Yellow Fish cruises: Day 105: At Sea

Oh, this was a rough day. Not ‘sea’ rough, but ‘life’ rough.

In the interest of “keeping it real” when I tell you what it’s like to live, albeit temporarily, on a cruise ship, I really need to share the bad as well as the good. This is what we went through today. For awhile there, I wasn’t sure how the day was going to turn out, but all’s fine in the end.

We woke up fairly early, or maybe we just called it quits on trying to sleep. As I’ve said, I’m recovering from what I think is a cold, G is in the midst of one, and the last several nights have been punctuated by sneezes and coughs by one or both of us all night long. G was feeling particularly bad this morning, so I thought I’d go to the World Fresh Marketplace to get coffees for us. I first needed to take a quick shower, and that’s when I realized I was feeling pretty poorly myself, extremely light headed. I clung to the handle in the shower to stay upright, stepped out, wrapped myself in a towel and laid back down in bed soaking wet. I was close to passing out.

Slowly, I managed to get dressed, and opened the door of our cabin to leave, and kind of collapsed against it, holding on to the door handle. I made it back to bed, and, by this time, G realized something was not right. I thought it was the combination of the cold and asthma and the smoke, but G grabbed the blood pressure wrist monitor we travel with and tried to take my blood pressure. Twice it gave us an error message, so he took his and it worked fine. We tried mine a third time and again got an error message. G felt for a pulse and, it was so weak he couldn’t find it.

Uh oh.

He obviously wanted to get me to the Medical Center as soon as possible, and I thought I needed a wheelchair to get there but he believed it would take too long, so he threw on some clothes and held me up and we started walking toward midship. On our own corridor, a couple was leaving their cabin and the man saw what was going on so he grabbed my other arm and they half carried me to the front elevators. Along the way we encountered people who ran ahead to call an elevator and all I remember about this is people kept saying, “It’s the smoke! It’s the smoke!” because I was hyperventilating.

I remember we got off the elevator on a deck with passenger cabins to walk across to the midship elevators. G was trying to keep me on carpet so that if I collapsed I wouldn’t be falling onto a stone floor. By the time we got to the midship elevators, two cabin stewards were clearing the way, and the man who was holding me up was asking them to get a wheelchair but they said it would take too long and to keep going on foot.

Finally, the five of us (me, G, the other passenger and the two stewards) burst into the Medical Center and I was taken right back into a room and hooked up to several monitors. Shockingly, my oxygen level was fine; it turned out it wasn’t the smoke at all. I guess because I had had a cold and again lost my senses of taste and smell, my appetite was gone, and I got dehydrated and my minerals and electrolytes were out of whack. My BP is naturally quite low; it was even lower due to dehydration and then, any time I’d stand or sit up, it dramatically dropped further to the point where it wouldn’t even register on our own wrist monitor and I got very lightheaded. I was then hyperventilating because there wasn’t enough blood pressure to supply oxygen to my brain.

Just another day in paradise!

Of course, as they always are, the entire medical staff was amazing. My nurse, Greg (gorgeous, BTW), was from some place that sounded quintessentially British, one of those “something on something” names like Thatch-on-Roof. He kept calling me “Love”, and, honestly, it almost made the whole ordeal worthwhile. The senior doctor was Zaeem from South Africa (also gorgeous, and here I was with wet hair, white as a sheet and looking like death) and he was very thorough and checked for everything. In the end, I got IV saline and some IV minerals and was there for a few hours and soon felt better. Meanwhile, G sat next to me the whole time, still feeling bad himself, but with (he believed) a viral infection so he chose not to be seen by the doctor, too. And in those few hours, I had a glimpse of our future, where we are simultaneously infirmed but one must rise to the occasion to care for the other despite it.

The IV was disconnected but the needle was left in, on top of my wrist, and cushioned with gauze and covered with Coban and I was released. Meanwhile, we hadn’t eaten and G was feeling peckish, so we went to the Concerto Dining Room for a quick lunch. Midway through, G said that he just had to get back to the cabin, but I was still eating and said I could get myself back and he should go ahead and I’d be fine.

And then- and this part G doesn’t even know yet- I was walking through the midship elevator lobby on Deck 6 when I tripped and fell- hard- over the door threshold between the stairs and elevator area and went down flat with my hands outstretched. Somehow, there was no one there right then, which was a good thing because it was embarrassing as hell and a bad thing because I lay there for a few seconds, kind of stunned when finally one of the dancers from the production show cast (I think, or one of the fitness center employees) came around the corner and helped me up. She wanted to call the Medical Center but I just couldn’t go back a second time and said I’d be fine.

Well, not quite fine. I hurt like the dickens. My knees took the worst of it but I can promise you that falling on outstretched hands while there is an IV needle inserted in the back of the wrist is not a pleasant thing. I made it back to the cabin and collapsed on the bed and napped. G was already asleep. It had been a grueling morning.

I had to go back to the Medical Center at 6pm and Dr. Zaeem rechecked my vitals and removed the IV. I was feeling not 100%, but significantly improved. I swung by the World Fresh Marketplace on the way back to the cabin and picked up some fruit chunks that G wanted and roasted peppers and shrimp for me and that was dinner.

It was quite a day, one where part of me wished that we were simply at home because that’s where I want to be when I feel that lousy, and the other part of me was happy we were on a ship with such good medical care so close at hand.

I still managed to scan the day’s Patters. I had scanned the menus yesterday.