Fiona Macrae

Fiona Macrae is a professional insurance broker with over 30 years’ experience. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in February 2005 when her son, Cameron, was just five months old. During her pregnancy, Fiona queried changes in her breast several times but was told she had nothing to worry about. Due to the delay in diagnosis Fiona’s oncologist decided the best course of treatment would be chemotherapy first, followed by surgery and radiotherapy.

Fiona had 8 cycles of chemotherapy and at the end of this phase of her treatment, she decided to take a holiday with her family to recuperate. However, when she tried to obtain travel insurance she encountered many problems. Insurance companies asked distressing, personal and intrusive questions in an insensitive manner, and the cost of the policies they offered was more than the price of the holiday.

Following more research into travel insurance for people with pre-existing medical conditions, Fiona was adamant that she wanted to do something to change the situation and enable everyone to have affordable easily accessible holiday insurance for pre-existing medical conditions. “We are supporting multiple charities through the sale of Insurancewith products. I am fortunate that I had support, but for people going through what I went through and have no support, that’s when they really do need help from a charity.”

“It isn’t just the chemotherapy; it is a full year of treatment. If you haven’t got family support then this can be a very lonely and traumatic period in your life. I just hope that Insurancewith can raise as much money as possible for the charities we support. I am really excited about the future.”

Life with breast cancer is hard and adapting to normal life again can be a struggle. When you are first diagnosed with breast cancer it can be very bewildering, you are thrust into a world you know nothing about. Something as simple as a holiday is now far more complicated because of the difficulty in finding travel insurance that will cover you fully now you have been diagnosed with breast cancer. You hear horror stories from people about being charged over £1000 for a week’s travel insurance just because they have been diagnosed with breast cancer. I founded Insurancewith, which was developed from my personal experience after I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I was determined to be able to offer people who had been diagnosed with breast cancer affordable travel insurance which fully covers their condition. No matter what stage of Breast Cancer they have, how far into treatment they are, Insurancewith can also offer travel insurance for people still undergoing certain treatments.

Too often people are advised to just exclude cover for breast cancer from their travel insurance policy to save money, (saying “ you are not suddenly going to get breast cancer while you are on holiday”), what people don’t realise is, they are not only excluding breast cancer but also excluding anything that arises as a result of the treatment for breast cancer, for instance, if you take Tamoxifen you could be more at risk of a DVT, therefore, you wouldn’t be covered for that. If you take Arimidex, you could be more at risk of bone thinning, and if you break a bone on holiday this may not be covered. With Insurancewith I wanted to provide an affordable travel policy for people with breast cancer that offered them full cover, so they didn’t have to compromise on the cover they had under their policy and could just relax and enjoy their much needed and looked forward to holiday, even if they have:

• recently been diagnosed with breast cancer
• had chemotherapy, radiotherapy or biological therapy
• had surgery in the last few months.
• secondary breast cancer
• Worldwide policies including cover for the USA are available

One of the major benefits of a policy with us is, in the event of an emergency or the need for immediate medical treatment abroad, Insurancewith have appointed a worldwide 24-hour emergency assistance team on hand to help who can organise and authorise your treatment, give medical and practical advice, as well as arrange alternative flights and accommodation for you and your family when you are fit to travel home. And importantly, will also liaise with the treating doctors and your specialist in the UK to ensure any proposed treatment is of a long term benefit to you, not just an immediate solution.