I part one I related that we were looking to do in Bali was relax on the beach, eat out, get lots of massages, and do some shopping. I cover all the other things in part one and this part begins with
'and then we went shopping.'
We were exactly half way through our stay in Bali when we decided to go shopping. Wednesday had be a glorious day, discovering Chill and going for a late lunch to Breeze Restaurant in Seminyak. We were in the neighborhood so we grabbed a cab to Geneva's. It was very hot in Geneva so we didn't stay long. We crossed the street to look at some of the stores just opposite Geneva and we starting to cross back when 'wham' Jaclyn was hit by a motorcycle. Both she and the motorcyclist went down. He got up checked out his bike and road off.
Jackie was down on the ground and couldn't get up. Her ankle was bruised and starting to swell, so I moved her off to the sidewalk. A woman came over to see how we were and said she had gotten medical attention the day before and gave us the card to BIMC (Bali International Medical Center). A cab quickly came by and offered transportation.
Once inside the cab, we realized we needed our traveler's insurance policy and some plastic for the interim for the medical clinic. So we decided to go back to the hotel (Nusa Dua Beach Hotel) first. After a minute or two, Jackie changed her mind and said go to BIMC first and I could go and get the other things.
We did exactly that. When we got to BIMC, we were happy to see it was very modern. They got a wheelchair for Jackie and took her in the clinic. We filled out some paperwork and then I went to the hotel and got what I thought we needed.
The emergency doctor was very good. She took x-rays and had someone cleaning up some scrapes and bruises Jackie had gotten. When I got back they were waiting for the x-rays. The doctor looked at the x-rays and there was once clear break. There were two others that might be breaks or they might be shadows since they seem to go on beyond the bone itself. She said she would treat the one break and would have the radiologist look at the x-rays regarding the other possible breaks. The put Jackie in a splint, prescribe some pain killers, some bone medicine and some antibiotics. We were sent home and told they would call about what the radiologist finds (either way).
The next morning we got a call from our doctor who said we needed to come back in and see an orthopedist as the radiologist found there were three breaks. BIMC emphasized to us to get the orthopedist in would cost us $150 USD. We scheduled that for noon (we got the call at 10 am).
After looking at everything, the orthopedist told us Jackie needed to have two or three screws put in to insure proper healing. They were talking about doing it that day but we needed to get the insurance company to get them a guarantee of payment before they would schedule the operation. It was complex here because the BIMC need the guarantee from a third source in Malaysia. We were in the middle of this calling our contact who told us they had sent everything to BIMC and everything was fine as of two hours ago while we were at the hospital and they had told us they didn't have what they needed two minutes ago.
Everything got sorted out to schedule the surgery on Friday afternoon and let her be released on Saturday afternoon. Everything was very successful.
I've seen some people bad mouth BIMC on this or other forums and I would disagree with what I've read. BIMC was fantastic. The care Jackie got was first rate and the care by the nurses and staff was what you would expect if you've gone to Bali. The people were warm, caring and very helpful.
BIMC was a western style small hospital. Jackie had her own room on the third floor and was operated on in the second floor. I went to the recovery room after she got out of surgery on the second floor and again they were very helpful.
The doctors were very good as well. They took a lot of time to describe exactly what they were going to do or to go over the tests and show you what the problem was. When we got back to Denver we went to a local doctor who told us everything they did was top rate. The only minor exception to this was the screws they used were older ones that they no longer used because they were a bit larger than what the new generation were.
Finally, the other point was trip insurance. We've been buying it the past few years and are really glad we did. We picked insurance with very good medical benefits. This included they were the primary insurer, covered medical cost up to $50,000 per person, and had evacuation benefits of up to $500,000 per person. The primary insurance was very important. Many policies have their medical benefits as secondary, so you must go through your own insurance from home and their insurance kicks in to cover deductibles, co-pays, etc. I'm not sure how successful we would have been in getting the guarantee of payment from a domestic insurance company.
The cost to Jackie was approximately $10,000 USD for the care in Bali. Plus the insurance company sent us back to the USA in business class vs the coach tickets we had purchased. All in all this was not what you want to have happen on your vacation, but it definitely could have been worse.
Next, part 3-- Bali in a wheelchair.