Against all odds: you're finally going home!

rudy de kort / 27 june 2022

Medical repatriation from Canada to Pakistan

The social worker at the other side of the line sounded hesitant: ,,Rudy, are you guys able to do anything for this family?” To be honest, after she briefed me on the story, I was glad she couldn’t see the wrinkle on my forehead. ,,Well. I’ll promise you this: we’ll exhaust all options.”

In short, the lady lived in Northeast Pakistan and suffered a stroke a month ago, while visiting her adult children in Montreal. Her travel insurance covered medical emergencies, but after the hospital bills, no budget was left to claim the cost of repatriation. Each day that passed by, the family’s debt was growing out of control. A mission with a commercial medical escort was planned, but the company decided last minute that they needed an air ambulance. To the other side of the world. Paid out of pocket. Where they expected to sell their house to make it happen?

Airline stretcher not an option

The social worker offered to talk to us and I could sense their panic. We started assessing the situation. The lady could not sit due to her neurological deficits, but an airline stretcher would be out of the question, as all flights from Canada directly to Islamabad, Karachi or Lahore were fully booked for the next few weeks. We’d also have to apply for visa in the middle of the December holidays, figure out a plan for our nurse to get back to Canada despite the Omicron-madness, and all of this on a limited budget and with the added pressure of getting it done before the family hit the bottom of their financial resources.

Long distance transfer by air and ground

We came up with a plan: fly to Delhi. Then take an 8-hour, 400+ kilometer drive by ground ambulance over the border to Pakistan. We contacted our regional partner, and five minutes later the plan was thrown out of the window. The political tensions between India and Pakistan would sure enough add a few days, if not a few weeks to the trip, with the ambulance sitting at the border, waiting for “paperwork to be checked”. A few more options were explored before we decided to fly the patient over in business class to Istanbul, then have our nurse transfer care to a colleague from a partner organization, for a connecting flight to Islamabad, then have a local ambulance crew drive for five hours to the final destination. A few more roadblocks presented, and we patiently dealt with those, one at a time. The family couldn’t believe their ears when they heard that we had a plan, that they could actually afford and might just work out after all: ,,Over the last few weeks, so many things went wrong. Our stress levels are through the roof. At this point we can’t imagine mom actually making it to Pakistan.” I had to agree. So many things could still go wrong.

So many things can still go wrong…

And they did. A few days later, when it was time to get going, our nurse tested positive for COVID, just a few hours short of boarding her red eye flight into Montreal. There was that wrinkle on my forehead again, with only three hours left to get another nurse to do a PCR-swab, pack and leave to the airport. I had a lot of rebooking to do and it was gonna be past midnight while this nurse was already up in the air, hopefully sleeping off the jetlag of a previous mission, and still not a 100% sure if this PCR-report was gonna show up negative. When I briefed the family the next morning why a different nurse would be joining them shortly, they didn’t even sound surprised, just depleted. ,,Mom is just doomed to be stuck here until she dies.” I couldn’t help but think about the Biblical story about the ten plagues of Egypt. A story with a happy ending, but so many uncertainties until the very last minute.

A happy end after all

That morning, our nurse entered the room and made the seemingly impossible happen: she put everyone at ease, and showed them the much needed sunshine behind the heavy clouds of their storm. She then did her assessment, the paperwork and a few hours later they were on the way to the airport.

Long story short: the journey was uneventful. The lady made it home safely. Tired, but emotionally revived after the rollercoaster of events in Canada. And the family: they told us, they felt life had stopped for six weeks, and they were finally ready to pick up again where they left off.

Rudy de Kort is a medical travel companion and the founder of Jet Companion, a Canadian company that deploys commercial medical escorts worldwide to assist patients in getting back home.

EVERY MILE WE FLY IS FOR THE PURPOSE OF REUNITING PEOPLE OR BRINGING THEM TO SAFETY