To Be Sick Upon a Cruise Ship

I have had a plague for a few days. Not the crazy vomit/crapping sickness, just a boring cold that might be partially flu that when you walk around for like 25 minutes, you immediately want to go to bed. Or if you start to watch a movie, you pass out. But more than that, I have finally dealt with my stomach, which constantly hurts, which has constantly hurt since I started the cruise. I finally went to the infirmary thing while everyone else was out on a smaller fun boat, cruising around the bay of Acapulco, drinking and making out, even though the magician was also on board with his mom. And the engine died for a half hour (oh Mexico). So.

The infirmary is on deck 4 and staffed by a Filipino nurse and a South African doctor. They were very stressed because an extremely old man and wife were down there with their extremely old son. The extremely old man maybe had a stroke, and they were trying to figure it out with x-rays (yes, they have that machine on the boat) and a bunch of running around and making the guy sit, get up, sit, get up, sit, get up, sit, get up, etc. They were trying to see if he should disembark, even though he was trying to talk them out of it. His wife said “WHERE’RE YOUR SHOES!” because he was shuffling around without them, and he also said “ANNETTE!” after struggling to take off his necklace before he got his xray. The Filipino nurse came up to them and gently explained what was going to happen. Then she walked away and extremely old man said to his wife “What’d she say?!” and extremely old wife said “I don’t know!” Then son came down and spoke to them in the appropriate volume.

Meanwhile, myself and other crew members, dressed in their uniforms, complete with apron (I don’t understand) were moved to the more inconvenient chairs around the corner and out of sight from the extremely old people. There I sat between two waiters, one of whom froze and said “Spires and gar…mutter” which was the chapter heading of my very boring F. Scott Fitzgerald book that he was clearly reading over my shoulder. Then he got bored and went back to shaking his leg, and I don’t blame him because I barely care about Princeton in the 1940’s, why should a waiter from the Phillipines. The nurse got ripped a new one over the phone from a passenger, who then brought her son down to the medical center. Passenger said “when you tell me the same thing over and over again, it is irritating” in a loud mouthy way that would indicate she is from California. Her son also had GI, and was therefore profusely vomiting, but they had a loud back and forth about whether or not there was also diarrhea. I decided he did not have GI apparently because I scratched my eye. No one in the infirmary joked around at all, the Filipino nurse said clearly to everybody that came in, including a room service guy (?) who took the GI kid back to his room in a wheelchair: “fully sanitize that chair when you are done.” And “call cleaning to have them fully sanitize that bathroom.” There were a lot of silent and serious nods. My favorite was when the nurse said “Where’s your pee!” to me, referring to a urine sample and I saw her test for something, which involved her putting in like a pH stick and going “well, you don’t have that” out loud in the bathroom.

Then more passengers came in and crew members started coming in, but the nurse made the crew members sit in the hall, behind a closed door. I think none of the crew members got helped, except for me on a fluke. After about 2.5 hours, I was told that my stomach pain is qualified as “general abdominal pain” and got hard core ibuprofen. So I decided that it was all in my head and logically celebrated with ice cream and double dessert.

To note: there is an intensive care unit in the ship’s medical center, along with an operating theater.

To note: if you stay on the ship during the longest port day, which is what I did due to my plague, you will feast your eyes on a cornucopia of very very elderly people. Most of them have the walker with the seat in it, some of them prefer to sit on that walker instead of a normal chair in the buffet, one of them prefers to do that and tuck the napkin in her collar. There is a lot of elderly hair dye going on on this cruise, and also a passenger with incredible plastic surgery. She doesn’t look like a plastic surgery widget a la Los Angeles, but she looks oddly 38 with 24 year old textured skin, and must be in her mid-60’s, because her buddy looks about that. I heard her violently flip out about white shoes and how terrible her friend/daughter’s white shoes are and how dirty they are and “she spends $200 on necklaces, you’re telling me she can’t get a new pair of white shoes???”

To note: I also witnessed an elderly take over of the buffet line. About 10 elderly adults worked in a unit and cut in front of a 30’s-ish woman. They ran around and looked serious and didn’t make eye contact holding their silverware/napkin roll and informed said 30’s-ish woman that “if we don’t want salad we can cut ahead” even though the 15-odd other people didn’t hear that rule and also that rule is a lie that they made up. Then another extremely old woman walked right in front of a cast mate and said “oh the lines must merge.” Cast mate said “no, the line is this long one and ends over there,” extremely old couple went ahead and cut. ELDERLY TYRANNY!