Thursday Sep 27 – at Sea

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Hello Everyone.

Let’s start with the good news we’ve been waiting to receive. We finally got the message that our granddaughter (Tessa Brink) had successful surgery on her arm to insert a couple of long nails to align the two bones she broke in her right arm almost 2 weeks ago. The doctors have been waiting for the swelling to subside so they could set the bones properly and she is doing fine. In 2 more weeks she will need more work, but not to worry. She will stay overnight in the hospital, but Valerie will stay with her and they should both go home tomorrow. We are really relieved this is done and that all went well.

Now for the bad news. Janet has relapsed into having more stomach distress and had a rough night even though the seas have calmed to little more than ripples. She decided to skip breakfast and just went back to sleep in the cabin. David went up to eat in the buffet about 8:00 and brought her a slice of banana bread. Since she was still sleeping, he went to the 9:15 lecture on our up-coming port visit to Barcelona. When he returned to the cabin she wasn’t able to eat the bread or take her regular morning pills so we took her to the Medical Center.

We’ve visited the medics on a previous cruise ship and had no desire to compare facilities, but that’s what happened anyway. They had her from 10:30-12:00 and gave her a couple of doses of medicine in her arm. She then was put in a wheelchair to be pushed by a porter back to the cabin. She slept the whole afternoon. Happily, when she finished sleeping her stomach felt better but she was still weak and tired.

We had planned to go to the Pub Lunch today but that was out. Instead David was able to get a plate of grilled fish and French fries at the buffet, so he made his own Fish & Chips for lunch. He brought it back to the cabin to eat so he could keep an eye on Janet, and had one of our complimentary beers from the fridge. Then, since Janet was still sleeping, he went to the 2:00 presentation on Ceuta. On his way back to the cabin he diverted past the dessert station of the buffet and got a bowl of apple-cranberry crumble and then had the Swirl Girl top it with vanilla ice cream. Back in the cabin by 3:00 he found Janet had just awakened and was eating 2 packs of Saltine crackers but then was ready to go back to sleep again.

The Medical Center reopened at 3:30, so David went back down there. They said that sleeping was good for Janet. He took the excursion tickets for tomorrow (Pisa) and got them stamped so we could cancel our trip with less than 24-hours’ notice. Instead of walking on the cobblestones, we had a nice easy trolley ride scheduled around the principal sites in Pisa. But Janet did not feel she would have enough energy for even that, so we cancelled that tour. Instead David booked a different short tour for himself and has assumed Janet will be well enough to stay in the cabin unassisted for the morning. We will see if that works out tomorrow. We will soon have to make up our minds about the following day’s excursion.

It was 6:00 when Janet really woke up from her nap. She knew she needed to eat something but only felt like a bowl of broth and was too tired to go anywhere to get it. David was able to get a cup of soup from the buffet and bring it back to the cabin for her. By 6:30 she was worn out again and went back to bed. David went to the pizza stand on the Lido deck and got a couple of slices of Pepperoni Pizza (Patterson would have loved the real big slices) and some lemonade. Janet got up again after 8:00. We did not have any interest in the Production Show in the theater, so we stayed in the cabin and periodically checked for Tessa updates.

Now it actually is time to go to bed – hopefully Janet will still be able to sleep through the night and not have her mental clock all confused. That’s it from here – our final sea day before reaching Italy.

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