Yep, I’m sick. Not only that, I’m seasick. I took the tablets last night, and I thought I’d mastered this thing that hadn’t really impacted me since I was 13 on a school trip to Boston, Massachusetts, but I should have known better. Everything was going well up until the point that my toothbrush hit the back of my throat unexpectedly, and then it wouldn’t stop.
This is a great example of me saying earlier in this trip that I would share my experience, good and bad, and that I wasn’t going to sugar-coat this for you. I had one of the worst days of my life, punctuated by trying to force down cough medicine that mostly had me wanting to throw up again the moment it hit my tongue (it’s some kind of herb-honey mixture that I will only remember heretofore as ‘death cough medicine’.
Death Cough Medicine
I did only what I absolutely had to during the day. I had a mandatory safety briefing, a mandatory gear-cleaning session to ensure that I wasn’t bringing in foreign bodies, and most of the day was punctuated by ship-wide calls to remind me I was missing this thing, or that thing, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t eat, and all my addled mind wanted for my sore throat was water… which really didn’t help the seasickness. I did what I could, make the minimum meetings, and slept. I slept every moment that I could.
By all standards, our trek through the Drake Passage really wasn’t that bad. In fact, it doesn’t even really rate on the “bad” scale according to the crew, but seasickness coupled with coughing and a sore throat had run me down. Jen was my savior, bringing me bread, apples, crackers… and eventually pills from the front desk that are the drowsy-kind I had elected not to get for myself. These actually did the trick (I had pills, these are just… better ones), and by dinner time I was just suffering from my normal cold but still didn’t want to eat anything. I lost a day, lost part of the cruise, and admitted to Jen that so far… this really had not been my trip at all. I was hating every day for one reason or another! Worst of all… I didn’t even take one picture all day long! That’s not like me at all!
Tomorrow will hopefully be better than today, it has to be… right? We’re nearly out of the Drake.
The route we’re planning… so far… as long as the weather goes well tomorrow.
