Needing a vacation from vacation

Last Updated on Thursday, January 03, 2013 06:48 pm Written by Cindy Nevitt Friday, January 04, 2013 01:00 am

For the second time in two years, I have returned from a Caribbean vacation ill enough to warrant medical attention.

“Aww. Poor me,” I can hear you saying. “Let’s have a pity party.”

There are two things about my recent medical history that completely perplex me. First, I do not get sick. Second, I have been on about 20 cruises, and until the last two, never suffered a bad moment unless you count the time in August 2005 when I slipped and fell on a boat platform and tore every ligament and tendon in my right ankle. Or the time in December 2007 when I cracked a tooth on a breakfast pastry.

Here’s how infrequently I require medical attention: When I came home from an Eastern Caribbean cruise in 2011 with sinusitis and called the doctor’s office for an appointment, I was told I hadn’t been there in 11 years and needed to fill out a new patient form!

Like I said, I do not get sick.

This time, as a bonus Christmas present, I returned from a Southern Caribbean cruise with conjunctivitis and bronchitis.

So apparently, I do get sick on cruises, but don’t fall ill until I get home.

After two days at home with worsening symptoms, I was forced to admit I needed medical attention (translation: drugs) and sought it. As I sat in the waiting room at the doctor’s office, I tried to come up with a logical explanation for why a woman who is too ornery to get sick has gotten sick the last two times she’s had it soft for a week.

Is it that I go, go, go all the time and when I relax, I’m more susceptible to illness? Do I let down my defenses so completely that opportunistic illnesses strike? Or am I – gasp! – allergic to vacation?

Denise Hemby, nurse practitioner at Ocean City Family Practice, said she doesn’t think I’m allergic to vacation so much as allergic to the environment in which I vacation. Moving from one environment (the cold Northeast) to another (the warm Caribbean) can cause an allergic reaction. Oh, God bless (Holland) America, I thought. I won’t be trapped at home forever after all.

While transitioning from a cold to a warm climate can trigger an allergy, being confined in a closed space with lots of people can create an even bigger health hazard. Cruise ships, like airplanes, have systems that re-circulate air and keep passengers in tight quarters. Basically, cruising is akin to living in one great big Petri dish. Exposure to people from all over the country and even the world, or more specifically, the viruses and bacteria they harbored, made me another cruise line statistic.

While I would have preferred to come home healthy, I am grateful that I did not contract norovirus, the bane of the cruise industry as there is no prevention or treatment for it. Norovirus, which can spread quickly, affects about 23 million Americans a year, usually presenting with symptoms similar to those of a stomach bug, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The CDC says new patterns of old diseases are to blame for the increase in gastrointestinal illnesses while traveling.

The odds of falling ill on a cruise ship are about 1 in 4,000, much greater than the odds of falling off a cruise ship (about 1 in 2 million, as 10 to 12 people a year – out of 19 million worldwide passengers -- either fall from or jump from ships). But illnesses on board are eminently more survivable than going overboard, so despite the discomfort I’ve endured since returning home, I’ll count myself lucky I managed to fall the right way.