Do not get sick on the Legend of the Seas

[blondie from arizona]

How much does it cost to use the medical facilities? I assume the fee is different based on what you need.

[setsail]

I assume the fee is different based on what you need.

 

Correct.

 

The doctors/nurses onboard the ships are highly trained caring people.

Edited September 5, 2015 by setsail

[Coralc]

How much does it cost to use the medical facilities? I assume the fee is different based on what you need.

 

The December before I had to go to medical (shingles). The fee to see the doctor was $110. With medications, the visit was $320. It was fully reimbursed by my primary and travel insurances. :)

[blondie from arizona]

The December before I had to go to medical (shingles). The fee to see the doctor was $110. With medications, the visit was $320. It was fully reimbursed by my primary and travel insurances. :)

Thanks. I wonder what a broken leg would cost??? We often wonder when they are hauling someone off the flowrider how much that is going to cost them! :eek:

[luvscruising2007]

DH cracked his elbow on one of our cruises. The total bill came to a little over $300, which was reimbursed by our cruise insurance.

They took several x-rays, prescribed and gave him pain killers and put the arm in a sling.

We did see his primary doctor upon our return. No further action was taken.

We felt he received great care. The doctor was very thorough.

[Desertbelle]

I imagine that doctors and their staffs on cruise ships are going to be just like the ones on land....some good, some bad.

 

I know that the doctors on cruise ships are not always upstanding members of their profession as I know a former local doctor who was an OBGYN who was all but run out of town because of repeated law suits and some serious legal problems, and I heard that he was working on a Carnival cruise ship (someone I know ran into him on the ship). :eek: So, consumer beware.

[mollyeilis]

My best advice is to not get sick on any ship, and if you do, it would be wise to stay away from the infirmary unless you are extremely ill. You are better off to bring some emergency medicines with you from home and quarantine yourself if ill.

 

I have heard way too many stories of poor medical care, very expensive care, people being misdiagnosed, people being confined to cabins who don't have a communicable illness, and more. No, thank you.

 

 

 

I would have to be at death's door before I'd ever use a ship's medical facility.

 

 

I agree, but I agree with that even on land. :)

 

 

I feel we all need to take responsibility for our own care, and at the very least when traveling, carry with us the OTC meds for common illnesses such as cold, allergy, cough, stomach and digestive upsets and headache/fever medication.

 

These OTC meds are all available at any drug store, Target, Walmart etc.

 

It is not the ship personnel's fault if I do not think ahead and bring OTC meds I might need. To me this is just common sense.

 

Yep. For some of us it's pharmaceuticals, for others of us it's homeopathy, etc. We need to bring what we might need.

 

 

Because a cold and a sore throat will not bring me to a doctor anywhere unless it persists for a week or more.

[Coralc]

I didn't have acyclovir in my formulary. ;) And it is very expensive onboard. But I didn't care. :D

[searoses]

I was charged $800 for x-rays taken by a portable machine they could not read once taken.....over and over....they guessed my shoulder and leg were not broken.....I had to stay for several hrs for observation...I had my own pain medication....completely ignored once they finally allowed me to leave......and had to call 4 times to get a wheelchair off the ship....I did take a bad fall.....my private ins reimbursed me but this left a very bad impression about care on a ship....took a few years to cruise again and it will be 10 yrs this winter when we cruise rc again....

[klepton]

I'm so sorry you had to go through that OP, that sounds horrible. We were on the Legend in December, and while we had a great experience with the medical center, guest services proved useless time and time again. I can absolutely see you getting that kind of treatment, and it's a true shame...

[DEL67]

Is that actually policy or just an above and beyond? That is nice, but it really isn't their fault you got sick.

 

I was told by the Customer Relations Manager, when he apologized to me, that it is RCCL policy to contact anyone confines to their cabin twice a day.

[Iron-Maiden's-No1-Fan]

Being a nurse you should see the size of the medical kit I take on 😉

[monorail81]

Being a nurse you should see the size of the medical kit I take on 😉

 

I'm not a nurse and you should see the size of my kit! :D I've got all the things I need to self medicate should we get a cold, sore throat, etc. We view the ship's medical facility as a place for emergencies - not a cold. I don't go running to the doctor on shore every time I have a little cold. Why would I on the ship?

