As parents, we spend years learning how our healthcare system works in the US. We know which pediatrician we call. We know where the nearest urgent care is. We know which hospital we’d go to in an emergency. We know our pharmacy, our insurance, and generally what to expect.

The thought of leaving all of that behind can feel overwhelming.

What if they get a high fever?

What if they break a bone?

What if they need antibiotics?

What if no one speaks English?

What if the hospital isn’t good?

Those questions are enough to stop a lot of families from ever booking the trip.

As a mom who’s been traveling full-time for the last 22 months with my two daughters, who were just 2 and 4 years old when we left, I want to share what this has actually looked like for us.

My husband and I are both physician assistants, so we naturally think about healthcare a little differently than most people. We spent years working in medicine, learning what requires emergency care, what can safely wait, and what usually gets better with time. I completely understand that not everyone has that background.

This isn’t medical advice, and I’m not trying to tell you what you should do if your child gets sick.

My goal is much simpler than that.

I want to show you what healthcare abroad has actually looked like for our family so that one of the biggest fears parents have before traveling doesn’t feel quite so overwhelming.

Because after nearly two years of full-time travel, this has been one of the easiest parts of the journey.

Kids Get Sick at Home Too

One of the biggest surprises for us was realizing that our girls actually got sick less once we started traveling.

Before we left, I assumed it would be the opposite.

I thought we’d constantly be exposed to illnesses we’d never seen before. Different countries, different food, different germs, it seemed logical that we’d be dealing with sickness all the time.

That simply hasn’t been our experience.

When we lived in the United States, our girls were around the same groups of children all the time. That’s just part of normal life. Kids go to daycare, preschool, school, camp, and birthday parties, and illnesses naturally work their way through those groups.

I actually remember speaking with a co-worker years ago who told me she’d give her child Tylenol or Motrin before school so she could make it through her workday. She knew the medicine would wear off later, and she’d eventually get the phone call that her child had a fever again and needed to come home.

That’s the reality for a lot of working parents.

Once we started traveling, that constant cycle disappeared.

Our girls weren’t spending every day in the same classroom with the same group of children. Instead, they were outside more, walking everywhere with us, exploring cities, hiking, swimming, and simply living a different lifestyle.

Have they still gotten sick?

Absolutely.

We’ve dealt with stomach bugs, vomiting, diarrhea, fevers, runny noses, and the occasional cold.

But overall, they’ve actually been healthier while traveling than they were at home.

That was one of the first assumptions that travel completely changed for me.

A female doctor examines a child in a clinic setting, ensuring proper medical care and attention.

How We Decide Whether to Stay Home or Seek Medical Care

This is probably the question parents are really asking.

How do you know when it’s serious?

For us, the answer comes down to looking at the whole picture instead of focusing on one symptom.

One thing I want to make very clear is that this is where our medical background comes into play. After working as physician assistants for ten years, my husband and I naturally think through illnesses differently than someone who hasn’t worked in healthcare.

That doesn’t mean our way is the only way.

If you’re looking at your child and you’re uncomfortable, go get them checked.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Peace of mind matters too.

When one of our girls gets sick, I’m not immediately asking, “What’s their temperature?”

I’m asking questions like:

How long have they been sick?
Is the fever improving after medication?
Are they drinking fluids?
Are they eating anything at all?
Are they still acting like themselves?
Are they unusually sleepy or difficult to wake up?
Are they vomiting or having diarrhea?
Do they look dehydrated?
Are they still urinating normally?
If they’ve had an injury, are they able to bear weight?

Those are the things that help guide our decisions.

Children are incredibly resilient, and we’ve found that many illnesses look much worse in the first twelve hours than they do a day later.

Because of that, we’re usually watching the overall trend.

Are they improving?

Staying the same?

Or getting worse?

Again, this isn’t meant to tell you what you should do.

It’s simply how we think through these situations as parents with medical backgrounds.

When We Simply Watch a Stomach Bug

If you’ve traveled with kids long enough, chances are you’re going to deal with a stomach bug at some point. We’ve certainly had our share of vomiting and diarrhea while traveling, and my husband and I got hit way worse than the kids.

The biggest thing we’ve learned is not to panic after the first episode of vomiting.

As parents, it’s easy for our minds to jump straight to the worst-case scenario, especially when you’re in another country. You start wondering if it was something they ate, if they picked up a parasite, if they need to go to the hospital, or if you should completely change your travel plans.

For us, we try to slow everything down before making a decision.

The first question isn’t, “Do we need a doctor?”

The first question is, “How does our daughter actually look?”

Is she tired because she just threw up? That would be completely normal.

Or is she so lethargic that she can barely wake up?

Is she able to take small sips of water?

Has she kept any fluids down?

Is she still urinating?

Does her mouth look moist, or is it becoming dry?

Those are the things we’re paying attention to because they’re much more important than counting how many times she’s vomited.

Generally speaking, if things stay fairly mild, we’ll monitor her for about twenty-four hours before deciding if we need to be seen. Most stomach viruses improve on their own, and thankfully that’s been our experience while traveling too.

