Back in late 2022, I booked a Celebrity Cruises 10 day “Wine Cruise,” sailing from Sydney, Australia, departing on December 1, 2024. A good friend and former colleague, Andrew Mace, is Australian and happened to be living back in his home country. I’d thought it was Sydney, but learned he was around 90 minutes out, in a place called Cooranbong.
I was especially excited about the trip for a few reasons. First, I’d not seen Andrew in years. Besides working together, we’d been neighbors for quite a stretch in Georgia. The thought of a reunion was a thoroughly happy one. He had also married a Thai woman, Saki, since our last meeting, and I was excited to meet her. Finally, Australia is one of those places I’ve always wanted to visit, but never have. As a man in his 70s, I’m more acutely aware of what “time’s a wasting” means than I used to be and here was my chance.
We’d made fairly elaborate plans to spend a few days together prior to the cruise, then in early August he messaged me to say something had changed and he needed to update me. I was alarmed, but just asked “What’s up?” After 2 days with no reply I asked more urgently if he was all right. The next morning I got a message from another mutual friend/former colleague, Graham, a Canadian, telling me Andrew had died. In shock, I checked messages and found Andrew had messaged me the night before, telling me he was in hospital with heart problems and pneumonia. And then he was gone.
Something else I’d read recently flashed instantly into my brain: “Stop ‘effing’ living as if tomorrow exists!”
Saki and I began emailing back and forth. I told her the trip was still on and I was hopeful we’d be able to meet and spend some time getting acquainted. She invited us to attend a Stravinsky concert with her at the Sydney Opera House – a most welcome invitation. In exchange, dinner would be on us. Such a deal!
We had planned to arrive in Sydney on Nov. 28, giving us three days there before Dec. 1, our sail date. The flight plan was SLC – LAX – SYD, leaving SLC on Nov. 26. Problems along the way led to our missing the connection to SYD. Delta graciously provided us a voucher to spend the night at the airport Renaissance. I hadn’t yet seen Delta’s message when Cynthia and I, together with other displaced travelers, were loaded onto a van for transport. After 2 or 3 stops, the driver told us we’d come to ours. We unloaded, checked in and went to bed.
In the morning I presented our emailed voucher to the front desk agent, a pleasant young woman whose slightly pained expression told me something was amiss. “Unfortunately, this is the Residence Inn, not the Renaissance. It happens pretty often.” Oh well.
Our flight to Sydney didn’t depart until after 10pm, so we had the day to kill. The desk agent very cheerily recommended we grab a ride to Manhattan Beach, where we would find abundant shops, restaurants and sightseeing. Taking her up on it, we summoned a Lyft and away we went. We whiled away our time walking along the path between beachfront houses and, well, the beach. One of those was for sale and I asked Cynthia what she thought the ask was. “$7 million,” she opined. My curiosity piqued, I looked it up. We’re obviously rubes when it comes to So Cal beachfront property values: Cynthia’s guess, which sounded reasonable to me, was only $13 million short. After a lovely, suitably leisurely late lunch, we returned to the hotel, where we’d checked our carry-on pieces.
To digress briefly, in the late 80s/early 90s, I was Sheraton Hotels’ Western Region (west of the Mississippi) Director of Rooms, officed in downtown Los Angeles. One of those hotels was what then was the Plaza La Reina at LAX. The last time I’d set foot in that property the general manager was a transfer in from Dallas, and a friend, Patrick. The cluster of hotels approaching LAX are all near one another and I took advantage of the opportunity to check out the Sheraton, since renamed the Sheraton Gateway Los Angeles Hotel. The cavernous, main floor open space was empty except for a bell stand and bellman. Knowing that bell staff in cities like Los Angeles often keep their position for many years, I asked the bellman if he’d been there when Patrick was GM. Turns out he was, which opened the door to a lively conversation about how the area, and hotel, had both changed and stayed the same over the years. Memory lanes can be fun to visit!
Not wanting to be late for our international flight, we got to the airport in plenty of time. After getting a lite dinner, we headed for the gate.