[jeeppartsman]

My wife got ill on our last cruise, and based on our experience, I would recommend the opposite of what some in this thread have said. If you are ill, go to the infirmary and get it checked out. Maybe, if I just had what I thought was a simply cold, I might not bother, my wife had some sort of gastrointestinal illness, and they gave her some medication for the nausea, some sports drink for hydration, gave her access to special room service menus, complimentary access to in-room movies and mini-bar items during her quarantine, and Guest Relations did call and check on her a couple times.

 

She was only quarantined for 24hr, but they seemed to be going out of their way to make it as pleasant as possible for her. Once the quarantine was lifted, they did a special cleaning of the room as a precaution. All this is intended to help prevent illness from spreading around the ship, so I think it's generally better to report such illnesses, rather than trying to deal with it yourself.

 

Just my opinion, but obviously the OP of this thread did not have the same experience on that ship. If it had gone like that, I might say skip the infirmary, too.

 

 

i have to agree with what Paul said. i had a similar experience on the allure last year. They went above and beyond to make sure i was comfortable. They refunded part of my drink package and gave me future cruise credit as well. i was confined about 36 hrs. I would much rather be confined and not ruin other peoples vacation by getting them sick.

[Desertbelle]

I'm not a nurse and you should see the size of my kit! :D I've got all the things I need to self medicate should we get a cold, sore throat, etc. We view the ship's medical facility as a place for emergencies - not a cold. I don't go running to the doctor on shore every time I have a little cold. Why would I on the ship?

Exactly. I am in my 60's and I almost never go to the doctor, on or off vacation. I know best what my body needs when it's ill, since I have been the owner of said body all my life. :D

[shopper77]

I broke my shoulder while on the Explorer. I was ice skating with my family, when two kids ran into me and I fell. The ice dancers helped me down to the medical facilities. The took X-rays of my shoulder and knee. It was confirm that my shoulder was broken. The put it into a sling, wrap my knee and gave me plenty of pain pills. My daughter took pictures of the xrays and we were able to text them to our orthopedic surgeon. They offered to call an ambulance when we got back to Bayonne, but we decided to head home, a 2 hour drive. We never received a bill. I was told because it happened on the ship there would be no charge. We thought we got great service. Security also came up to our cabin several times to get the story of what happened.

[Coralc]

Exactly. I am in my 60's and I almost never go to the doctor, on or off vacation. I know best what my body needs when it's ill, since I have been the owner of said body all my life. :D

 

(Get the Shingles vaccine :D;))

[Iron-Maiden's-No1-Fan]

I'm not a nurse and you should see the size of my kit! :D I've got all the things I need to self medicate should we get a cold, sore throat, etc. We view the ship's medical facility as a place for emergencies - not a cold. I don't go running to the doctor on shore every time I have a little cold. Why would I on the ship?

 

Exactly ☺

[chrisb74]

This is my story from yesterday on the Legend.

 

Tuesday I had a bit of an upset stomach and (according to the ships nurse) a fever. I felt otherwise Ok. On Tuesday afternoon i finally got sick of feeling a little off and went to see the doctor. He poked around and decided I might have appendicitis. He gave me some antibiotics and discussed the possibility of having to get off Wednesday for a CT Scan. After seeing the doctor we went out and watched the nights show, so you know I wasn't near death.

 

By Wednesday morning i was feeling better and the fever was gone, but I went back to the doctor as requested. I still had some minor stomach pain. (I gave it a rating of 2. It was annoying at most. none of the other ‘stomach’ symptoms you’d expect). Still they gave me more IV anti biotics and told me I’d have to get off to be checked out as there were 3 sea days coming up.

