Corfu 2018.Some very healthy advice first!

2018 has been a strange year, it was intended to be my "year of travel" but it soon became the year it unravelled!
Off to a great start we should have been heading to Namibia and South Africa in July but two weeks before we were due to leave I had an MRI scan on my back, it had been troublesome for the previous 9 months or so, and after much waiting it was decided that they should investigate properly and the result was I had Spinal Stenosis and was at extreme risk of Cauda Equina! What does that all mean. Well it meant my GP advised me I would be foolish to go ahead and travel on an African Safari in case I needed urgent medical attention. There was a risk of permanent paralysis. I cancelled. No choice really but at least I had travel insurance...or so I thought!
Meantime my back consultant had enquired if I had had any blood tests recently and suggested I should get one done. That revealed I had a PSA level that was slightly higher than the considered safe limit. Further examination suggested an enlarged prostate ( you get used to the sound of the rubber glove snapping on to the hand and to be honest, it's no big deal being examined particularly if it might save your life). I decided to get a prostate scan done privately as our local health service doesn't pay for them.
The result came as a big shock if I'm honest. I had two areas of concern, one looked very dubious and a private consultation with a Professor in Urinology told me it was 95% certain I had prostate cancer.
Prostate cancer isn't necessarily the end of the world, especially if you catch it early enough. Contained within the prostate survival rates after surgery are very high indeed but if it spreads outside you can find yourself in trouble.Big trouble.
I would need a biopsy to confirm the cancer and to decide a course of action. Once again, I decided to pay and had one done within 4 days instead of the 8-10 week waiting list for one on the National Health. Shrouds don't have pockets was a regular quote from a friend of mine now deceased and didn't leave a fortune in the process either. 
Miracles do happen. The biopsy came back clear. I didn't have cancer after all. That was one problem less but in the meantime I had seen a neurosurgeon in a Liverpool specialist hospital and been given a provisional date for my back operation 12 weeks later at the end of October.
Things were looking up but then the insurance company rang up and told me that my claim for a cancelled holiday had been rejected on the ground that I had failed to disclose a prescription for some painkillers, co-codomel tablets, and an undisclosed medical condition, the Spinal Stenosis, when I had renewed my policy.
That was 9 months previously when I had first mentioned backache to my GP and he prescribed the painkillers. ( Ironically I only took one tablet and that made me feel worse than the mild pain I was suffering then).
On the other hand, there wasn't a medical condition to disclose really. It was 9 months and three consultants appointments later that it was decided I was suffering more than typical ageing problems.
Still, the insurance would not budge.
I'd managed to recoup a fair amount of my costs. No charges for cancelling accommodation  booked via Booking.com, cars from Rentalcar.com, airport parking included cancellation insurance which strangely I usually don't bother with and I got the tax back on our Emirates flights. All in all I was still down £4.5K but hey, look at it another way and it was a saving. No further expenditure on the planned trip and even a bit of money back which helped offset the cost of my prostate treatments!
So people, the moral of the story is, don't hold back on any information, no matter how unimportant you feel it might be, when renewing your insurance policy. It might come back and bite you in the bum! And my nether regions had certainly suffered in recent weeks!
I had no excuse for not mentioning the co-codomel tablets as the doctor visit was two days before I renewed the policy. I didn't think it worth mentioning at the time, it wasn't a deliberate attempt to mislead but I do also wonder what would have happened if I had visited the doctor two days after I renewed the policy. Would I be expected to ring the insurance company to tell them about the prescription? Are you expected to ring the insurance company after every visit to see your GP?
I can't see it myself but there you go. If you don't, you give them a get out clause for non payment.
However, here in the UK we have an option to appeal via an independent ombudsman. It's a free service but whatever they decide you have to accept. Their decision is final.
It's worth a try. I have written to them for an adjudication and I'm still hoping that I might yet be rewarded with at least a partial payout. Might be some time before I hear I'm told.
To add to my cause though, I received the annual renewal letter telling me the fee for my travel insurance would be automatically deducted unless I rang to cancel or needed to tell them about any change in circumstance.
Well, I certainly had a change in circumstance so I would ring and see what they had to say. What would be the renewal cost be?
The verbal reason the insurance company had given me for not paying out was that there would have been an extra premium to pay had I declared everything at the time. I had already tried another company and got a quote online, first pretending that there was nothing wrong with me aka 12 months prior, then declaring prescription and spinal stenosis. I was pleasantly surprised to see they didn't ask for any increase payment as a result, so at least I had a benchmark of what I might have to pay.
Back to my current insurance company then, I rang the renewal line and spoke to their sales person. She too added all the details and this time she got the lot, despite her assurances they didn't need to know she got the entire prescription list including suppositories and enemas. They weren't getting out of any future claims. When all was said and done , my every condition declared, the quote came back as no extra premium to pay.
I asked her to repeat that I was covered for my spinal condition ( they record the phone calls which is where they got me last time!). Yes I was covered even BEFORE I was due to have my back operation.
Did that mean I could travel?
There were just two conditions added.
1) I wasn't covered if I travelled within 6 weeks of an operation
2) I should get my GP's approval to travel prior to the forthcoming operation .
The payment was taken and that was that. I shot off to my GP and asked for permission to travel somewhere "safe", close to a medical facility, somewhere not too far away. He said I could go anywhere if it was sensible and by that he suggested no safari trips, rough travel or extreme activities.
I got him to write that on my record card. That is important because if you happen to make a claim on your insurance the GP has to fill in a form disclosing all they know.
Now as my prostate biopsy was a fairly big procedure and done under general anaesthetic I had to wait 6 weeks before I could travel. No problem, during that period I had Champion's League tickets for the Paris St Germain game and I didn't want to miss that anyway. Another week and we had already made arrangements to visit some friends for the weekend. 
Claire was really desperate for a holiday. As she pointed out, I had had birding trips to Scotland and Estonia (twice!) since she had been anywhere. Wherever we went had to be her decision, her choice.
By an odd coincidence we both discovered the same trip at almost the same time whilst browsing the internet.
It was too good to be true. The date was perfect! We would fly 12 hours after I had been to Liverpool to watch them play Manchester City so I wasn't going to miss that game after all.
10 days in Corfu in a self catering apartment. Flights and transfers included. The place was getting brilliant Trip Advisor reports too.
I decided to book it online there and then but when it got to the payment stage my credit card wasn't accepted as there was a problem and it told me to ring their help line.
I rang. 
The girl took the holiday detail.
I was told the problem was that there must be a mistake. The price was too cheap!
I insisted there wasn't an error so she put the card details in again and this time it went through.
I had got an absolute bargain.
£292 for the two of us. It was cheaper than the flights alone would have cost.
Nothing to lose then. We could always find somewhere else to stay if needed.
But as it happened that wasn't the case at all.
For once it was a genuine bargain. 
T.B.C.