Doctors and nurses,any funny cruise stories?

[JanineM]

Imagine the inconvenience of having to keep his carcass throughout the entire cruise, then the expenses of having to have it shipped, then buried.

 

I'm sorry but to call the physical incarnation of someone's LOVED ONE a 'carcass' is unbelievably crass. Perhaps this was meant to be funny, but it came across as distasteful.

[Karysa]

Every cruise line that I've been on has had policies against throwing ANYTHING from a balcony. So that would be a "NO".

 

 

Well, if you have travel insurance, like you should, then it shouldn't be too inconvenient. They'll store the body for you, but not through the whole cruise. They'll off load it at the next port. Insurance will pay to have the body shipped home. You can make all the arrangements by phone at the port. Also call the mortuary at home to arrange burial. Then get back on the ship and continue your cruise. Minimal inconvenience to you.

 

(and before everyone crawls down my throat about how callous I was, please know that my tongue was wedged firmly in my cheek as I write this).

 

 

Are you kidding that ship sailed long ago!!! We are trying to figure out if we are being punked or if we are wittness to the planning of a future crime and cover-up!:eek:

[sail7seas]

Most travel insurance covers cost of repatriation of a deceased traveler.

Edited December 1, 2013 by sail7seas

[alexandra cruiser]

I work in a hospital setting but am not in the medical Proffesion (Security).

Lots of my friends are RN's. It seems every cruise I end up meeting at least one nurse. A few years ago on a cruise one RN got cut on a jagged rock on an excursion. Guess who had a first aide kit? Yep me!:)

 

Last year I had a problem breathing, went to the ship Doctor who was very nice but really unsure of himself, asked me every step of the way if this is what my doctor at home would do.(Which is probably a good thing, but...) The Doctor told me IF I wanted to come back tomorrow for anther breathing treatment I could.

 

When the doctor left the room the nurse leaned over and sternly stated I WILL SEE YOU TOMORROW MORNING while shaking her head up and down. That nurse was absolutely correct I needed those next two treatments until the meds kicked in. New to a nebulizer so I needed guidance. The same nurse called me through out the cruise to make sure I was feeling better. Nurses are good people !! :) Go MNA!!!!

 

Reader

and got me wondering about the background of majority of Drs.onboard.Not to take offense,but most seem foreign trained.Have found that this causes a minority of them to be less familiar with the English language subtleties.Can come accross as non caring.Same is true with nurses,to some degree.

My DH has a weird sense of humor, I told him to be "more professional:since I work for him 1 day a wk.First time he did that,the pt.complained to me(DID NOT know I m his wife),,that he had a rigid bedside manner and no sense of humor.So told him to go back to being himself.So you NEVER know,whew...

PS.enough with the dead body thing,got a little off topic.:(

[CaveDiving]

Most travel insurance covers cost of repatriation of a deceased traveler.

 

I have been under the impression that except for the military, it is actually rather difficult, and usually not practical, to bring a dead body into the USA. I thought it was generally necessary to cremate a body at the next port on a cruise rather than bring the entire body back to the USA. Unless the deceased died after the last cruise port before returning to the USA.

 

This also contributed to my confusion of travel insurance policies offering to cover the “cost of repatriation of a deceased traveler.” I read this to simply cover the cost of returning an urn back to the USA.

 

Have I been misinformed on this?

 

Scott & Karen

[alexandra cruiser]

under the cruise insurance section here on CC,someone might know the answer.

We got a little sidetracked here,,started as Dr.and nurse stories .;)

[Colorado Kat]

Would it be OK if I just tossed his body off the balcony?

 

Well, you could, but it would cause problems and delay the boarding for the next week.

 

They must match the in & out pings for each passenger. If he left the ship unofficially, the numbers would not match.

[Reader0108598]

and got me wondering about the background of majority of Drs.onboard.Not to take offense,but most seem foreign trained.Have found that this causes a minority of them to be less familiar with the English language subtleties.Can come accross as non caring.Same is true with nurses,to some degree.

