Day 70 ~ Turn Around Day or What’s Wrong with Me Anyway?

April 2, 2018

“The over-80, clothing-optional hang gliding competition will begin promptly at 2 PM.” ~ Heard yesterday from Peter, our cruise director. This April Fool’s tale didn’t fool anybody!

Today is “Turn Around Day” for the Pacific Princess. It’s the end of the third leg of our journey and the beginning of the fourth and final one. Our friends Vicki and Craig are on their way home now along with about 100 other passengers.

New passengers' bags line the hallways.

A similarly sized group of new guests have embarked and are settling into their cabins. We all had to attend the mandatory safety drill before the Pacific Princess cruised one last time down the Guidecca Canal and back out into the Adriatic.

It was a day for goodbyes and hellos.

Our last view of Venice--Beautiful San Giorgio Church

The DH and I were in the cruise terminal earlier today taking advantage of some free wifi, when I heard someone say, “Well, if it isn’t the Round The World Writer.” It was Linda and Gary, a couple who were just joining the ship. They’d been following the blog since LA and had intended to try to find me on the ship, but instead they bumped into me in the terminal. Turns out, their cabin is just around the corner from ours on Deck 7, so we’ll be neighbors!

I didn’t ask how they knew it was me. They may have recognized me from the pictures on the blog, but I suspect it was because I had Herkimer (my portable oxygen concentrator) beside me. People are understandably curious about the little machine that makes this journey possible for me, and I’m always happy to explain how it works. It’s not an oxygen container, it’s a concentrator. It pulls in air, runs it through a filter to scrub out the nitrogen, and then gives me a bolus (little puff) of almost pure oxygen. It’s just what I need to keep my O2 saturation in the high 90’s when I’m walking about. I’m able to do without it while seated.

The next question folks ask is if I have COPD, probably because that lung disease gets a lot of commercial air time advertising drugs to treat the symtoms. COPD is an “obstructive” lung disease. Sufferers are unable to fully expel the air in their lungs, so it’s difficult to draw in a fresh breath. For this reason, folks wonder how I can still sing with a lung condition, but in my case, I can push air in and out all day with no problem. My condition is considered “restrictive,” meaning the air flows unimpeded, but the difficulty comes because my lungs don’t do what they should with that air.

I have a rather rare disease—NSIP (Non-Specific Interstitial Pneumonitis) Non-specific means the doctors don’t know how I got it. Interstitial means … well, I’m not exactly sure but I always thought the word referred to “between t he ribs”. And despite the pneumonitis bit, it’s not contagious. What it mostly means is that the lower halves of my lungs look like they’re filled with cotton candy on an MRI. My aveoli, the little organelles that should puff up like balloons to exchange oxygen for CO2 in my blood, operate more like paper bags.  

They’re brittle and fibrotic and inefficient.

The only cure at present is a lung transplant, but I’m not nearly bad enough off to consider asking to be put on a list yet. My condition is stable, which is a win! As long as I have a full battery, Herkimer and I are good to go! I tease the DH that he has a battery operated wife.

“As long as you’re not a blow up  wife, it’s fine,” he says.

“If it weren’t for Venetian blinds, it’d be curtains for all of us.”
~ from the wags at Table 22