Less Than Royal Treatment

We got back from our Mexican cruise on the Royal Caribbean Vision of the Seas, in honor of my parent's 65th wedding anniversary on Sunday. Except for dropping $200 at the Texas Hold-Em table everything was going fine until our last night on the ship. We had a cocktail party in my uncle's cabin before dinner, my Uncle Gordon, my parents, my sister Barbara and her fiance Mick and Dayle, Brian and me. We left to get ready for dinner and a few minutes later Barbara, Mick and the three of us we seated at our table in the dining room, having just ordered our drinks when Uncle Gordon came in and said, "We think Rosalie (my mother) just had a stroke!"

We spent the next three hours in the ship's medical facility. My mother's blood pressure was 198/97 and she was incoherent. The doctor (at least we think he was a doctor), a big Russian man who spoke in broken English and possessed a loud barking voice, ordered the nurses about as they began dripping something into my mother, which slowly began to lower her blood pressure . When it got to 145/90 he said she was "out of trouble," that for her that would be "normal" and that she could not survive on a normal blood pressure of "120 or so." He and the nurses then left the room and I sat there watching her blood pressure slowly go down to the "normal 120 or so" and then still lower. When it got to 103 I found the doctor and asked about it. He then took her off the drip and her blood pressure went back to the 140 area.

They released her (against our wishes) and we kept asking the doctor about a stroke. "She no have stroke. Stop saying that word. No stroke here. High blood pressure only problem. No stroke." We watched her through the night and when we got off the ship in the morning I drove her to her hospital and we spent the day getting her checked in. They looked at her in the ER, did a CAT scan and said she had had a stroke. Duh! She had trouble forming words, didn't remember anything about Saturday, was docile and quiet. When we checked her in she had to sign an admittance form. She signed "Rosalie" and then stopped and stared at the paper. I said, "Keller" and she slowly signed her last name. She got into a room around 9:00 PM, ten hours after we arrived at the hospital.

She was better yesterday, remembering the cocktail party and the doctor (she thought he was handsome), but not much else. She was speaking better, being able to form more words. They will be looking for heart damage today and to see how her new pacemaker is working.

We did this trip this year because we were not sure both my parents would be around for a 70th anniversary; I hope we were wrong.

I did some checking this morning and it appears that Holland America is rated as having the best medical facilities and we may take that into consideration next time we cruise. When we took Holland America to Hawaii in 2003 we awoke the first morning to a Coast Guard helicopter hovering outside our balcony. A passenger had had a heart attack and they called for an air-lift. They also TURNED THE SHIP AROUND to meet the helicopter and put us 8 hours behind schedule when we hit Hawaii five days later. On Royal Caribbean the doctor would have most likely argued with the passenger over the chances that a heart attack had occurred.