Down She Goes

Down She Goes

18^th February 2012

Getting into Shutters (photo gallery), Carolee hadn’t recuperated her voice and was feeling pretty rough. Rama had me displaying pictures and everyone was going about their business. Suddenly there was a loud thud with Rama (AMS) calmly repeating “Hey, are you okay?” Going round to the other side of the gallery, guests were surrounding someone on the floor. A guest pointed out that it was one of the photographers, but that I could tell by the uniform. It was Carolee. 

Grabbing the phone I called the medical facility who told me it was a Brightstar (Alpha on other ships, meaning Medical emergency) and that I needed to call the Bridge and ask them to sound out a BrightStar announcement. What the fuck!? A girl is lying unconscious on the floor and I’m having to fart arse around calling different numbers just to get the medical facility to come up four decks!

Calling the Bridge I had to explain four times what had happened. Carolee was still lying on the floor in the recovery position and unconscious. Whoever I spoke to had a classic dumb arse reply: “okay, have you called the medical facility?”

“Yes, they told me to call the bridge”

“Who are you, by the way?”

“Lou from the photography department and currently in Shutters where my colleague has collapsed.”  

"She's crew. Not a guest?"

"Yes, she's crew. A photographer"

“Is she breathing?”

“I don’t know, they are two people with her at the moment (a guest and my AMS) so I got on the phone to call for medical aid”

“Oh. Well, call me back if she’s not breathing” and he hung up.

The thought of ringing again saying she’s not breathing popped into my head, only to get the medics down as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, we all felt that if Carolee had been a guest, the medics would have been at the location within minutes. Carolee being crew was left on the floor for nearly 10 minutes. It was disgraceful!

When medical did arrive, they only had a wheelchair as they couldn’t use the stretcher unless a BrightStar announcement was made or something along those lines. Utter tripe! A BrightStar was, of course, never announced. In other words, there's no medical emergency. Lifting Carolee up, she was flopping about like a dead fish as they tried sitting her in the wheel chair. It was unbelievable.

Speaking to the others, we knew she’d been feeling a little under the weather recently, shattered and with next to no energy. Someone, who’s name I won’t mention, said she simply collapsed due to extreme exhaustion. Carolee is ill, she finished working in the lab at around 4am last night and then was in the gallery for morning sale at 6am. This wasn’t a one off episode either. Whoever said it was down to exhaustion had a point.

Dave called me at 09.00 asking if I’d do Carolee’s shift on embarkation. Feeling bad about Carolee, I obviously said yes. If it helped the team out a bit, then I’d do it. Dave then said that in return I’d get the rest of the evening off – result! So after 15.00, it’s rest time!

With an hour to go until setting up for embarkation, I went and had a coffee and something to eat before running back to the cabin to sleep for 30 minutes. I was drained to say the least. After set up, we had a 45 minute break before we started shooting.

The shooters were already decided, Aniko, Kate and Clarita. I was smudging, sending each family to the studio they need to go to. Talk about Crowd Management! It was hectic and to be fair, I thought I’d done a shit job until Diva, the AMP, told us we’d done a great job on embarkation. Another result!

So now, I’m sitting in my cabin, typing up my blog entries while the alarm system rings for the guest drill (to show guests where to go in case of an emergency). My night is pretty planned out: sleep, gym, internet and if possible go to a guest show if there are any on tonight.

Tomorrow we are in Key West and I want as much energy as possible, get the lab set up done as soon as possible and get the hell off the ship for some fresh air and a look around. What I saw from the ship’s forward deck, Key West looked amazing!

 

 Embarkation Test Shots with Kate

Messing Around

Test Shots and White Balance

Light Metering