This is a long overdue post on my first ever experience as a ship doctor aboard the Greenland Adventurer, a 150 passenger cruise ship. Mostly I wanted to relate a unique challenge I ran into on this 2-week adventure around Greenland.
The trip started off peacefully. Other than enjoying the beautiful scenery and chatting up the guests, I had little to do. I mostly tended to minor cases of sprains, other aches and motion sickness. This is until the ominous day midway through the voyage when the ship got caught in a storm. Suddenly everyone needed a doctor, including the doctor herself! While the ship was battling 20ft waves, most of the passengers and I were faced with stomach-churning vertigo. The best solution was to stay in bed with eyes closed letting meclizine do its trick. If you waited long enough to spill out your guts, IM Phenergan was still an option. But of course, the doctor (me!!!) was expected to jump to the rescue and make personal deliveries of these magical drugs to the passengers scattered on four different floors. This involved crawling on the stairs, bracing myself against the walls and filling up multiple emesis bags that promptly littered the passageways to save the suffering passengers. I learned that sea legs take more than one week to develop. As this was not enough, a bigger challenge surfaced.
Problems tend to surface when you are on the boat. One of the staff members jammed her thumb in the doorway. This is a common injury at sea during a storm when doors swing. Most seamen learn to avoid it. She had a nail bed injury that needed to be repaired, and the task fell on vertiginous me!
I was lucky to have a great team: a staff member who was a
knowledgeable EMT, patient’s very supportive boyfriend and a forgiving and
brave victim. Despite the rough rocking
of the ship and multiple episodes of emesis (into a dustbin strategically
placed just outside clinic doors!), we managed to anesthetize the thumb, remove
the nail, repair the laceration and suture in a temporary foil nail.
Two days later we were all laughing about this. The nail, I learned later, started to grow back well after my service on the boat was over. It was a happy ending and a worthwhile experience for me to have. However, think twice about how much you like to be rocked by giant waves before you sign up to be a ship doctor!
