Day Seventy Five: When in Rome……. Or maybe not!

Preface: I wrote the stuff below earlier in the day but you will be pleased to know that things have changed for the better……

Well we didn’t make it to Rome after all as Hilary has not been well. It started yesterday after dinner when she began to complain of severe tummy cramps and they got slowly worse during the night. And it was a terrible night on the ship, probably the worst that we have ever had for rough weather with force 9 winds making the ship bang and crash around all night long. To cap it all there was some kind of medical emergency in one of the cabins on the deck above us and at 4.00am an emergency call went out over the ship’s intercom to all cabins asking for a medical team to attend this emergency. That meant the whole ship was woken up by the call and it was the talking point in the laundry room this morning with speculation, later denied, that someone had died during the night.

We were due to get on a coach for a two hour ride from the port into Rome at 8.00am this morning and I was up at 6.00am realising that Hilary was not at all well, she had been to the loo about four times during the night and I sort of assumed that she had some kind of diarrhoea. By 7.45 am when we realised that she was not going to make the coach I was downstairs talking to the tours operator who told me that if we got the doctor to stamp our tickets then we would get a full refund so we contacted the surgery and a nurse turned up just after 8.00am. By now I was beginning to see that Hilary’s main problem was not so much with her tummy but that she had an excessively bad headache and the nurse did little other than to confirm that she needed to see the doctor as he had nothing in his emergency bag that could help her. While Hilary slept I thought that I would take advantage of the lack of passengers on board and do our laundry so you could imagine my surprise when I returned to the cabin while the clothes were washing to find that Hilary was up and dressed and had decided to see the doctor after all. We took the lift down to Deck 4 where a real life emergency was going on with one person on the dock side having had a heart attack so that the Italian Red Cross were running around with stretchers and oxygen trying to find out when they could take the person to Hospital and another – possibly the one from the 4.00am call also in the doctor’s room.

Hilary had little choice to wait in the waiting room holding her head for the best part of an hour until she could see the doctor while I flitted between Deck 11 where our washing was now drying, and Deck 4 where Hilary was waiting. And I had a little diversion back to our cabin to get Hilary’s medication as we couldn’t remember the name or the strength of the pills that she takes every morning. Thank God for lifts! Consultation over it was time for 2 injections in Hilary’s rear end with one for the pain and one to ward off any sickness that the pain killers might cause and of course time for the bill which amounted to around £76.00. Too small an amount for the excess on our insurance policy and around half of what we will get back for our cancelled trip to Rome.

It is roughly 2.30pm now and Hilary has been sleeping ever since she saw the doctor, I have looked in on her a couple of times and she has been sleeping like a baby – but fully clothed – while I have been back to the cinema and seen Quantum of Solace again (I understood it a little more the second time around), I have had lunch (fish pie and chips), and sat on the aft of Deck 10 reading a novel and doing the Sudoku with no effort at all. I am in two minds as whether or not to have a swim – one of the pools says the temperature is 29C and that is not too bad – or just to sit on the deck and have another go at the book I am reading, but the first thing I have to do is to go back and see my lovely wife again and check if she needs anything, I know that she will be very disappointed if she can’t get to see the Headliners tonight. I think that I told you earlier that we had put in a request for their autographs and I am pleased to tell you that we had an envelope waiting for us last night with them all in including all the members of the band, so that is another one for the scrapbook. I am going to stop here but I won’t post this until later tonight when I hope that I can give you some happier news. Tomorrow is a sea day while we sail between Civitavecchia (I don’t think that is the correct spelling) and Barcelona where with a bit of luck we should celebrate our 45th Wedding Anniversary.

OK I thought that Hilary was going to add to this blog but I have just come back from dinner and the theatre show to find that she hasn’t added to these pearls of wisdom but take it from me that she is feeling better but is still very sleepy and I am sure that she will tell you all about it tomorrow. Night all…