Back in November during the Black Friday sales, Richard and I decided to book a cruise to Alaska. This was despite the fact that we had traveled to Alaska in May of last year with Holland America with somewhat mixed results:
I had twice been locked into bathroom stalls with faulty locks on the ship, necessitating an alarm call from the stall. We were allocated a cabin that seemed to be directly above the ship’s engine room; so noisy and vibrating was it that we couldn’t sleep at night. And finally, on the second to last day of the cruise, my husband tripped on the last step of a staircase on the ship and sprained his ankle. He was wheeled off the ship in a wheelchair, a mixed blessing because that meant we were allocated priority loading at the taxi rank and in the airport. It took him two months before he could walk normally.
With all that having happened, you might wonder why we chose to do another Alaska cruise this year. Well, we actually loved the cruise itself. Alaska was beautiful and so peaceful. No getting on and off the ship if we (primarily my husband) didn’t want to. We could sit on our balcony and just enjoy the scenery—as long as our cabin wasn’t over the engine room. It was also one of the closest cruises to where we live. No very long plane rides, no time changes. Ten days of peaceful cruising. Easy, right? Well, it turns out it was as easy as it gets and it was as peaceful as it gets but it still wasn’t without its pitfalls in terms of getting there.
We decided to change cruise lines, given that most of the issues we’d had with last year’s cruise revolved around ship-type issues. We opted for Cunard because we’ve sailed with them many times and, except for two terrible COVID cruises, we’ve enjoyed their quiet elegance. Most people onboard are our age or older, quiet dining, plenty of nooks around the ship to just sit and read or watch people pass by. The entertainment is geared toward our generation, interesting guest lecturers, very professional singers and dancers. No water slides, no big screen outdoor Disney movies at night. Just a beautifully elegant ship that hearkens back to a time when life was slow and mellow.
We booked the end of July cruise in November of last year, on Black Friday. We were careful to budget, and pre-pay, as many costs as possible, and, importantly, to buy any necessary insurance. We didn’t book our airline tickets in April, mindful of online advice that about six weeks out from travel is the best time in terms of cost. Plus the chances of flights changing are less the closer to travel time. As it was there was one schedule change but it was a small one. We stuck with one carrier for the flights from Tucson to Vancouver; one carrier has the responsibility to get you to your ultimate destination and back per your original contract. Mixing carriers there and back just adds to confusion.
We always fly into a port the day before; flying in the day of is a recipe for anxiety at the very least. We would be sailing from Vancouver BC. There are excellent hotels there, close to the port, but they are expensive, at that time they were close to $300/night American currency. I kept track of hotel prices on the Web from the start of 2023 and made sure that I booked one that would be refundable up to 24 hours beforehand. In fact, even after booking, I kept watching to see more up-to-date hotel reviews and price changes and ended up changing the hotel booking. I also took out insurance on it. Insurance, insurance, insurance. Things happen at our age.
As they very nearly did as the date of departure grew closer. As I have written about before, Richard developed issues with anxiety and claustrophobia with just a little over a month to go. The extreme change in him came on suddenly. Trips to ER, canvassing doctors, finding mental health professionals who could help, all this fell to me as he was in such a state. We were given various medications to try, some made him sick, some made him even more confused than he already was. In fact most did, making him reluctant to take the meds. When he would get into another panicky state and admit to me that he hadn’t taken the meds, I started thinking, “Give ME the pills and I’ll take them because I can’t stand another night of being woken up to drive to the ER or another day of watching you pace up and down the house.”
He was still having episodes up until the very day we were to leave for our trip. That Saturday morning, our bags all packed and ready for our late afternoon drive to Tucson, he was pacing and almost crying, sending me into a quandary. What if he has a claustrophobia attack in a plane? What might that look like? Would he be subdued and marched off the plane? Would we have to turn around and drive back to Sierra Vista from Los Angeles or from Vancouver? I wore myself out thinking of the worst. Should I cancel the trip? He was devastated when I even suggested it, insisting that no, no, if anything I should go alone because he couldn’t bear to think that he was ruining both of our lives. And I was very tempted to do so.
I texted our counselor in a panic and she invited me over. Thank goodness she is a friend of a friend and was willing to take some of her Saturday morning time off to advise and reassure, “Tell him if he wants to go, he’s going to have to take his meds as they have been prescribed. The meds we’ve given him will make him tired and sleepy and that’s the best thing for plane travel. He’ll make it but he’s going to have to let go and accept he may not remember a lot of the journey.” She was a blessing from heaven. In fact, she had also solved the problem of the pharmacy refusing to fill the prescription for the only sleeping pills that had worked. Our HMO had questions about the prescription being the most cost effective and the pharmacy couldn’t fill it without the doctor associated with our counselor’s office’s intervention. That office is closed on Fridays. Monday would be too late, we’d already have traveled to Vancouver by then. I’d poured that problem out to our counselor too and as she patted me on the back Saturday morning, she handed me three sample packs of the meds, enough to see us through the cruise.
I also stopped in to see my Episcopal minister afterwards, getting a much-needed blessing of calmness. You reach for what you believe in when you’re in crisis and if you’re lucky, you’ll find the help you need.
With all of this solved, and Richard saying that he really wanted to go and that he would take his meds, we drove off to Tucson to spend the night at the airport. But the challenges weren’t over quite yet.
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