If you don’t have that background and your child doesn’t look right to you, trust your instincts and have them evaluated. There is absolutely nothing wrong with getting reassurance from a medical professional.

One thing I don’t want parents to think is that because we’ve traveled for almost two years, we’ve somehow stopped worrying about our kids.

We haven’t.

We’ve simply become more comfortable separating normal childhood illnesses from true emergencies.

That confidence didn’t happen overnight.

It came from experience.

The Only Time We’ve Needed an Emergency Room

People are usually shocked when I tell them we’ve only needed the emergency room once during almost two years of traveling full-time.

Not because our kids have never been sick.

They absolutely have.

We’ve dealt with stomach bugs that included vomiting and diarrhea, fevers from who knows what, colds, and I’ve even needed treatment for a sinus infection myself.

None of those situations required emergency care.

The one time we did go to the hospital was because our daughter injured her ankle.

It wasn’t the pain alone that concerned us. It was where the injury occurred. We were worried about the possibility of a growth plate injury, and that’s something that requires imaging to evaluate properly.

That wasn’t a situation we wanted to watch at home and hope for the best.

We knew she needed to be seen.

We went to a private hospital in Thailand, she was evaluated, had imaging done, and we had an answer very quickly.

That experience actually gave us more confidence traveling, not less.

Before that visit, hospitals abroad were still an unknown in the back of my mind. Afterward, I realized they worked much like they do at home. We checked in, saw a provider, got the testing we needed, paid before we left, and submitted everything to our insurance afterward.

It was straightforward, professional, and far less stressful than receiving healthcare in the US.

woman getting a visual exam performed — Visual Examination in Cuenca, Ecuador

Finding a Doctor Abroad Is Easier Than You Think

If I need to find a doctor while we’re traveling, I don’t have some secret list of providers.

I do exactly what I’d do if I had just moved to a new city in the United States.

I open Google.

Most of the time I’m typing exactly what I need: pediatrician, dentist, ophthalmologist, optometrist, or hospital.

Then I start narrowing it down.

How close is it to where we’re staying?

Do they have good reviews?

Do they have a website?

Can I message them on WhatsApp?

Do they speak English?

One thing I’ve learned is that clinics serving international travelers usually make themselves easy to find. If they regularly see expats or tourists, they’ll often advertise that they have English-speaking providers or staff. That’s always my first choice because it makes communication much easier, especially if we’re discussing something more complicated.

If I can’t find an English-speaking provider, translation apps have become incredibly helpful. Between Google Translate, WhatsApp, and email, we’ve always been able to communicate what we needed.

People sometimes ask if I use Airbnb hosts or Facebook groups for recommendations.

Personally, I usually don’t.

Because I already know exactly what type of provider I’m looking for, I find it faster to search myself. The exception would be if I were staying somewhere long term and wanted recommendations for routine care, just like I’d ask friends for a pediatrician back home.

For anything more urgent, I don’t wait around for recommendations.

I search, read reviews, and make the appointment.

What Healthcare Abroad Has Actually Been Like

Before we left the United States, healthcare abroad felt like one giant unknown.

I wasn’t worried about the quality of doctors.

I just didn’t know what the experience would actually be like.

Now we’ve received healthcare in multiple countries, and every experience has made us more comfortable.

In Ecuador, we’ve visited dentists and ophthalmologists.

In Vietnam, I was treated for a sinus infection through a local pharmacy.

In Thailand, we visited the dentist, got the exact same contact lenses I use at home, and our daughter was evaluated in the emergency room after injuring her ankle.

Routine appointments have generally cost us around $30, while our emergency room visit in Thailand was about $600 before insurance reimbursed us.

Looking back, healthcare abroad has consistently been one of the biggest pleasant surprises of our travels.

What We Actually Carry in Our Medical Kit

One thing that surprises people is how small our travel medical kit is.

The thing is we don’t travel with an entire pharmacy and our goal isn’t to prepare for every possible situation.

Our goal is to carry the basics and know that we can buy almost everything else if we need it.

We always carry:

Children’s Tylenol
Children’s Motrin
Adult Motrin
Benadryl for both adults and children
Hydrocortisone cream
A few Band-Aids
One larger dressing for bigger cuts

People are often surprised that we don’t carry a thermometer and for me the reason is simple.

I don’t need to know whether my child’s temperature is 101 or 102 degrees.

I’m paying much closer attention to how they’re acting, whether they’re drinking fluids, and whether they’re improving over time.

We also don’t carry antibiotics.

If one of us truly needs antibiotics, I’d rather be evaluated and receive the medication that’s appropriate for whatever illness we’re dealing with in that particular country. Antibiotics treat different things differently and if you take a medication when you have a virus it doesn’t work. If you take an antibiotic for the wrong bug it doesn’t work. It’s pretty straight forward.

The same goes for electrolytes.

They take up space in our luggage, and we’ve found them incredibly easy to purchase almost anywhere we’ve traveled.

A pharmacist organizing medication on shelves in a pharmacy in Bangladesh.

Buying Medicine Overseas

One of the biggest misconceptions I had before we left was that we’d need to pack an entire suitcase full of medications because we’d never be able to find what we needed overseas.

