This morning I awoke to a beautiful full rainbow across the harbour! It was brilliant – the picture I took actually does not do it justice!
On our last cruise to Hawaii with my parents, when we arrived in Kauai, I was amazed to see the line up for the Walmart shuttle for people to take to the store nearby. I actually thought it was bizarre – why would someone visiting such a beautiful place want to go to Walmart? Well I take that back now!
This morning started off really early as I had a Swedish Massage scheduled for 8:15 am in the Spa on board! My last “massage” experience on vacation was in Thailand and lets just say I was sore for DAYS after that experience! I have never had a lady get onto the massage table with me and pull and stretch my body in so many ways as at Thai Massage does! As I was already feeling pretty sore on this cruise from a pain standpoint, I visited the “Massage Sampler” Promotional session on one of the days at sea to talk to the massage therapists about having a massage and whether I had picked the correct one – the Swedish massage sounded like the easiest on my body! I was correct – that is what they suggested too me too – with a focus on my lower back which was sore due to all the extra “balancing” work I was having to do at sea.
I met Patricia my masseuse bright and early and what a luxurious experience it was! She was a very nice Filipino lady who had been on the Noordam now for 5 months – basically the Alaska season and was looking forward to going home at Christmas to her family, however had just found out prior to the cruise leaving Seattle, that she needed to stay on for an extra month, over Christmas, as there were no other massage therapists to replace her. She was sad about that however happy she would be in Australia as it is not as long a flight home as from other parts of the world. Her next contract will be in the Caribbean.
She worked on my funky back, especially the lower part where it seems that my previous steroid injection, which has lasted 6 months previously, was not in full force anymore. She thought my upper back was funny as I have Botox injections on the upper right side to stop spasms and she noticed a difference when trying to massage the muscles – she said they were “stiff” which I think is a good description as Botox basically freezes them! Then came the pain – she attacked my calves where she said that I had paid showing up. Now I did not realize this fact until she started to work on them! Now I do! Also the soles of my feet got a work out too! So I was pretty relaxed at that point before she started in on my arms and then finished with an awesome head massage! Getting that massage oil out of my hair was a bit of an experience though – took 3 shampoos!
Needless to say, I was pretty relaxed heading back to the cabin! Next to do? It was time for school! No, I was not going to school – as part of the Health Mentors Program at UBC that I participate in (more on that tomorrow), there are often opportunities to speak with students at varying levels in a particular discipline, which today is Pharmacy Students. The students today are 1st year and the 10 mentors including myself, are the first “client” experience they will have. The best part of this is it is done via Zoom so I can participate from Hawaii! The other awesome thing is that it is at a normal time of day this year for me – 10 am vs. last year I think it was about 1 am when I was in Cork, Ireland that I was holding my sessions with the students! Larry, the professor, I really like and that is the other reason why I volunteer to do these sessions each year – he is really great with the students and encouraging them to get information out of the guest speakers as being in a Zoom session with 5-6 students looking at your doe-eyed is not fun!
The goals for the session, which there are 3 half hour sessions each with a different group of students, is for the Health Mentor to explain how a Pharmacist is involved in their care, give an example of a positive (I guess also could be a negative too but I focus on positive) experience with a Pharmacist or Pharmacy and then answer questions. For myself, I just generally explain how I am on medication, have gone to the same Community Pharmacy for 25 years now and get my blister packs and then chat about some thoughts on the blister pack process – as there have been some automation changes in the last few years with the blister packs being out sourced but with certain types of medications, such as some that I take, the blister packs then need to be opened at the pharmacy once received and the additional medication added, as they are a controlled substance. The other subject that I talked about this year was how supportive the Pharmacy was with my huge medication change that I went through and how they started using email so that it was easier to chat with them with regards to my symptoms instead of different pharmacists each day which lead to a lot of miscommunication. The questions that all the groups asked were great and respectful which were wonderful too!
After 2 hours of being “in class” I was now tired! I then had a short nap with the plan to go to the Baldwin Museum in Honolulu like my mother had suggested we visit. However after my power nap, the pain in my legs was increasing so we decided to not go to the Baldwin Museum and instead just complete the errands for today which involved returning my Hilo Hattie dress and going to Walmart to get some items, including some shoe inserts for Andrew as one of his pairs of shoes are not fitting very well right now.
To do so, we took the public bus – the Waikiki Express bus to be exact! It was just like the bus in Vancouver with a ramp to get onto it and then the accessible seating at the front. There were more accessible seats than we have on our bus system though and they were a different colour so people knew they were sitting on them and needed to get up if asked. The only downside of this bus I found was the number of people with luggage on it in the accessible section as it was the largest area of the bus. Not a lot of room to move!
We got to Hilo Hatties and returned the dress and then walked to Walmart. Unfortunately, during that time, the online order that I had placed, had come back that they were out of the heel inserts that Andrew wanted. As we were at the store already, we decided to improvise and bought some shoe inserts and tape instead (along with my online order for knitting supplies) and then took a taxi back to the Noordam to get crafting on optimizing Andrew’s shoes! We then cut the shoe inserts to match the curve of the heel and taped them in with the double sided tape and voila! The shoes where Andrew’s heel was slipping out of were optimized! Thank goodness I have so much experience making shoes from my childhood that I could help him with this little project – right mum?
We then hung out on our balcony and watched both some dinner cruises leave for the evening and the clouds come down the volcano and hover over Honolulu very pregnant with rain! Glad we were not going to be walking the streets tonight!
We then went to dinner, where I had Marlin fish, which was fresh caught and very good! Andrew had pasta for dinner which he also enjoyed. Trying not to fill my blog with pictures of food unless they are outstanding presentations or awesomely good!
After dinner, as the ship was not to leave port until 11 pm, we walked around the Promenade deck for a bit of exercise and fresh air. There was a container ship behind the Noordam unloading its cargo – the cargo ship was almost as bit as the Noordam! Interesting size comparison! Last, a skyline picture of Honolulu prior to departing for Kahului for tomorrow’s adventures!