Another important digression here: Cynthia is on diuretics, which means her need to use a restroom is frequent and, often, urgent. She stopped in the first restroom we passed, which was along a wall somewhat recessed from the main walkway. Waiting on the main walkway’s edge, I watched Cynthia emerge and take a step toward me. On her next step, she tripped, falling forward and landing hard on her left side. Because I’ve seen the laces come untied a few times on the shoes she wore, my guess is she tripped on a shoelace.
Regardless, I expected I would help her up and we’d proceed to the gate. I helped her roll over and saw she had opened a nasty gash on her left cheek that was bleeding profusely (it eventually took 5 stitches to close). “Taken aback” doesn’t do it justice. Within what seemed like seconds, paramedics were loading her onto a gurney and into an ambulance, allowing me to stay with them. From LAX we traveled to the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, where Cynthia was admitted to Emergency. In addition to the gash on her cheek, whose depth quite surprised me, she was experiencing pain in her left shoulder. Testing revealed that she had sustained a hairline fracture in her left shoulder, as well as what they called a “minor” brain bleed. As to the hairline fracture, she was given strict (did I mention STRICT?) instruction to lift nothing with that arm requiring shoulder engagement for the next few weeks.
Emergency, unsurprisingly, is a busy place. Patients in beds occupy every available space not needed for administrative areas or walkways. With no place to sit, I spent most of the night (what little was left of it) standing vigil over Cynthia, who by now was sporting an impressive array of electrodes and leads polka doting her person. Unless she was someplace for tests or procedures, she was in a hall, against a wall, lined up with other beds/patients as well. Because of the medical team’s concern to know as much as possible about her condition, she was often elsewhere. Which gave me chances to explore the area, learning as I did that finding one’s way back to Emergency could be tricky. More than once I found myself at doors locked for entry on my side, but available for egress on the other. Fortunately, I never had to wait more than a few moments for someone either to exit or espy me and open the door, letting me in.
A nurse I came to particularly like introduced herself as a kind of liaison between the doctors and nursing groups. She came to debrief us about tests still to be conducted, but as much as anything to check on how we were holding up. Earlier, I had checked to see if the hospital had any accommodations for people like me and found it did not. As we chuckled with the nurse about the spartan nature of Cynthia’s hallway abode, I slipped in mention that at least she had a space. The nurse gave me a sympathetic look, shook her head and said “Oh I know, I know.” Then Cynthia was off for more hospital stuff and I was again left to my devices.
Instead of continuing to wander the hospital, I decided to step outside and check out the immediate area. As a UCLA alum I have a fondness for the school and, more generally, Westwood. Not wanting to be gone long, I returned shortly. When I approached the security station, I realized my stick-on ID patch had fallen off, probably onto Cynthia’s bed. You can’t, and I’d call this a good thing, just walk in and wander around. The guard stopped me and I explained that my wife was up in Emergency and recited her specific location, which did not suffice. Fortunately, I did have my phone with me, which I had used to photograph Cynthia’s injuries and wiring. Showing them to the guard did the trick. I made sure not to lose my badge again.
When I got back to chez Cynthia in the hall, she told me the nurse had arranged for her (Cynthia) to be moved to a double room in the wards, but with her as the only patient. A huge relief! I’d already been checking local options and was not looking forward to spending nights away from Cynthia in a hotel. Once the room was made ready, an orderly and nurse showed us the way.
A large, hospital type bed dominated the front half of the room. A smaller, single hospital bed was toward the back. As we got situated, the nurse turned to me and said, motioning toward the single bed, “If somebody comes and tries to take that, don’t be nice.”
In the throes of so much painful (literally and figuratively) upheaval, a courtesy that allowed me to stay with Cynthia and spared us the need of a hotel room felt like sympathetic, warm, caring generosity. I will always be thankful that, in a moment of fairly desperate need, we had the good fortune to be delivered to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center for care. Truly world leading medical care applied with expert, sensitive and warm humanity.