That couldn’t have been further from our experience. We’ve found pharmacies to be incredibly accessible in almost every country we’ve visited.

If we need children’s Tylenol, Motrin, Band-Aids, hydrocortisone cream, or other basic medications, we’ll simply walk into a pharmacy and ask.

The pharmacists have consistently been knowledgeable and helpful.

When I developed a sinus infection in Vietnam, I explained what was going on, answered a few questions, and was able to get the medication I needed without it becoming some huge ordeal.

That experience changed how I think about packing.

Today, I don’t try to carry everything.

I carry enough to get us through the beginning of an illness, knowing that if we need more, we’ll buy it locally.

The only exception is prescription medications that someone relies on every day.

Those are the medications I’d absolutely recommend bringing with you and researching before your trip. If you’re unsure whether a medication is available in another country, you can usually search online before you leave to see if it’s sold there under a different brand or generic name.

For everything else, we’ve found pharmacies to be one of the easiest parts of managing healthcare abroad.

How International Travel Medical Insurance Actually Works

Before we left the United States, I assumed we’d need extremely comprehensive international health insurance because I had no idea what medical care abroad would cost.

We actually started with a plan that cost us around $800 per month.

Looking back, we were probably over insured simply because we didn’t know what we didn’t know.

As we gained experience, we realized that routine healthcare overseas was much more affordable than we expected, so we switched to a travel medical insurance policy that fit our actual needs much better.

Today we pay about $112 every four weeks, and because our daughters are under ten, they’re covered at no additional cost.

We’ve only had to file one claim, and that was after our daughter’s emergency room visit in Thailand.

The process was surprisingly simple.

We paid the hospital before we left, kept every receipt and medical record, submitted everything through our insurance portal afterward, and were reimbursed about a week later.

That experience gave us a lot of confidence in our coverage.

It’s important to understand that travel medical insurance isn’t designed to replace routine health insurance back home. It’s there to protect you from the unexpected emergencies that could otherwise become incredibly expensive.

Hopefully you’ll never need it.

But if you do, you’ll be very glad you have it.

The Health Issues We’ve Actually Experienced

After nearly twenty-two months of traveling full-time, our list of illnesses honestly looks pretty normal.

We’ve dealt with stomach bugs. Vomiting. Diarrhea. A few fevers. A couple of colds. A sinus infection.

And the random allergic reactions, which is one of the reasons I always carry Benadryl.

Our girls have had plenty of mosquito bites, but we’ve intentionally avoided traveling in high-risk malaria areas and have always been mindful of places where dengue is more common. That’s influenced where we travel, how we dress, and how diligent we are with mosquito repellent.

One thing we’ve never dealt with is dehydration severe enough to require medical treatment.

We’re constantly encouraging our girls to drink water, especially in hot climates, and because we’re together all day, it’s much easier to stay on top of that than it might be during a busy school day.

Looking back, what’s surprised me most is how ordinary most of these illnesses have been.

Travel didn’t suddenly introduce some completely different set of health problems.

Life still happened.

It just happened in different countries.

The Biggest Mistakes I Think Parents Make

The biggest mistake I see parents make is assuming they need to prepare for every possible medical scenario before they leave.

I completely understand why.

When you’re nervous about traveling, it feels comforting to pack every medication you can think of “just in case.”

The reality is that you’ll probably never use most of it.

We travel with a very basic medical kit because we’ve learned that almost everything else can be purchased locally if we actually need it.

The second mistake is waiting too long because you’re afraid of navigating healthcare in another country.

If something doesn’t feel right, go get your child evaluated.

You don’t have to prove that you can handle everything yourself just because you’re traveling.

On the other hand, I also wouldn’t let Google convince you that every symptom is a medical emergency.

One search can quickly convince you that your child has something catastrophic when in reality they have the same stomach virus they might have picked up at preschool back home.

Trust your instincts. Know your comfort level. Get travel medical insurance before you leave.

And remember that seeking medical care abroad isn’t a sign that your trip has gone wrong.

It’s simply part of life.

Kids get sick.

Kids fall down.

Kids get better.

That doesn’t stop just because you’re seeing the world together.

Our Biggest Lesson After Nearly Two Years Abroad

If you had asked me before we left what worried me most, it actually wasn’t sickness.

My biggest fear was that someone would kidnap one of my children.

Healthcare wasn’t something that kept me up at night, although I definitely wondered how insurance would work and what medical care would cost.

Now, after nearly two years abroad, I can honestly say healthcare has been one of the least stressful parts of our travels.

We’ve learned how to find providers, learned how pharmacies work, llearned that private hospitals around the world can provide excellent care and that routine medical visits are often far more affordable than we expected.

Most importantly, we’ve learned that kids are still kids no matter where you are.

They’ll get a cold.

They’ll throw up occasionally.

They’ll scrape their knees.

Life doesn’t stop just because you’re traveling.

You simply learn how to navigate those moments in a different place.

If this fear is the one thing keeping your family from taking the trip you’ve been dreaming about, I hope our experience gives you a little more confidence.

Once you’ve gone through it once, you realize something important, you’re still a parent, they’re still your child, and the world has far more good healthcare than most of us ever realized before we left home.