By Bill Peckham
The weather didn't cooperate today. The plan was to have a group snorkeling excursion to Stingray City but the wind kicked up the surf so the tour company had to cancel. We found this out after taking a tender to shore. It was disappointing but what can you do? -- there should be an opportunity to snorkel tomorrow in Honduras if the weather cooperates.
We did a little shopping. I found a pair of sunglasses ($10) and Mom got a few small souvenirs, then it was back to the ship. With everyone else off the ship on their shore excursions it felt like we had the whole place to ourselves. I took the opportunity to try out the water slide that spirals down from the 12th deck to the 10th. Usually there is a pretty long line of kids waiting their turn but I had it to myself and took a couple runs. It's saltwater which, while not heated, was warm enough to make it a lot of fun. Mom and I also played a round of minigolf, the Valor has a course up on the roof. It was close but I nosed ahead with a birdie on the 7th hole (check out more pictures on Flickr).
Last night I had my first treatment aboard the Valor. Medically it went fine but there was a bit of side to side rocking that had me wondering about the physics of having 30 liters of dialysate swinging around above the machine. I decided to take one bag down and set it on top of the cycler, which moved eleven pounds from the top of the pole to the top of the machine - a twenty two pound shift. This gave me more confidence in the stability of the setup but I noticed that the bag on top of the machine was filling with additional fluid to the point where it seemed as full as it could get.
On the one hand this meant there was more weight on the cycler to counter an sway from the dialysate suspended above but I had a mental image of the bag on top of the cycler bursting. I decided to clamp off the suspended dialysate bags and ran using the overfull bag until it seemed less stressed. It wasn't an ideal solution, I had to clamp and unclamp bags in the early morning hours in response to the anticipated alarm #14, but in the end it all worked out; I got a pretty good night's sleep. I heard from other cruisers higher on the ship or farther forward that they had a rough night with a lot of motion - I now feel fortunate to be on the second deck towards the middle of the ship.
The new NxStage warmer and pole would be better for cruising - I saw Harvey use it at a meeting in LA. I'll try to get the new setup once I'm back in Seattle. Tonight we're having a reception of all the NxStage cruisers - there are a few nondialyzors I still haven't met and really we haven't spent any time together as a group so it will be nice to see everyone.
Sounds like you are having a great trip, Bill... thanks for all the updates ! Very ingenious adaptation to counteract the sway... hope it continues to go well. Love the pictures of you on the two story slide... And please say hello to everyone...
Posted by: Kathe LeBeau | January 05, 2010 at 01:53 PM
Really enjoying reading all about the cruise, Bill. So glad you guys are able to pioneer this stuff. It gives us all great hope and courage for the future.
Have linked this to the Australian Dialysis Buddies site. Even though we don't have NxStage down under, we are all very interested and maybe some of us (even those with transplants) may be able to finally meet some of you we call our friends on a crusie in the future. Alaska sounds great!!
Cheers
Posted by: Melissa Darnley | January 05, 2010 at 06:51 PM