I’ve been lucky enough to take two cruises. Great fun, awesome food, and sea sick both times. I grew up “on a boat”, in fact my first boat ride was at 6 days old (so I’m told). I’ve never been sick on a boat ride, and there I was… standing in the gift shop of my first cruise ship vacation, and I immediately wanted to throw up. It was the oddest thing. I knew if I didn’t get into fresh air I was not going to make it.
Point A to point B got me to the deck and I felt better. I sat in the lounge chair for a little while and thought, “I’m OK” so I headed back inside (of course attempting to get back to the gift store) and… nope… that wasn’t going to happen. It was nearly instant, I was queazy and felt green. Why? Why was this happening to me. After 24 hours and getting off the ship at the first port, I was fine the rest of the cruise. I was fine even with the 20 foot swells, imagine walking down the hallway and literally bouncing off one wall onto the other side. Wow!
The second cruise I thought, “I’ll prepare” — haha, there’s a laugh. I took my sea sick prevention pills ahead of the cruise. I even bought the bands for my wrists (never thinking I’d need them). We boarded the ship, I was fine and as soon as we got underway, it was 24 hours of misery. I could tell right when I walked down the stairs toward our cabin. I made another point A to point B dash right to my wrist bands. I bought the pressure point style. They do work… I felt less awful. I’m not sure if that’s an endorsement, but anything that could get me to force down (at least) dry toast was an accomplishment. And almost as rapid as the onset was the relief, again it took 24 hours.
I bring this up because this morning I read an interesting article on sea sickness. They don’t really know what causes it but the article has a hypothesis, and that is that your inner ears and vision don’t match causing overload in your brain. OH, I’ll go with that theory. Both times I became sea sick I found relief as soon I was able to get outside… I thought the fresh air made me feel better, but now I wonder if it was the combination of fresh air and being able to see the elements, that helped me, hummm.
My recommendations. 1) Go on a cruise, it’s fun. 2) Get a room with a veranda so you can go outside from your cabin. 3) Read the article about sea sickness (Source: Seasickness prevention and cure: the good, the bad and the dreadful) 4) prepare for being sea sick and hope it doesn’t happen, because it’s awful!
