A Sick World

I thoroughly enjoyed The Healthy Traveler (“Untangling Advice From Web Sites,” Jan. 25), but was somewhat dismayed to finish it and not learn about the real issue of being sick on the far side of the world.

I have recently returned from more than five weeks in Europe by car, foot, bus and ship, and during that time was deathly ill with a bad cold or pneumonia in Venice, beat up by an unhappy bus driver in Rome and run down by a driver in Avignon, France.

I think I have seen almost all the aspects of foreign medical assistance along the way. The one main problem, seldom if ever addressed by travel writers, is the inability to communicate your ills to anyone. My dear wife hunted and hunted for vitamin C tablets, as the Venetians did not understand her needs.

Worst of all, when I was run down in front of the Papal Palace in Avignon, no one spoke English to me asking where it hurt. I had legs broken, and all sorts of other damages. At the emergency center, not one doctor or nurse spoke English.

I am a somewhat fractured 72-year-old who may not ever leave the safety of the USA again!

JOSEPH S. RYCHETNIK

Palm Springs