...it was truly horrible but we all laugh now. Had to ask room service for more TP twice in a few hour period, and we found the Harrods shopping bags came in handy as well. I really don't know how anyone could get on a plane in that condition. Luckily it happened to us two days before we flew home.
I also wound up with food poisoning while staying at my MIL's. I too tried to hide the fact I was violently ill because she is germophobic and has OCD regarding cleaning. I am sure she boiled the towels and bedding after we left and sanitized the entire house. She used the word contaminated several times...I will never stay under her roof again!

Uhmmm, Mary2Go, was it your loving and adorable MIL that gave you the food poisoning?

I think I have the ultimate illness/vacation story. About five years ago, we purchased a week in a house on the Oregon coast at an auction. We invited my husband's family from Atlanta and Boston to join us.

The kids accompanied me to the Portland airport to pick up the Grandparents, our first arrivals. On the way, my stomach felt queezy. I blamed the frappacino I had just had. When we got to the airport, I had the kids go to the gate to greet them while I ran to the john.

I drove everyone home and got half-way through cooking dinner when I suddenly realized I could no longer stand up and had to go to the dark recesses of my room to ride out the storm. A few hours later, my husband flopped down next to me, felled by similar symptoms.

Now we were blaming the Indian restaurant we'd eaten in a couple of nights earlier.

We were both fine by morning. The Bostonians joined us and we were off to the coast.

There were nine of us, and one by one, the rest of us got sick. It was a 24 hours stomach flu and hit people to different degrees. The last holdouts were the Grandparents, who we thought had somehow been spared, but they too eventually succumbed. In fact, my mother-in-law got it so bad we had to take her to a little health clinic in one of the tiny towns on the Oregon coast for an iv infusion of fluids, as she had gotten so dehydrated.

It was hard to plan anything that long, long week, as we never knew when the bug would hit. We especially didn't want to be driving the coast when it hit. We managed to get in one kayaking trip (with those of us who had already been hit), rent a lot of movies, play a lot of poker, and walk on the beach some.

That trip has gone down in the annals of family history as the "Vacation from Hell." We set a rare standard!

... white bag, please.

I remember another time - in that same semester abroad in Toulon, France, I was in a grocery store with sandals when a friend of mine dropped a bottle of champagne behind me - where did the glass go? right into my achilles tendon - YUK! and very painful to say the least. I was rushed to the hospital by ambulance, had surgery, hospital stay, etc. and guess what - no bill! gotta love that socialism!