For me, the oddness of 2020 actually began in December of 2019. My other half Tom and I few from our home in Nashville down to Fort Lauderdale a couple of days before we were set to board a Western Caribbean cruise. (The itinerary had been slated to include the novel and mysterious destination of Cuba, but Washington had declared otherwise, so it was back to a more conventional voyage.) We were still super excited to be hitting the high seas, as we always are.
After landing in the Sunshine State, we boarded a shuttle bus to stay in a hotel that caters largely to folks coming and going from the cruise port. Seated on the bus, we happened to notice an older woman sitting alone and wearing a disposable face mask. Like us, she was checking in for pre-cruise rest and relaxation. I remember thinking to myself that a mask seemed pretty extreme, but I should be more understanding, given that I had immunity of steel. I never caught stuff, so I just counted myself blessed.
We enjoyed some karaoke in the lounge that night. Tom is the musical one, so he signed up for multiple turns at the microphone, and I played the cheerleader role. It was cheesy over-the-top fun in a place where such frivolity seems par for the course.
We had booked an all-day Everglades tour, so the next morning we got up early and met the tour van in front of the lobby. There were alligators and seabirds galore. We road two different kinds of boats during our outing and even got to watch a pod of dolphins. We dined on a lunch of all things fried, including gator tail appropriately enough.
It was such a fun day; we are both such animal and nature lovers that we were like kids in candy store. That night we took an Uber to walk on the beach just to say that we had done so, but we had had a long day and were getting ready for another long day, so we made a point to get back to our room early.
Around midnight, I woke up suddenly with pangs of nausea like I had not experienced in a long time. I rarely get sick at my stomach in that way. I will spare you the details, but the gators whose grease-soaked tails I had chomped down on a few hours earlier had their revenge. I settled back down to sleep, offering both myself and my concerned nurse husband the naively optimistic reassurance that it was just all the fried food I had consumed.
I woke up a few hours later feeling even worse. Thank goodness I had plenty of dollar bills to get cold Sprite (Was it one or two or three 16 ounce bottles, I don’t remember?) from the vending machine right around the corner from our room. Tom, bless him, Googled the nearest pharmacy and booked an Uber to make a quick trip there. It was some serious role reversal, as he is usually much more likely to develop ailments or infirmities when we travel. Yet, I guess eventually it was going to be my turn.
I know Tom brought back both Tylenol for my very ovbious feverish symptoms and some sort of stomach remedy (Emetrol maybe? That’s the stuff that got me through a rough morning or two in my college years, but that’s another story.) He also got us each a travel size bottle of hand sanitizer. “We will need to use this stuff religiously now,” he declared. Little did I know that, along with the mask-wearing traveler on the shuttle bus, it was a glimpse into what would become our normal daily routines three months later.
I kept trying to will myself into health, but I knew I wasn’t up to par. At least I wasn’t actively sick at my stomach when it was time to check out and go down to the lobby to board yet another shuttle bus that would take us to the cruise port. I figured we would just play this out and see what happens. We got to our ship, and the usual excitement when we saw the name on the side was tempered by my condition.
I knew from our previous sailings that there would be health screening questions on the initial check-in form. I am not trying to brag on my honesty here. I knew that even if I lied and said I was fine, I would be subject to quarantine in our room if the medical staff found out that I was sick, so not much of a cruise.
Sure enough, we got pulled aside instead of being directed to the gangway to continue the boarding process. It seemed like we waited forever, but I was starting to feel worse again, so I think I lost my sense of perception about things. I am usually so hot natured that I never encounter an air conditioner too cold for me, but this was South Florida, so the inside terminal was chilled to the temperature of a meat locker.
The ship nurse came to take my temperature, a really nice lady whose nametag indicated she was from South Africa. (That’s always a fun little aspect of cruising, learning the backgrounds of the crew. ) She took my temperature, and no surprise, I had a fever. Not high enough to be life-threatening, but not low enough to just “shake it off.”
The nurse left to confer with the ship’s hotel director–more waiting. I think the hotel director actually made an appearance, but I am foggy on that part. Yet, eventually someone’s assistant’s assistant gave us a written memo stating that, regretfully, we were denied boarding but that as a consolation we would receive credit toward a future cruise. Honesty really was the best policy. Yay!
So, more waiting for our luggage to be retrieved. That gave us time to contact the airline and change our return flight to the next day. We then made arrangements to go back to the same hotel for another night. I knew that our travel insurance would pay for that part, and I also figured that a night’s rest might be helpful before getting on a plane.
We checked in to a different room, and I was so glad to be back in a bed. I needed something on my stomach, but the hotel menu was basically heavy bar food. So, Tom got resourceful and used Uber Eats, which was a fairly new experience for us that would soon become yet another 2020 staple. The delivery of deli chicken soup really hit the spot. I felt lousy, but there are worse places to recover from sickness.
So, I was better in the morning–not 100 percent–but not really in the throes of full-fledged sickness either. The flight was pretty uneventful and pleasant all in all. We did have to contend with being seated right behind an overly enthusiastic bachelorette party tribe, but that’s a big chunk of the Music City tourism market. So, not quite the napping vibe I wanted, but I was reasonably comfortable.
After we got back home, Tom caught my virus and suffered the same effects for a couple of days, but then we managed to get back into our normal routines. It was evidently one of those potent but mercifully brief little bugs that was gone in two days. I am so blessed as far as my health and all the various other good things in my life. So, getting denied cruise boarding was definitely a “First World Problem.”
We got excited about the prospect of a make-up cruise, which we planned for the following April. Well, we all know what happened in February and March… It seemed like an odd coincidence that a virus kept us off the sea, and then a global virus shut down pretty much everything a couple of months later. (Knock on wood, that cruise will finally happen in 2022.)
I wanted to recount all of this on my blog earlier, but somehow it seemed shallow and tone-deaf to discuss my little inconveniences and discomforts during a time when folks were losing their lives and livelihoods to the pandemic. So, I say this knowing that I have been super lucky in every way, but sometimes, you just have to roll with it and make the most of things even when your plans don’t quite work out.
In closing, I think the lady wearing the mask had the right idea in hindsight. And, it really was cool to get to take pictures of alligators and also eat some alligator tail too.
Coloring Outside the Lines 