Cold Feet

Welcome to my random musings about the world, on a weekly-to-occasional basis.

Where we are: We’re in the Netherlands, where I am running myself ragged trying to go to All The Museums. For such a tiny country, the Netherlands has a mind-boggling amount of art. Turns out, being a former global power isn’t the worst thing.

Cold Feet

I thought I wanted to go to the Antarctic. It’s a big, once-in-a-lifetime kind of adventure; Lee and I both occasionally start researching it, then shelve the idea because it seems … expensive. And cold. And, well—last week we were in the Arctic, and I think now I might not want to go to the Antarctic after all.

Prior to our cruise in Norway, I got worried about the weather (which was cold) and the potential for rough seas. So when we were in the US last August, we got our doctor to prescribe motion sickness patches. Then in Bangkok, I stocked up on every other kind of seasickness remedy/medication I could think of.

Sailing in the fjords was delightfully calm—I could barely tell we were moving, most of the time. But I kept a close eye on the weather, and about halfway through the return leg decided it was time to put on a patch, because a gale was expected.

Sure enough, that night while we were at dinner, an announcement came over the PA system: the captain was saying we’d be in open ocean in half an hour, and it was going to be rough. They were going to turn off the elevators. We were advised to ensure nothing in our cabins could fall over, break, or land on us.

Lee and I hurried back to our cabin, put everything away, and just managed to get ready for bed by the time it got too difficult to move around.

Now, Lee’s response to most ‘problems’ is to just go to sleep, but I am not that good at sleeping. So within minutes, he was snoring, but I was convinced we were going to die. The ship rose and plunged with each wave, nearly levitating my body entirely off the bed. I had expected to be seasick; I hadn’t expected to be scared.

But the seasickness never actually happened. We rode through the rough water for a couple of hours—I finally drifted off to sleep—and in the morning, we were both amazed at how well the patches work. They’re kind of miraculous; I’ve been plagued by motion sickness ever since menopause, and I am not a fan. It was so effective, in fact, that when the first one wore off (after 72 hours of wear), I put on a second one, just to be on the safe side. That one wore off right about the time we disembarked, so I figured I was home free.

And then—Act II. A couple of days after I took off the patch, I started feeling seasick, even though we were driving around the Netherlands looking at tulips—definitely not on a boat. I developed a splitting headache. My balance was off-kilter; the world was tipped at an angle.

It turns out scopolamine patches are associated with some significant withdrawal symptoms, which (in my opinion) are just as bad as the problem they’re meant to solve.

I’m writing this on Thursday evening, and the nausea and headache have (mercifully) resolved, but I still feel a bit tippy. One assumes that will also clear up soon. What will not leave me, though, is a great disappointment: scopolamine is not the miracle I thought it was, and Antarctica, with its typical rough weather, now seems even more remote and unwise than it did just a week ago.

Take care,

Lisa

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