KmomChicago

Everyone involved asked either my husband's or my permission before they said or did one dang thing. Literally, the first thing the doctor did was tell my husband he was a doctor and ASK my husband if he wanted him to help. My husband thought I was dying, having a stroke, seriously, so he just said YESSS, please, thank you! However, he is here with me now and saying the doctor and nurse both said it was up to him whether to give me the glucose gel and they had him do it. So to your point, there is some risk for the pros. I do remember the doctor making very clear to me once I was coherent, that he is a PODIATRIST. I'm pretty smart so I said, Foot doctor. He said, yes, but I went to medical school, I am a real doctor, we all know basic medicine. Is that okay with you? I didn't think I was having a stroke, but I think I chuckled a bit. Umm, yes, that will be fine. The only real doctor available in this emergency will be a good enough doctor for now. He looked at my eyes and squeezed my wrist for my pulse and I think did a few other checks of my vitals. His name was Nate and he was very nice, but it seemed kind of clear he didn't want any further attention once the emergency had passed, and we didn't want to make him uncomfortable.

Sounds like we win!

I mentioned it very briefly in the review, but the next morning we did the Carnival wave runner excursion in Cozumel. They ask if you have any health conditions and I said Nope!

Right, we are on deck 10, so it looks like deck 11 will cover us? But if not it's not much of a big deal after starting out with the portholes. And if we don't like them then I'm happy to learn we don't like them this way rather than paying a premium for them.

We’re on Deck 10 and yes still adjoining. The balcony partition isn’t a big deal to us either way. If it’s an option, fine. If not, we’ll barely notice.

Yes this was the climbing temple, just on its front side. Here’s the rest of the group all over the thing like a buncha monkeys.

We zoomed back on our wild jet boat ride and it rained some more. We got back to Ayin Ha and had chicken, beans and rice, and fried plantains. Many people looked at me funny or asked how I was feeling or said they were glad I was okay. We were all drenched-it had actually rained some more while I was being walked back to the boat. I was so glad that I hadn’t needed to be carried. I had brought dry clothes - in a plastic bag in the backpack - and changed into those before another long bus ride back to Belize City. The doctor had told me I would feel tired and possibly a bit unwell for the rest of the day, maybe two. That was true enough. It was yet another long ride on the tender back to the ship, long loading and unloading processes. I really don’t remember what we did that night but I slept well and felt normal by morning in Cozumel. I already kinda figured this would be my last Mayan ruins so in spite of it all, I’m grateful to have visited Lamanai as well. I visited Chichen Itza and Tulum on the same land trip to Mexico in the 1990’s, then Uxmal from Progeso with Bill Lawson tours on our 2017 Triumph cruise. My cup runneth over.

You know, you’re actually too loony to be scared. You’re confused more than anything.

From that point things improved quickly. The podiatrist started telling me what was going on. I was given water. Yet another Good Samaritan had a blood sugar meter, lancets and strips, so (with my permission) she jabbed me and the doctor said the results were fine given the situation. A little entourage, two of the four tour guides, and about 8 other cruise guests, walked me back, with my husband holding my left hand and one of the guides my right, and the doctor walking backwards in front of me more than halfway back to the boat, monitoring me, keeping me talking, assessing. Gratitude is a daily thing for me, really and truly, especially since the pain of losing Carol 18 years ago changed my whole outlook on life for the better. Her passing truly made me understand the incredible gift of every day on earth, every moment. And even so, I was deeply touched and grateful for the kindness of all these strangers. I was so sorry to inconvenience everyone and delay the tour, but people were very patient and smiled and clapped a little when we boarded the boat, the last ones aboard, of course. My husband assured me our incident hadn’t cost the excursion more than 15 minutes.

Apparently my eyes were open but I was nonresponsive, being spoken to and not hearing, not answering, not in control of my body. As it happened, we had a podiatrist in our group who immediately offered assistance and diagnosed the hypoglycemia. Separately we had a nurse in our group who had and offered a pack of glucose gel. I “came to” hearing someone (husband) telling me I had to eat this, sliding the open packet gently in my mouth, feeling and tasting and then swallowing the gel. Apparently another dark, quiet 60-90 seconds passed before I saw all the people around me and whispered to my husband that I was embarrassed, and what is happening?