 

Here’s where it goes south. The weather was completely **** and we were anchored waiting for tendering. I asked my wife (via text) to bring my wallet down - I figured i’d go in, get checked out, come back. No problem. Meanwhile without telling me a nurse had called my wife and told her we were being offloaded and she had 20mins to pack and get down to medical. We were being offloaded and then the ship was leaving port due to weather. She ended up getting our stateroom attendant to help. I got wind of this via text and tried to go help her - the doctor refused to let me go and then the nurse sent 2 people up to help her with our two bags.

 

We got in the tender complete with our luggage - and the other people did too. So they were running tours. I should point out that (apparently) sick me had to carry two ~25Kg suitcases down the stairs to the tender and back up the dock stairs at the other end.

 

We were told by the doctor that royal would organise everything on shore. It didn’t work that way. The port agent escorted us off the ships, put us in a taxi and sent us away. Thankfully we’d had the forethought to get some Thai cash so we could pay. No one ever asked if we did. When we got to the hospital the ‘appointment’ didn’t seem that way - they just treated us like any other walk in (except we did have a referral letter from the ship doctor) and we got shuffled around between departments, over to another hospital, then back, and ~ 6 hours later i was cleared - Bacterial infection, probably from food.

 

I will say, at one point someone from RCCL in Miami called via the hospital to check up on us. There wasn’t much he could assist with as he was working under the assumption we were offloaded and we’d already talked to our insurance and started researching a hotels for the night. We were working on the assumption that if we could get the scan done and get back to the ship we’d continue. If not, there were heaps of hotels with rooms available online.

 

I texted the port agent to ask where the ship was (since we hadn’t really paid attention and no one told us) and while we were aiming to be back at the ship for last tender at 7.30, he said we needed to be back at the ship by 6pm. It was about 4.55pm and we were about an hour away. We grabbed a taxi and made it back with about 5 mins to spare, got onboard and were escorted to medical for a different doctor to sign off on us being onboard. I was cleared and we’re back onboard.

 

so that was our day in Phuket. ~$1600 in medical later (yes, insurance) and a story to tell. Getting a full lights and sirens ambulance transfer between hospitals because the one we were sent to for a CT Scan didn’t have a working CT scan machine was entertaining. :)

 

Don’t get sick on the Legend Of The Seas.

[Big_G]

Wow! Not fun chrisb but at least you can laugh about it now.

[tugboat]

We had to use the medical facility nearly 7 years ago on our honeymoon cruise, I am sure things have changed but there was no way we could avoid going. My husband nearly passed out at the muster station. While we both just through he was recovering from 2 days of wedding drinking he had a bad stomach bug. We BOTH were stuck in our room for 48 hours on our 5 day honeymoon cruise. There was no compensation as far as cruise credit, and honestly I wouldn't expect one, it wasn't the cruise lines fault my husband fell ill.

 

The nurse and dr on board a the time were very nice to both of us, they supplied him with ample meds to get this thing to end quickly, which we were not charged for. My fear was we wouldn't be able to cruise! But all was well. He was feeling much better probably about 30 hours into our cruise. I stayed as far away from him as possibly, HAHA.

 

The room service menu had some soups on there he chose and then tried some sandwiches later on when all was starting to get better. And they brought us plenty of bottle of water free of charge and ginger ale (but we had the soda package at the time).

 

Our room attendant made sure to check in what seemed like often, and he even made jokes about the "Ship A Rockin" cause we were on our honeymoon, but I wouldn't go near hubby at all....but it was a good laugh!

 

 

All in all we laugh about it now and I tell my husband he owes me another honeymoon cruise.....

 

and just an FYI, the ships medical team are not on the ship often, typically its just a few weeks and then they switch out...they are contracted out through the cruise line.

 

The Key phrase here is 7 years ago

[s407o]

A few years ago while in Cozumel it was raining really bad and of course I was wearing the cheapest flip flops ever and we stopped at a shop I lost my footing and bashed my head on a counter. Blood everywhere, my husband hailed a cab for us straight back to the ship. No way did I want stitches in Mexico. The security when I got on ship sent me straight to medical. 5 stitches to the back of the head and 400.00 later. The doc said she numbed it before the stitches but I felt every single stitch. I thought the medical did good overall, 400.00 wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.