Chapter One
Monday, April 29, 2024
Our Western Caribbean Cruise getaway proved to be a trip we’d never forget…
And not in a good way.
We left the ship early for a half-day shore excursion. The morning was overcast but it was not raining. It was a relief that the sun wasn’t beating down on us. We were going off-roading in a Polaris 4×4 then motorboating in a 14-foot, two-seater, 30-horsepower outboard engine followed by an authentic Mexican lunch on the beach in Cozumel.
We didn’t make it to lunch.
There were 18 of us on this shore excursion. All couples. The tour started with off-roading. Two couples were assigned to one Polaris. Halfway through the ride, off road, we swapped spots and took pictures. We went from being passengers in the back to a driver and navigator in the front. Off roading ended at a beach club where we were to go motorboating. I texted the off-roading photos to our friends Bo and Suzanne. I captioned them that we were “channeling Bo” by off roading on this trip. Bo drives his Jeep off roading in Mississippi whenever he can and has shared his muddied photos with us. We had never been off roading before, and we were so proud of ourselves for doing it.
At the beach club, the tour guides sat us down to watch a short video on how to use the throttle on our motorboat. Then we were assigned to a boat. Somehow, we ended up in the lead boat behind the tour guide. All the other boats were behind us, following in a line. The boat was small, only 14 feet. It was orange and white with a wooden bench seat. The bench was so low that we couldn’t tuck our legs under us. The bow of the boat narrowed to a point like a woman’s high-heeled stiletto. It wasn’t very comfortable. The only way to sit at all was to stretch our legs out in front of us and sit kind of sideways, angling our hips toward the center of the boat. The steering wheel and throttle were on the right side. My husband drove. I was a passenger on the left. There were two rope handles: one in front of me and one to my left.
The water was calm, but the ocean was crowded. There were two big 25-plus-passenger party boats speeding around in deeper water about 50 yards offshore. They turned the calm water rough, leaving big wakes as they passed by. We bobbed up and down as the waves rolled toward shore, waiting for our tour guide to give us the sign to throttle forward.
When we got the sign, my husband pushed the throttle forward and we started to speed up. At the exact same time the packed party speedboat’s wake hit us.
Our little boat hit the wave head on. It flew up in the air and crashed down hard on the water. We both heard a crack… It was my back.
“Are you ok?” he asked and stopped the boat.
“No. I can’t sit up,” I said. “Did you hear that crack?”
“Yes,” he said.
“I think something broke,” I said, my breath ragged. “Get me to a hospital,”
“Can you move your arms and legs?’ he asked. That was the first of many times I would be asked that question.
“Yes.” I said.
“Ok,” he said. “We’re going back.”
Leslie waved frantically to the tour guide ahead. I couldn’t straighten up. I sat hunched over on that bench with my head tilted down. I was trying to make sense of what had just happened to us. And figure out what was going to happen next.
I knew I was hurt. It was the kind of hurt you instinctively know could be life changing. I just kept holding onto the thought that I could still feel both my arms and legs. I could wiggle my fingers and toes. All I wanted to do was go back to the ship into that idyllic stateroom and order room service for the rest of the cruise.
My husband’s back hurt too. But he seemed to be able to move. One of the guides idled over to our boat and tied a rope to our boat while my husband continued to steer as they towed us back to shore.
It seemed like it took an eternity. All I could do was listen to the hum of the engine as we slowly made our way back to shore. I had to keep my head down. It hurt to lift it up. When we got to the shore, I was told that I had to get myself out of the little boat and walk up the beach on my own. I had no idea how to do that. Should I even be moving? Will I hurt myself even more?
It quickly became abundantly clear that no one was going to get me out of the boat. I was frozen. Afraid to move. Terrified that I would hear a snap and crumble to the ground, paralyzed, losing the feeling in my limbs. Slowly, gingerly and very painfully, I hoisted myself up with my arms off the bench seat and slid onto the top of the back of the boat. I had to slowly swing my legs around over the side of the boat and slide down into shallow water. Then I had to walk up the sandy hilly shore toward the beach club. To this day, I have no idea how I did that. But I did it. As I got to the entrance to the beach club, someone brought out a white plastic chair for me to sit on while they called an ambulance.
Thirty minutes later, three paramedics introduced themselves. They apologized for their poor English as I tried in my very rusty Spanish to explain what had happened and where I was hurt. They placed a gurney at my feet.
We all agreed I needed to get to the hospital, but how was I going to get out of this flimsy chair and onto the gurney? Again, not knowing exactly what we heard crack or how bad it was, I feared any kind of big movement would do more damage to myself. The chance of being paralyzed never left my mind. My heart raced while the pain in my back was excruciating. I didn’t want anyone to help me for fear that they’d jerk me somehow. I took a deep breath and pushed myself out of the flimsy chair, again using my arms. Standing hunched over, I steadied myself. Then slowly turned toward the gurney, shuffling my feet in the sand. I lowered myself into a sitting position on the gurney and the paramedic adjusted my legs.
