We have been home now for 35 days! Time flies when you are catching up. We are settled back in and enjoying being home. This post is to tie up some loose ends.
Debbie’s health continues to improve. She did get that chest x-ray that the Doctor onboard Voyager recommended. It did not show anything. She had some blood tests and everything was OK except for high cholesterol. (Well, she is blaming that on the chocolate croissants and getting it retested in 3 months!) She continued to cough though, so she is finishing up 2 weeks on Advair and the cough has improved. The Doctor here said that he thought she probably had the flu and not just some garden variety cold out there in the world and that she waited too long to get treatment and that when she finally got it that she did not get strong enough or long enough antibiotics. Add to that the new environmental irritants everyday coupled with the ship’s air and the busy schedule and that he just thought it would take a long time to get WELL again. So, she is pacing herself and waiting out a full recovery. She got a couple of Yoga DVDs to ease herself back into an exercise routine. (Thanks to both Bebi and Jacquie for having yoga as a regular class in the aerobics room onboard Voyager. It has been a lifesaver.) So, still not back to aerobics but she is working herself back to fitness.
The Doctor’s bills; we had 3 bills totaling $818. Clay’s employer-sponsored HMO policy states in large bold letters that we are not covered outside the USA. But, Debbie went ahead and submitted a claim for the 3 bills. To our surprise, when she checked the insurer’s website 2 weeks later, it showed that the claim had been paid. It showed that a check had been paid to Clay for $758. We are waiting for that check to arrive, and then we will submit the remaining $60 to our travel insurer. But, we are very pleased that our HMO honored this claim. If the travel insurance policy does not cover the remaining $60 we will survive that, too.
The other unresolved issue from the cruise was the IPS shipped luggage. (Our deepest debt ofgratitude to Peggy, xrvlcruiser, for supporting and helping us through this. Many thanks.) If you read the whole journal, then you know that we shipped 5 bags/268 pounds from our home on 12/19/2005. RSSC includes 270 pounds of shipped luggage per cabin in the WC fare. Since we had already paid for it, we used it before the cruise. There were a lot of problems. The ship was late leaving Ft. Lauderdale on 12/27/2005 because the WCers shipped luggage had not arrived. When we finally got our late luggage, it had been pilfered. We were up past midnight that night, going through each bag with our spreadsheet inventory and documenting our losses. We submitted the marked up spreadsheet printout to Ursula Whelan, Voyager’s Guest Relations Manager, and requested that she follow up with IPS. During the 4 months, Ursula told us that IPS had cut a check and mailed it to our house. Also, during the 4 months we had a voicemail from Ursula giving us an email address to contact IPS with our credit card number. We did not understand why they needed it, but we emailed and asked what they wanted. We never received a reply. When we got home and sorted through 4 months of mail, there was no check. About 2 weeks ago, we got a check from IPS for $230 for our lost possessions. Then last week, we got a phone call from IPS wanting our credit card number to pay for the 132 pounds that we shipped overweight. What?!? Supposedly, the vendor reported that we shipped an even 400 pounds. So, we went another round. Today we received an email that the invoice has been changed to 268 pounds and that we can consider this chapter of our lives closed. We hope. We have been assured that IPS’ problems in Florida have been resolved and that all is running smoothly now. We hope. We are not likely to ever ship our luggage again though, so good luck to those who do.
We are still holding a placeholder onboard booking for our next cruise. Debbie’s Mom wants to go with us around South America in January/February 2008. RSSC’s Mariner has done this cruise for the past several years and will do it again in 2007. So, we are keeping our fingers crossed that RSSC will repeat that itinerary in 2008. Ngaire has been notified and we will just wait to hear that she is holding cabins for us. It will not be that long. With Debbie’s Mom coming along, we will only have Clay’s family to do a journal like this for next time and so the jury is out if we will do it again. It is a lot of work. But, we did hear from a lot of people while we were out in the world that really enjoyed our efforts, so we will see. Thanks to everyone who emailed us with kind comments. Thanks also to everyone who approached us onboard Voyager with kind comments. This is our final entry.
