Wow. I was SO seasick. We were doing a one day passage (30
hours actually so leave early one morning and get there the next day) from one
of the Cape Verde Islands to another one of them so I didn’t bother to put on
an anti-nausea patch. I wasn’t even really sure if they work. Boy oh boy. Did I
regret it! There was also, certainly, some miscommunication, between HS and
myself wrt what the passage would be like, and, perhaps, he had also
miscalculated how bad it would be. About an hour after we started I went to lie
down. An hour after that I asked HS to get me a bucket. Two hours after that I
knew I had to go pee. I had two choices: I could pee in my bed which was not
really something I wanted to do or I could get up and go to the head which, I
knew, would involve puking, which I also did not want to do. OOph. I chose to
go to the head. I took my bucket and within minutes of sitting down in the head
had liquids coming, explosively, out of all the holes of my body. And once I
had started I couldn’t stop. Each hour, for hours, I vomited. Not normal puking
which involves throwing up and then feeling better. Oh no. This was vile
vomiting in which my body started with a weird wailing that I could not control
before extended periods of heaving. Our new crew, a pair of sisters in their
twenties, were discussing the noises I made and though they were talking in
German I could tell that they were saying I didn’t even sound human but rather
like a tom-cat trying to defend his territory. HS did my first shift for me.
And then my next one. It was obvious, to everyone, that I was just not capable,
at all, of doing anything. Also, unfortunately, we were heeling in such a
direction that my bed was on the uphill side of the boat so I couldn’t fall
asleep, because, if I even started to doze off I would loosen my hand hold and
start to fall out of bed which would jolt me awake, and, since we have two new crew,
there was not a downhill bed available. At one point salt water started
dripping on me from above. I could reach a dry diaper from where I was and some
duck tape, but I only had one piece of duck tape ripped off (to tape the diaper
over the drip) when I dropped the roll of duck tape on the floor and it rolled
to somewhere unreachable. One piece of duck tape was not enough to hold the
diaper up so I had two options: get up and get the duck tape – and start puking
again – or stay in bed and let the cold salt water drip on me. I chose to stay
in bed and let the cold water drip on me. One of my sons has suffered migraines
for years, several of my friends do too, I think for the first time ever I have
experienced a bit of what they go through.