Throughout this entire experience, the terror I felt would be expressed in varying emotions. There I was on a gurney in the sand on the beach in Cozumel. I was supposed to be enjoying myself on vacation at a Mexican beach club luncheon. Instead, I was on a gurney, trying to figure out how they were going to get me to the ambulance parked outside the beach club. Every little bump hurt! So, how did they do it? Seven men lifted me and the heavy metal gurney onto their shoulders like the Queen of Sheba and walked up the beach to where the ambulance waited. I am pretty sure that’s not a sight one usually sees on the seashore. I thought it was really funny and started laughing. But that hurt too. Then they put the gurney down on the asphalt to slide me into the ambulance. I screamed in pain.
Once I was in the ambulance, the paramedic told me she could give me something for the pain. About time! But to reach my upper arm, she had to cut the sleeve of the white swim shirt I was wearing that protected me from the sun. She had no idea how much time I spent trying to find that swim shirt, in the right color and size to fit under my bathing suit. I even had it tailored because the sleeves were too long. At that point, it didn’t even matter. Nothing mattered except to stop the excruciating pain I was feeling. Not to mention the growing anxiety I had, knowing I was headed to a Mexican hospital for emergency care.
Even after the shot of Toradol the medic gave me, every bump the ambulance hit was painful.
“Despacio!” Rita, the female paramedic, would shout every time she saw me wince.
The ride probably took 15 minutes. The meds kicked in quickly and I was more comfortable than I had been. That is until they had to move me from the ambulance into the hospital and change gurneys. I screamed. They gave me another shot in the arm that they called Mexican morphine. They said it was not the same as American morphine, but I never understood the difference. All I knew was that it worked.
After that shot, and still in the emergency room, I had a chance to settle down and found a relatively comfortable way to be still. It was the equivalent of lounging on a chaise though obviously not by any hotel pool.
The doctor saw us quickly and ordered X-rays. Mine was first. Still feeling the effects of the shot, the X-ray wasn’t terribly painful. They didn’t have to move me much. But the doctor didn’t like what he saw, so, he ordered a CT scan. By that time, the pain meds were wearing off. When they moved me from the gurney onto the table for the scan, I screamed so loud my husband heard me from his gurney in the emergency room. He was being examined now as well.
The CT scan showed something. They had to consult with another doctor they called a traumatologist. He ordered an MRI. Unbeknownst to me, the MRI cost $1,000. Before they went through with it, my husband had to approve the charge, which of course he did. Meanwhile, I got another shot of Mexican morphine. But when they moved me from the bed to the MRI table, I screamed out in pain again. Plus, the room was freezing cold. and I was still wet and sandy from the wave that hit the boat. To take the MRI, I had to lie flat on the scanner table. Flat was bad. Even with morphine, the pain was unbearable. I tried to find a position I could lie in that hurt less, but nothing worked. I couldn’t stay still. I had to keep adjusting my back to get some kind of relief. That MRI took an hour and twenty minutes! The morphine wore off and I was shivering from being in pain, wet and cold.
Finally, they returned me to the ER room with my husband. I got another shot of Mexican morphine, and I was finally stationary. One look over at Leslie and I knew something was very wrong. Leslie’s X-ray showed that he had a compression fracture of his L1 vertebrae. That’s the first vertebrae in his Lumbar spine. Up until that moment, I had no idea what that meant, but I knew it wasn’t good. Then the doctor came in to see me.
“You have a broken back,” he said.
“A what?” I said. “I walked up the beach after climbing out of that tiny boat and sat in a rickety plastic chair before the ambulance arrived. How could I have a broken back?”
“Fractured,” Leslie said. “Your spine was fractured. Bad translation.” Apparently, he knew before I did that this was the stuff nightmares are made of.
The doctor went on to explain that when the wave launched us into the air, we both landed on that hard bench seat with our spines. My fourth Thoracic vertebrae absorbed the impact and shattered. That was the cracking sound we both heard. I slowly learned that the nerves in the T-4 vertebrae are responsible for the upper chest and arms. It also monitored the gallbladder. An injury to the T4 spinal cord could cause paralysis from the chest down, which included not being able to control the bowel or bladder.[1] My worst fear!
This was what I was thinking about when the doctor showed us the MRI image and explained what happened.
The impact of the crushed T4 sent shrapnel into my spinal column. It did not pierce my spinal cord, which is why I still had feeling in my arms and legs. But as he continued to explain, any movement could change that.
That’s when it hit me. I was being admitted to a Mexican hospital because I had to be immobilized. I was not going back to the ship to order room service while I convalesced in our lovely mini suite with full bathroom and gorgeous sunset-laden balcony. We were not going to toast each other with Champagne and canapes on that sunset balcony. Our seven-day getaway cruise was over on day three. That’s when I started to cry. I cried. And cried. I cried those wailing cries of loss for the rest of the time I was in the ER until they wheeled me to a room.
Leslie, on the other hand, although hurt, was able to move around with somewhat manageable pain. He refused his hospital admission so that he could get back to the ship to get our luggage.
I got more Mexican morphine.
