Please note this is quite a long post - I wanted to provide full details of the situation and the journey to getting a decent travel insurance quote rather than just stating my husband has terminal cancer and we got travel insurance for £75.
In Nov 2024 after battling oesophagus cancer at the G junction with his stomach for 12 months (including a 12 hour operation having his stomach and part of his oesophagus removed) my husband was told the cancer had escaped the primary site, grown and spread throughout his body. He was now terminal with an average of 13-14 months to live if he had palliative treatment.
After being floored by the devastating news and spending many days crying with each other, alone and with our family, we decided to do our best to stay positive and have as many positive experiences as we could during the time he was well enough.
We started this by planning a full (if small) wedding for 6 weeks later. We'd been together for 18 years and discussed getting married many times but never got around to it. Whilst it became stressful in the 4 days leading up to the wedding when he was admitted into hospital with a urine and blood infection, he was discharged the day before and our wedding went ahead.
As his palliative treatment started the week before the wedding and was every 2 weeks, we didn't plan a honeymoon.
Between Jan 2025 - April 2025, he was ill on several occasions - side effects from the chemo and severe pain in his lower back and leg. Whilst we had a couple of short UK breaks, we thought our days of enjoying a holiday abroad, which had always been the highlight of our year, were over.
But in April he started a different chemo - tolerated it very well and was prescribed an anti-inflammatory which cleared the pain and spasms in his leg immediately after taking the first one, resulting in him not needing the fentanyl or oxycodone pain relief meds anymore.
He continued to feel well and we started wondering if we could go on holiday in Europe - the first step was renewing our sons passport, as it was his first adult passport we couldn't fast track it and so thought it pointless looking at holidays or insurance if his passport wasn't going to come through in time (we were looking at July or August - my husband's treatment is currently weekly for 3 weeks then a week off - so after his 3rd week there's a 2 week window before his next treatment so we earmarked the dates that would be in July and August). Our sons passport came within 2 weeks and just a couple of days before the date we'd earmarked in July - this didn't leave us enough time to sort everything else out so we focused on the August date.
The next step was to speak with his consultant at his next review appointment - if his consultant was against the idea, we'd accept that - but his consultant was positive and felt that if he was feeling well enough he should do whatever he wanted to live life to the full - he said he'd be happy to write a letter confirming he's happy for my husband to travel should an insurance company need one.
So the final step was getting travel insurance. I'd filled in a few forms with various companies online and some hadn't even got as far as declaring medical conditions as they'd rejected the quote as soon as I'd ticked someone included had a terminal diagnosis. Others also didn't get as far as declaring medical conditions - they immediately wanted a telephone consultation as soon as terminal diagnosis was ticked.
We didn't want to be phoning loads of companies as if they rejected the application or came back with a quote in the thousands it would get disheartening quickly.
Others proceeded to the declaration of medical conditions and upon entering either came back rejecting or with a quote for thousands.
A couple came back with a basic cover (medical only, no possessions or cancellation cover) of £700 - £900 going up to £1200 if you went to the next level cover that did include possessions and cancellation. But there was a question on those forms that I hadn't been able to accurately answer - asking for the results of the latest scan (options given were - no change/growths reduced in number & size/growths increased in number & size/some growths reduced and some increased/no cancer detected/not had a scan). My husband had recently had a CT scan but we were waiting for the appointment to find out the results.
As I was only filling these online quote forms to get an idea (we hadn't chosen a holiday at that point and didn't know the definite dates within a 3-4 day window we'd be travelling) I ticked the no change option as I didn't want to jinx things by selecting the more positive option. So selecting no change produced the £700 - £900 basic silver cover and £1200 gold cover quotes.
So we kept those companies in mind, thinking we'd go for the £700 cover as just cover for my husband and get "normal" travel insurance for £25 for me and our son - that way at least two thirds of any baggage loss or holiday cost if we needed to cancel would be covered.
But we'd also heard about insurancewith. We felt optimistic given the owner set up the company after having breast cancer herself and struggling to get travel insurance.
I was reading a lot of positive experiences but none related to people who had a terminal diagnosis.
We filled the online form out and at the end it came up that they needed more info and prompted us to book a telephone appointment. We did, but when the call happened, we still hadn't had the appointment to find out the latest CT scan results - so I asked the member of staff if we'd be better rescheduling the appointment for the following week the day after we got the CT scan results. She agreed.
The results were mostly positive. They'd looked at 4 main lesion markers and 3 had shrunk with the 4th having grown. Of the other markers, most had shrunk or stayed the same with one having grown.
My husband answered all their questions the next day and they said they'd be in touch within 24 hours.
The next day he got an email from them saying they still needed more information - they had 3 questions:
1. Had the whole of the original tumour been removed during the operation or had they been unable to get some of it (we already knew the answer to that - they had removed the whole tumour).
2. Which organs had the cancer spread to - was the reason we didn't know because the specialists didn't know or because it hadn't been fully explained to us (we'd been told the cancer had spread throughout his body both in the lymph nodes and outside of them - but they hadn't gone into the specifics).
3. Of the growths that had shrunk and those that had grown, they wanted to know how much they'd shrunk or grown compared to the last CT scan.
So my husband copied the relevant paragraphs and pasted them into an email to his consultants secretary. After 6 days he hadn't got a response and when he tried phoning the call went to answerphone. So yesterday he phoned the nursing team - he left a message and they phoned him back and later emailed him the relevant information. He sent that to insurancewith and today we've got a reply confirming they have all the information they need now and they will send a quote within 15 mins. 15 mins later the quote (for all 3 of us and including cancellation and possessions) came through ....
£75
We're amazed! Whilst waiting for the information to come from the hospital, I'd find back into those silver cover quotes where I'd put no change and got the £700 & £900 quotes and changed my answer now we actually had the results - to some cancer cells/growths had reduced and some had grown. There's no scope to elaborate on this so for all they know, 95% could have increased in size with only 5% decreasing - rather than the vice versa that was more the case with my husband. Upon changing that answer the quote shot up to £2000 with each of the 2 or 3 companies I'd completed the form with (the £2000 was covering just my husband and only for medical - it didn't include cancellation or possessions).
£2000 (for just the person who is ill with no cancellation or possessions cover) versus £75 (for all 3 of us to include cancellation and possessions).
Huge difference!
We're so grateful to insurancewith - we're now going to be enjoying a family holiday abroad in 8 days time and continuing to make positive, special memories at a stressful and daunting time allowing us to at least live as normal as possible (going on holiday abroad in August has always been our normal routine, we didn't go away last year as he was recovering from major surgery and got infections in his surgical wound that had opened up on each side so needed the dressings changed daily by the community nurses) whilst my husband is still feeling well enough to do so.
If you or your loved one is in a similar situation and the person with cancer (terminal, incurable or not) is feeling well enough to travel and wants a holiday abroad, do try insurancewith and persevere with the telephone appointment.
In the past, we paid around £35 for a single trip family cover travel insurance policy. We thought (and accepted) that we'd have to pay several hundred if not more (but my husband refused to pay more than £1000 max and even paying that was because I persuaded him it would be worth it) - so to have been insured for £75 with the company knowing absolutely everything about his diagnosis and current status is amazing.