In this, a much more stable base of operation, less of whatever needed to be done required that she be taken out. Besides, wired as she was to the gadgets surrounding her bed demanded enough unplugging, then reconnecting later, that one tended to do it on an as needed basis only. Which, recalling Cynthia’s diuretic effects, felt dominated by trips to pee. The nurses strongly wished to be summoned to assist, but there were times when the choice was for me to assist or Cynthia to, well, you know. As it became clear to the nurses that I was reasonably able to disconnect/reconnect and otherwise help her, they relaxed enough that if we did it ourselves they didn’t overtly express disapproval. Her shoulder’s hairline fracture was a constant source of pain that couldn’t just be ignored. The hospital made both Oxy and Tylenol (big guns) available to her, but her concerns about associated risks strongly inclined her to avoid Oxy in preference to Tylenol. Except at bedtime, when Oxy did the better job.
It is now day 2 since we moved from Emergency to the wards. The issue keeping the hospital from discharging Cynthia was her heart rate. It was asymptomatic to Cynthia, but fluctuated wildly enough to alarm the medical team. Coupled with a few elements of her health history, the concern was stroke risk. The same nurse whose tender offices got us into our room came to chat. She told us Cynthia’s scar would probably fade to be practically unnoticeable; that the “minor” brain bleed would take care of itself; that the shoulder would need to do nothing that would be weight bearing with it, likely through February.
She also brought up the cruise. Beginning with “Of course, the decision of whether to go on the cruise is entirely up to you,” or words to that effect. In fact, I had rebooked the flight to Sydney for the next night, thinking a chance might remain for us to make it. If so, it was flying the next night or nothing. “Still,” our nurse went on, “we strongly advise against it. Strongly.” The medical team was concerned about us being out at sea, far from their sort of capabilities. It is true that cruise ships have medical facilities, but equivalency gaps would be vast. Besides, what sense would it make to debark, knowing the risk of needing possibly complicated care was a distinct possibility? The nurse told us that whatever we decided, she would deliver hospital documentation to us in the morning, confirming to our carrier, Celebrity, that Cynthia had required hospitalization and would need continuing care into February, in case we might need it.
When the nurse left I looked at Cynthia and said “I think it would be reckless to do this under the circumstances.” To say she agreed readily suggests a perceptible time lapse that I swear did not exist.
Of course, all of this heartbreak and trauma also meant many plans needed to change. Quickly. I canceled the flights I’d held to Sydney. Before making the final decision to abort, I’d also notified Celebrity that, although a sliver of a chance existed for us to make the cruise, odds are we would not. The agent I spoke with asked that I inform them what to expect with finality as soon as possible. I asked for a direct number to reach him and he shared it, together with his personal extension. I needed to tell Saki, my old friend’s widow I’d never met, that a terminating event would keep us from arriving this trip; that I still fully intended for us to meet at some future time, but not this one. Saki responded with shock (who wouldn’t?), but mostly with care and concern – assurances that getting Cynthia home and convalescing was priority number one and not to worry about missing her this go-round.
Among the remaining tasks to be discharged was arranging our return to Salt Lake City. Checking the Delta website for availability, I found space for a flight the next evening, late enough to allow for any falderal getting discharged and transported to LAX, but early enough that we’d not arrive too terribly late in SLC. In view of everything we’d been going through, I thought it appropriate to burn the miles necessary to seat us in the plane’s pointy end.
Another item with which we expected to need special help: luggage. Although Cynthia’s fall had prevented our flying to Sydney, we expected our checked bags, having suffered no injury, had gone ahead without us. I called Delta to ask about getting our luggage back from Sydney. The agent put me in touch with their Luggage people, who ascertained that the bags had not left LAX and would travel with us back to Salt Lake.
This bit of welcome news was further enhanced when good friends (the couple whose back yard served as our wedding party location - Cynthia and I both had alerted friends and family to our vacation’s collapse) volunteered to pick us up when we landed. Saints be praised! Friendly faces would meet us. We would collect our luggage and repair with all of it to our home, which was quite surprised to see us home so soon (homes are like that, aren’t they?).
And that is the true and, mostly complete, Parable of the Trip That Wasn’t.
So sorry to hear about Cynthia’s fall and injuries. You put such a light spin on it in your tellling but there had to be many anxious moments. Also, what sad newsabout Andrew. I didn’t get to know him very well at AI but do remember him as a likable and competent guy. So sad. I hope your wife mends quickly and fully Tom. It’s the holiday season. Try to enjoy. Pete