Then we got even worse news.
There was no spine doctor on Cozumel. It’s an island. The closest doctor was in Cancun, three hours away by plane. Then the other shoe dropped. I would not be able to fly home by commercial airline.
First of all, I wasn’t even thinking about having surgery in Mexico, assuming I needed surgery. But holy shit!
“What did it mean I can’t fly commercial?” I said. “How am I going to get home? How long am I going to be in pain? What are we going to do?”
An infinite number of questions flooded my brain. It was so surreal it was hard to take it all in. A few hours ago, I was on a fabulous cruise with the love of my life to get my mind off being unemployed. A wave hit us in a little boat on a shore excursion and I was stuck in a bed in a Mexican hospital afraid of being paralyzed from the chest down. WTF.
Fortunately, Leslie was way ahead of me absorbing this.
He contacted the cruise line. They sent a representative to meet us. In all the chaos, I don’t think I caught his name. And with all that was going on with me, Leslie handled all the details with this guy anyway. Between them, they arranged for our cabin to be packed up. Leslie went with the rep to retrieve our bags and met me back at the hospital. I was admitted and by the time he got back, I was in a room.
It was a very nice room. It was big. It easily fit two hospital beds. One part of the wall had a floor to ceiling window so we could see outside. There was a tropical mural painted on another wall with a porthole on a ship looking out over the water. Ironic, right? Just a few hours ago, I was on a real cruise ship looking out over the real ocean and now I’m looking at a mural on the wall of my hospital room of a porthole on a ship looking out over the water.
My lips were very dry, so I asked for some Chapstick. It took some charades between the two language barriers, but one of the attendants figured out what I was asking for and was kind enough to get me the Mexican brand from the gift shop. Labello. I still have it. It’s pretty good stuff.
I settled myself into my surroundings as best as I could when I realized that I was still wet and sandy. Then suddenly, it occurred to me that I had a new problem. I had to go to the bathroom. I guess with all that was happening to me, I didn’t realize I had to go. But now that it was quiet, I had to go badly.
I called the nurse to help me to the bathroom.
“Lo siento senora,” the nurse said. “I’m sorry ma’am, you can’t leave the bed.”
“Well, I have to go,” I said.
“You can try to use in a bed pan,” she said.
“Well, first of all, that’s gross,” I countered. “And secondly, I can’t lean on my back to prop myself up.”
“Otherwise, you will have to have a catheter,” she said.
“Whoa? A catheter? No way,” I said.
“Your spine is fractured,” she reminded me. “You can’t leave the bed.”
“Shit,” I said, feeling completely defeated.
I was defenseless. I had zero options. I was truly stuck and hated every second of it.
I was not comfortable being dependent; not being in control. And that was putting it mildly. I also don’t like my person or personal space invaded as both were about to happen to me in the most intimate way imaginable.
Fortunately, I still had my Louis Vuitton bag next to me. I slipped my hand in. Pulled out the little round pill case and secretly swallowed a Xanax. My savior. Those little pills would prove to be my most trusted source of solace.
The nurse hooked me up to an IV. Then I was catheterized. The realization of this situation hit me, and my mood plummeted. I started to cry again. It was another full-on body heaving, tears flowing, all out cry, complete with an accompanying level of screaming and cursing over this disaster of a situation I was in. The only positive I could find at that moment was that at least the pain meds I was getting through the IV had kicked in. I was in almost no pain. But, from all the Mexican morphine shots I had been given, the skin on my left upper left arm was deeply bruised in black and purple.
To be fair, I am very fair skinned. In general, I bruise like a peach if you looked at me wrong. But this was something I had never seen before. And it never really went away. It faded but you can still see the shadow of where it was.
Leslie finally arrived with our suitcases; two big and two smaller ones. In addition to getting dressed up for the specialty dinners and having a professional photographer take portraits of us every night, we also had a total of four shore excursions. They included horseback riding on the beach in Honduras and visiting ancient ruins in Tulum and Belize. Instead, of enjoying that and the Thermal Spa we both dreamed of using every day, I was propped up in my hospital bed, staring at all of our suitcases that lined the wall of my hospital room in Cozumel. I was in constant fear that if I moved in any way, my spinal cord would be pierced, and I would be paralyzed.
For a little background, my thoughts on being paralyzed are equivalent to those of Hillary Swanks’ character Maggie Fitzgerald in the movie Million Dollar Baby. When she woke up in the hospital and realized she was paralyzed from the neck down due to accidentally falling in the corner of the ring and breaking her neck on the stool, she bit her tongue hoping to bleed to death.
As day turned into night in my hospital room, I wanted a giant Margarita with a Cuervo floater, chips, guac and salsa. My stateroom would have been aglow with a golden sunset as we sailed away from Cozumel. The smells, the sounds and gentle rocking of the ocean from my 10th deck balcony would have been glorious. We would be getting dressed up again for our next fantastic dinner and photo shoot on Deck 6…
None of this happened.
And it wouldn’t happen again for a long time. But first, we had to figure out how to get off this island.
The Reddy Life 