My DH has a weird sense of humor, I told him to be "more professional:since I work for him 1 day a wk.First time he did that,the pt.complained to me(DID NOT know I m his wife),,that he had a rigid bedside manner and no sense of humor.So told him to go back to being himself.So you NEVER know,whew...

PS.enough with the dead body thing,got a little off topic.:(

 

 

Hi alexandra cruiser

 

Just finished a sixteen hour shift so forgive my typos:)

 

Yeah I had my suspicions about this doctor when he asked me about dosage and such (Predisone ). I understand all Doctors do not know all things, they have specialties. However I was new to this great disease I have and am so grateful the nurse took charge! I could not breathe after walking across the room, I had an exacerbation I'm told. The nurse knew he was not up on my problem. I stopped by at the end of the cruise to thank her, She told me she was just doing her job! I told her she not only saved my vacation but very well could have saved my life! When you cant breathe nothing else matters!

 

P:S Love a Doctor with a weird sense of humor,work with a few :) Rather that than the self important %$&* :(

Reader

Edited December 1, 2013 by Reader0108598

[SadieN]

Well, you could, but it would cause problems and delay the boarding for the next week.

 

They must match the in & out pings for each passenger. If he left the ship unofficially, the numbers would not match.

 

It does mess up the cruise for those coming onboard. We got stuck in the Carnival Dome for hours while the Paradise was being searched.

Boarding was stopped and we waited til about 5:45 to embark.

 

http://missingexploited.com/2009/01/17/elderly-couple-missing-aboard-cruise-ship-carnival-paradise-presumed-to-have-gone-overboard/

 

Cruised 6 months later from Long Beach and spoke with the clerk who checked the couple in. Only one was ever found.

[alexandra cruiser]

Hi alexandra cruiser

 

Just finished a sixteen hour shift so forgive my typos:)

 

Yeah I had my suspicions about this doctor when he asked me about dosage and such (Predisone ). I understand all Doctors do not know all things, they have specialties. However I was new to this great disease I have and am so grateful the nurse took charge! I could not breathe after walking across the room, I had an exacerbation I'm told. The nurse knew he was not up on my problem. I stopped by at the end of the cruise to thank her, She told me she was just doing her job! I told her she not only saved my vacation but very well could have saved my life! When you cant breathe nothing else matters!

 

P:S Love a Doctor with a weird sense of humor,work with a few :) Rather that than the self important %$&* :(

Reader

 

I never worked more than 12,and HATED that.Now semi retired and only work 1 day a wk.and for my DH.Anymore than that and I d go crazy,for one thing. Don t get paid,he says anything HE MAKEs ,I get anyhow.So true.

Some Drs.ARE very rude, and like to treat nurses and staff like their servants.We would all try to scatter from desk when one of them came on the floor.

One of my DH s colleagues ,stopped by to visit and when my DH asked if he could call him by first name,he same NO,,call me Dr.,,,,Dr. So we always referred to him in future,as DR>DR>..get a life,right?

[LA_CA_GAL]

Are you kidding that ship sailed long ago!!! We are trying to figure out if we are being punked or if we are wittness to the planning of a future crime and cover-up!:eek:

 

Yes, every time I kill a husband, I go to the appropriate travel board to get input and assistance.

 

It is very helpful.

[Vampire Parrot]

Not a cruise story - but it does involve travel.

 

Many years ago I was flying home from a business trip on a 747-200, from San Francisco to London Heathrow.

 

I looked out over the port wing just as the sun was setting.... a very beautiful sight at 33,000 feet... and fuel started pouring out of the dump pipe on the end of the wing. "That's interesting", I thought, "I don't see that very often".

 

So I pressed the call button, the flight attendant came over and I asked him why were we dumping fuel. "Ha ha, we aren't" he said, I pointed at the wing, he looked at it, went pale, and walked fairly quickly to the flight deck. A few minutes later he came back and asked me to follow him.

