The Honeymoon

This is the story to end all stories. This one is so bad, I almost want to spare the public from my own humiliation. But at the same time, it’s such a weird story I somehow end up telling to pretty much everyone I know. What is wrong with me?

Ok. Here it goes.

My husband and I went for a Baja Mexico cruise for our honeymoon and left the day after the wedding. We were both 18 and more than excited (obviously) for our romantic getaway. But God, being the ultimate unrelenting practical joker, had other, more hilarious plans. The makeup I had worn for my wedding made my eyelids swell up and itch and water. I went from blushing bride to bug-eyed monster overnight. By the second day I could only open one eye.

Since it was a cruise, and I didn’t really expect this situation to arise, I didn’t have any treatment for my swollen eyelids. So I went to the gift store and bought some Benadryl to fight the swelling. I took 2, hoping that would be enough to at least stop the itching, but it didn’t help. 2 hours later I took 2 more. And then 2 hours later I took 2 more. Again. I took 6 Benadryls. As most would have guessed, 6 was too much and I insisted on not sleeping off the drowsiness that comes with Benadryl. I kept walking around the cruise ship thinking I could feel it rocking when it was actually all the drugs inside me trying to put me on the floor.

After taking 6 pills and insisting on staying active, it was dinner time. At the table I couldn’t fight the drowsiness any longer and passed out on the floor. A doctor at a nearby table helped me up and asked me what happened. When I told him I took 6 Benadryl he said, “6?! I only take half of one to knock me out at night and I’m twice your size!”

Suddenly coming to the realization that I am the dumbest person in the Pacific, I let the ship crew wheel me down to the on-board hospital.

I don’t know if it was my appearance, my stupidity, or my hazy drunken perception of everyone else, but the doctor and nurse both had a giggle-fest at my expense. I explained about the Benadryl and my eyes that now resembled a squeezed frog’s and cried. I was so embarrassed.

“Has this happened to your eyes before?”

…Yes.

This had happened to me before. In my senior year of high school I had a similar experience during a week-long fine arts convention–minus the drugs. The doctor for this occurrence was stumped, but prescribed a steroid cream to reduce the allergic reaction. You know what the most common steroid cream is? Hemorrhoid cream. I put Hemorrhoid cream on my eyes. 

The ship nurse almost wet himself laughing. But he didn’t wet himself.

I did.

They were giving me steroids to fight the swelling and fluids to flush the drugs from my system–meaning I had to pee them out. I was a little too wobbly to get to the toilet so they gave me a bed pan to go in. I missed and peed all over the red dress I wore to dinner. Somehow even more humiliated than before, I insisted on walking to the bathroom for my next attempts at…flushing my system.

So with the help of my new husband, I sat on the toilet and peed and had diarrhea and peed some more while he held my hand.

After the flush the crew wheeled me back to my cabin to sleep off the rest.

The next day I went back to the ship hospital for quick look-over and besides a high heart rate and dilated pupils, I was fine.

Thank goodness! That day was the zip line excursion and I wasn’t about to miss it. I was able to do all but the last line before going back to rest. I went to the bathroom about 3 times within the 30 min it took my husband to get back from the last line because my body was still getting rid of some of the fluids. When the last call to board the van back to the ship was made, I peed one more time to make sure I could make it the whole trip.

I didn’t.

We were in the middle of a cactus field when I couldn’t hold it anymore. After begging the driver to pull over he gave me a few choice words in Spanish and finally let me jump off to pee in the desert.

I bolted out the door to try to find a spot away from the van and the onlookers it was transporting. I paused at what I thought was a good spot until I heard a resounding “NO!” come from the van. Apparently everyone could still see me and really didn’t want to.

Nobody looked me in the eye when I re-boarded.

The last few days of the cruise were less eventful. We played mini golf, did some rock climbing, watched some awesome performances, and haggled with Mexican vendors for fake Rolex watches. By the last day my eyes were finally a normal size so we decided to take the camera up to the top deck and take some pictures. We hadn’t really taken any because up until the last day I looked like Sloth from The Goonies.

We left the camera on the deck and it never made it home.

And the icing on the cake?

Swine flu.