May 2014

Why I chose to use Medical Travel agency - story

I hadn’t used a travel agency my whole life, so when it came to traveling to Prague, the Czech Republic for fertility treatment, the idea of using a medical tourist agency didn’t even cross my mind.

We had already decided that we were open to the idea of traveling abroad for fertility treatment. Perhaps it is silly, but we decided that Central Europe was the best place to go because we remembered that my grandma had said that we had distant relatives from Moravia. Plus I am blonde with blue eyes and it seemed like it would be much easier to find someone with similar characteristics in Prague than in Madrid or Greece.

As I started looking into exactly what clinic I wanted to use, the information started to stack up. I felt desperate, I just wanted a child, I didn’t want it to be complicated, and now I found myself in a web of tangled information about what to do and what not to do, where to go and where not to go, what to be careful of and what to consider. As I watched the list of web links to research get longer and longer I started to feel like the light at the end of the tunnel was fading.

One day I came accross something about a medical tourist agency that had helped a patient who had complications when traveling abroad with her clinic. What’s funny is that I had probably seen a hundred advertisements about medical tourist agencies and had astutely ignored them. But for some reason, this hit home. I didn’t want to be in Prague, vulnerable, in the middle of a treatment when something goes wrong and there is no one on my side.

I told my husband about it and we figured that there was nothing to lose by contacting one, we could always politely turn them down. So we reached out to a company called Medical Travel Czech Republic who works with a fertility clinic that we had seen some information about; emailed them and explained our situation, concerns, and what we were looking for. They wrote us back within the hour and provided us with detailed information about the clinic and services they offered as well as a price list.

Out of curiosity and perhaps skepticism, I called the clinic long distance to see what kind of prices they offered and found out that there was no difference. When I fessed up and asked Medical Travel about it later, they explained that because they negotiate prices with the clinics, they can offer the same prices as going to the clinic directly and, on top of it, offer their travel services.

When I told them that we still had a lot of unanswered questions, they offered to consult with the fertility specialists at their clinic directly to get answers for us. Since we had done a lot of reading beforehand, we saw that the information that we were getting was in line with other sources. The difference was, this information was related to us and a real clinic with real donors, no more theoretical stuff.

Medical Travel orchestrated everything for us, from finding the best flights to booking accommodation in a modern hotel near to the clinic and offered their 24/7 support. They made sure we were comfortable in the clinic and introduced us to the doctors. I really felt like the whole time we was there we had someone on our side, who would help if anything would go wrong.

Actually everything went just fine and, fingers crossed, we’ll see what the pregnancy test says in the next few days!