 

The flight engineer told me we were dumping fuel to get down to max landing weight (285 tons) as we had a medical emergency, a passenger was having a suspected heart attack. A short time later an announcement was made that we were diverting.

 

We landed at Winnipeg airport and the passenger was taken off in a stretcher, and it looked like there were several other passengers attending him. He was loaded onto an ambulance which quickly left with emergency lights on.

 

We took off about 90 minutes later - we had to refuel and let the brakes cool first. Stopping a 285-ton 747-200 really heats up the brakes, even if full reverse thrust is used!

 

On the way back I went up to the flight deck again and chatted with the crew.... it turned out that we had about 20 cardiac surgeons and specialists with us, on their way back from a medical conference in San Francisco. Also, many of them had medical equipment with them being taken as hand luggage, stowed in an adjacent seat (in a similar way that some musicians take their instruments as hand luggage).

 

So the patient had got the best possible care available onboard a civilian airliner... and about an hour before we landed at Heathrow, the Captain told me that he'd just been talking on the company frequency, and the patient was in a stable condition and expected to make a good recovery.

 

VP

[Karysa]

Yes, every time I kill a husband, I go to the appropriate travel board to get input and assistance.

 

It is very helpful.

 

Well help is definitely what you need.:D

[Reader0108598]

Not a cruise story - but it does involve travel.

 

Many years ago I was flying home from a business trip on a 747-200, from San Francisco to London Heathrow.

 

I looked out over the port wing just as the sun was setting.... a very beautiful sight at 33,000 feet... and fuel started pouring out of the dump pipe on the end of the wing. "That's interesting", I thought, "I don't see that very often".

 

So I pressed the call button, the flight attendant came over and I asked him why were we dumping fuel. "Ha ha, we aren't" he said, I pointed at the wing, he looked at it, went pale, and walked fairly quickly to the flight deck. A few minutes later he came back and asked me to follow him.

 

The flight engineer told me we were dumping fuel to get down to max landing weight (285 tons) as we had a medical emergency, a passenger was having a suspected heart attack. A short time later an announcement was made that we were diverting.

 

We landed at Winnipeg airport and the passenger was taken off in a stretcher, and it looked like there were several other passengers attending him. He was loaded onto an ambulance which quickly left with emergency lights on.

 

We took off about 90 minutes later - we had to refuel and let the brakes cool first. Stopping a 285-ton 747-200 really heats up the brakes, even if full reverse thrust is used!

 

On the way back I went up to the flight deck again and chatted with the crew.... it turned out that we had about 20 cardiac surgeons and specialists with us, on their way back from a medical conference in San Francisco. Also, many of them had medical equipment with them being taken as hand luggage, stowed in an adjacent seat (in a similar way that some musicians take their instruments as hand luggage).

 

So the patient had got the best possible care available onboard a civilian airliner... and about an hour before we landed at Heathrow, the Captain told me that he'd just been talking on the company frequency, and the patient was in a stable condition and expected to make a good recovery.

 

VP

 

Wow ! That was one lucky Patient!:D

[Reader0108598]

I never worked more than 12,and HATED that.Now semi retired and only work 1 day a wk.and for my DH.Anymore than that and I d go crazy,for one thing. Don t get paid,he says anything HE MAKEs ,I get anyhow.So true.

Some Drs.ARE very rude, and like to treat nurses and staff like their servants.We would all try to scatter from desk when one of them came on the floor.

One of my DH s colleagues ,stopped by to visit and when my DH asked if he could call him by first name,he same NO,,call me Dr.,,,,Dr. So we always referred to him in future,as DR>DR>..get a life, right?

 

 

Pulled 23 hours last year when we got hit with a huge storm that crippled our town. Known as the OT queen, the kids cannot keep up with me!