And we arrived at the last temple. This was the only one we could ascend. I didn’t plan to do that but I did go up the lower stairs to the platform where I sat down on a bench. I suddenly was not feeling well at all, leaned over, and my husband caught me as I lost consciousness, dropped the phone and fell forward. This was the last photo I took before suddenly feeling too unwell.

Walking through forest to third temple.

Second temple.

Walking through rain forest to ball court and second temple.

Below first temple. Close up of first temple. Better view of first temple.

At the site it was a LOT of walking in hot, humid weather. Long walk from the boat to the first building, long walk between buildings. There are really just three big ones excavated. We had another person on the tour with knee trouble flaring up by the time we made it to the first one. Carnival calls this Moderate activity level but I would up that. Here are the steps that nearly knocked that guy out to ascend to the site.

We boarded the boat to the left and soon we were like this: IMG_0599.MOV

The end of the road is Ayin Ha, where you visit a bar if you’d like, small gift shop, board the river boat, then have lunch after visiting the ruins. I bought some crazy home brew wine which was nearly indescribable. One bottle was very syrupy and the other slightly carbonated. I’m not sure that’s how either were supposed to turn out. 😝

So Lamani, Belize. The ship docked way far from shore. The tender was huge and took quite a while to load. Then it took quite a while to get to port, then get us all off. Then we found our meeting point and had only a minute or two to use the public restrooms and buy ponchos as it was sure to rain per the forecast. Our 90 minute or so bus ride was narrated by friendly guides. The only video game I really ever play is Tropico, and many of the buildings looked right out of the game as we passed through rural villages toward the rain forest.

Yeah, I thought it was fun, kinda bouncing along.

No, I don’t think they reported it to Carnival. No mention of it to me whatsoever.

I enjoyed it quite a bit. I felt it coming on but didn't recognize it. It was brought on by heat exhaustion. It was an important learning moment for me and I am doing fine.

I have some video of the riverboat ride portion of the trip which I will upload later today; sorry for the delay. We did expect a slow, meandering, nature boat and this was a jet boat just flying IN THE RAIN. We were all drenched, pelted at high speed with raindrops, laughing at the sitcom that is apparently not only my life but all my Lamanai friends' as well. The footage is only on the way there, as are my photos. After my unfortunate event the photos abruptly ended.

OH yeah @ontheweb. So the lady who collapsed in Lamanai with the hypoglycemic event was, actually, me.

When I made the change from the porthole to the oceanview rooms, Easy Pay had been inadvertently removed from the booking. And so, one week later, the $$ did not come off the credit card on file, a few days after that the bookings were cancelled, and we were charged two $400 penalties. EIGHT HUNDRED BUCKAROONIES! After a lot of time while she kept calling and texting her supervisors, my phone agent got the original reservations and the $400 penalty money restored, but the problem was that prices had gone down again and the policy is you can reinstate, but not for less than you were paying at the time of cancellation. Follow me here - and I assume this is the last of the pandemic bargains this year with people still not cruising because of vaccinations and tests - right now the spa balcony room is cheaper than my initial booking in 1A, and my subsequent change to a lower fare for 6B. Still cheaper. Only about 40 dollars per room, but still, cheaper. And during a school break. Which to be fair, the first week of June is always the cheapest summer week to book a cruise, but usually more $$ than spring break and of course off season. Not to mention, maybe not quite so sizzling hot. Win win. In fact, this spa balcony room is now the fanciest room left on this sailing - suites are sold out - and it's still less than the insides were booking back in January. They really did not want to give me the spa rooms for less than I had agreed to pay as of the March date prior to the cancellation, and I suggested they do some kind of manual override (I don't think the system allows that from a technical standpoint) but as I very nicely pointed out that was THEIR mistake, not mine (the agent should have taken care of transferring Easy Pay at the time), they decided to go ahead and give me the rooms for the current rate. So now I am about $150 per room down from the original cost and in the most upgraded room available and one I would never have expected to be in (because I'm cheap and it's not worth it to me). If I had not yet booked anything, I would actually be saving about half of the cost of the cruise as the pricing is in double digits right now for insides.