Thread: Bon Voyage Cruise Planner - 12/14 - Uniworld S.S. Antoinette

I have been away for a couple of days, and this news is shattering. Pete and Nancy your son is most important, and its always sorrowful when family illness probably spoils our vacation planes.

Pete and Nancy our thought and prayers are with you and hoping your son soon recovers.

Update: Pete & Nancy have decided to cancel this trip. It is disappointing I'm sure but these things do happen. Prayers to their son for a speedy recovery.

Pete .... Please give us an update on how your son is doing now.

Thanks to everyone for their best wishes! I really do appreciate the thoughts and prayers.

To give you an update, our son had a gall bladder attack and ended up having to have it removed. He's only 28 and found that his gall bladder was only functioning at about 30%, which I thought was very unusual for someone that young. This is something that only happens to old people. But I found out from one of the nurses that her 17-year old daughter had to have her gall bladder removed. I asked them what was happening to cause young people such problems and they said they didn't know whether it was caused by a bacteria that has been introduced into our systems or whether it was caused by chemicals used in our foods. But they said they are seeing alot more young people with this problem than ever before.

Anyway, he's doing fine. But we went to a follow-up visit 2 weeks after the surgery and on the way home, we stopped at the grocery store. On the way out, his knee popped! We ended up taking him to the orthopedic surgeon and he was on crutches for a few days. He's still having problems and they think he stretched a tendon. So he'll be recovering from that for a couple of weeks.

And to top it off, before all this happened, he developed an anal fissure and had to have that operated on. That was very painful and caused alot of discomfort. Then at work, he tore a ligament in his elbow, which still requires surgery after everything else is healed up and it'll take 3 months of rehabilitation.

The kid is a walking disaster!!

With all the problems he's been having this year, we told him if he was a horse, they would have shot him along time ago!

We can only hope that 2012 finds him in better shape because no one, especially a 28-year old, should have to go through all this.

Hopefully, come Spring, he'll be somewhat back to normal and we'll be able to finally do a river cruise as it's very high on our Bucket List. We really need to do it so we can advise others on what it's like from a first-hand experience. We've sold alot of them and everyone says how great they are, so we need to find out for ourselves.

Pete

Pete, as I mentioned to you elsewhere, my daughter had to have her gall bladder removed. she was about 30 when it happened. Unlike your son, though, she was in Angola when it happened and the third world medicine was not the greatest. She is doing fine now. In her case, they are almost sure it was a bacterial infection.

He spent 4 months about a year ago going through all sorts of tests from endoscope, colonoscopy, blood work, etc. They tested for parasites, infections, etc. Finally, they figured it was a bacterial infection in the GI track and treated it. Seemed to work, but became lactose intolerant. The bad thing is they cannot determine whether all this, including his gall bladder problem, is connected and if so, what the cause is.

But if it is a bacterial infection, like they told you, why is this just now causing problems in young people that was never a problem before?

Whole thing is strange.

Just glad your daughter is good after going through that in a third-world country.

She, too, experienced the lactose intolerance but she has since narrowed it down to radiation processed milk. Her bacterial infection was a result of getting water from a well, not the town's filtered water supply as she and her fiance had thought.

So what I hear you saying is that she can drink regular milk as long as it has not been radiated - is that right? Interesting.

He could not eat cheese, so he couldn't eat pizza, which is one of his staples. But lately, he's been able to eat some cheese, not alot, so hopefully that's improving.

That is the way it was with my daughter. For a while ANY dairy product even aged cheese or chocolate (except for really dark chocolate) make her sick. She is finally back to some minimal dairy except for the irradiated stuff. Unfortunately that is almost the only thing they have in Argentina.

Have him try pizza with just the crust (I use pita bread) tomatoes, fresh basil, olives, and a little bit of feta cheese. It is very good and gives you the flavor of pizza without all the dairy.