This story has a little back story. A few months back, a heart transplant team from the Mayo Clinic here in Florida were killed when the helicopter they were flying in crashed. I first heard of it when I received a panicked phone call from my mother who missed the Mayo clinic part of the story. Following the story, seemingly thousands of emails have circulated among the transplant surgeons and powers that be here at UM regarding liability and life insurance. The final consensus was as "transplant" surgeons, we expose ourselves to more potential harm than a "non-transplant" surgeon. Therefore, the plan was to have additional insurance coverage should something happen during a harvest. There was much debate about how much and how best to go about obtaining it, but quite honestly when they started discussing the tax benefits of establishing estates - I quit reading the emails.
Then yesterday rolled around. The weather here in Miami has been atrocious since Saturday. Heavy rain with dense clouds and no sunshine in sight. I get the phone call that I'm needed to fly to Puerto Rico to harvest a heart. Not overly excited, I climb into the car and head to the airport. Due to the rough flying conditions, we are sharing the flight with the liver team. We usually prefer to let them go first as their part takes longer, but in this instance the plan was to have me bide my time in San Juan while he got started. During our ride to the airport, we were both discussing how little we were looking forward to the rough flight ahead.
Then, simultaneously both of our phones chime signalling incoming emails. The subject of the email - "death insurance". It was an email from our VCA telling us that all the "kinks" of the additional life insurance policy had not been worked out. Hence, we were still only covered by our standard hospital policy. It was consequently his recommendation that we both go "online" and purchase an additional trip policy coverage of 5 million dollars for which the department would reimburse us.
Let's just say this did not allay our fears. It also turns out that pilots don't really like it when you ask them to delay your flight so that you can quickly go online and buy insurance in case the plane crashes. We knew it was going to be a bumpy flight due to the weather, but pretty sure they were looking for "pockets" to hit. At least all is well that ends well - until next time.