 

It is I who am in awe of you ! You help save lives :)

 

Telling your husband who is a coworker to call him DR??? Yeah i'd have a few things to call him and it would not be DR.....lol

 

We(Servants) always have our way of returning the favor don't we :D

 

Take care ,

Reader

Edited December 2, 2013 by Reader0108598

[alexandra cruiser]

wow, really agree he was VERY LUCKY.What are the odds,right?

 

Both my DH and myself always laugh that IF,,,a big IF..we ever had a medical emergency we always hoped it would be at the hospital,or at least the office.But ,with our luck,it will be some out of the way place.

 

As i mentioned above,I ve had many accidents and always seem to happen in odd places.Last was when my beagle was a puppy, somehow wrapped his leash around my leg ,I fell and Fx my ankle.My DH is an orthopedic surgeon and thought I was kidding him when I told him to come get me in the park(luckily it was on a Sun AM). He comes in handy.

Oh, gets better, he got me a small wheelchair so I could still cook,etc.Told him I couldnt do it all with crutches,so that was his answer.PS.I was trying for household help,oh well.:p

[alexandra cruiser]

I get a kick out of reading and sharing them.

[cruise-kitty]

My story is very long and not exactly fun. I do not think that this is exemplary for medical emergencies on cruiseships and I'm positive that medical crews on ships provide passengers with very good care.

I'm a german psychiatrist with quite a bit of experience in neurology. Some time ago I was on a cruise from Kiel to St. Petersburg. It was the first day on board so I took a walk on the sundeck, when right next to me an elderly man suffered a seizure. I tended to him and told one of the crew members to go get the ship's doctor. It took quite a while before a nurse with a wheelchair showed up. Since the patient wasn't fully awake yet they carried him to the ship's hospital on a sunbed. Since the nurse didn't speak German and hardly any English I couln't really tell her what had happened.

In the ship's hospital we met the ship's doctor whose English wasn't very sufficient either. I tried to give him a summary of what had happened he wasn't interested in the facts, he just stated that the patient had a stroke. The patient's wife and daughter were there too and I explained and translated as much as I could. Then suddenly the ship's doctor left us in a hurry, asking me "you stay here, yes?" because he had another emergency (someone had injured their arm). I was fully aware that the ship's hospital was neither a place where I should practise medicine nore where I could any orders, but I decided it was more important to take care of the patient. The nurse asked

me to help out and handed me a stethoscope and a reflex hammer I started to examine the patient who was already doing better.

Then suddenly we heard a loud argument outside the door. Then the ship's doctor and a man rushed in, screaming around. The nurse whispered to me that this was the captain. The ship's doctor whipped the reflex hammer out of my hand and pushed me aside, the captain yelled at the doctor in Italian and the patient's family members were totally ignored, again. And again, I tried to

explain that the patient, who at that point was fully oriented but still a bit weak, had suffered a seizure. The ship's doctor cut in and told the captain it was a stroke. My request for a blood sugar test was denied. Apparently the captain forced the doctor to do something so the patient, who had no idea what was going on, suddenly had an I.V. and meds for stroke that wouldn't help much with seizure. Next thing was the captain yelling at me for intervening, still without telling me or the patient who he was. I suggested that the patient could probably come back on board the same day after being examined at the hospital. He yelled again, telling me he would not let some passenger like me tell him what to do on his ship. Then he disappeared.

At that point we were already docked in Copenhagen's port. An ambulance was called, the patient was taken to hospital and the patient's family was told to empty out their cabin and leave the ship. No help was offered, not even for calling a taxi.

Then the ship's doctor disappeared again and I was left alone in the ship's hospital, no "bye" or "thanks", nothing. I found my way out. Needless to say I had no interest in having my picture taken with the captain at captain's dinner...

Anyway, the night before the cruise was over some people came over to my table. It was the man who had the seizure and his family. Apparently he was examined at the hospital in Copenhagen and then returned to the ship a few hours later. Turns out he had forgotten to take his anti-epileptic pills that day.

Edited July 27, 2014 by cruise-kitty