We were winding down on our Hawaiian Cruise. It was Sunday night, the end of the last of five sea days after leaving Maui. Tomorrow we were going to stop in Ensenada, a port city on the Pacific coast of Mexico's Baja California peninsula. We signed up for a tour that would take us around to some various sites including Margarita tasting and wine tasting.
That night when I went to bed, my last stop was to the bathroom. Larry was already asleep and when I went to flush the toilet I noticed that the water in the bowl was a lovely shade of pink. On a ship, it's hard not to notice what's in the bowl since you have to put the cover down in order to push the button behind it to flush.
At the time I didn't think too much about it. I knew it had to have come from me, even though I never saw anything like that before and the thought passed through my head that maybe it was from the 2 glasses of red wine I had at lunch that day. So I thought that maybe I should drink some water, but I never did. During the night when I got up it was this lovely shade of pink again. I'll think about it in the morning I said to myself and went back to sleep.
In the morning, it was still pink but it didn't upset me until I had to poop! Then the toilet bowl was filled with what I thought was bright red blood. I went out into the cabin and said, "Larry, I think I have a problem." "What is it," he said. "I'm bleeding internally," I replied.
When I googled it, the first thing I saw was how dangerous it was and someone could bleed out rapidly. I was going to need rapid medical attention. But where? On the ship? In Ensenada? I wasn't ready to die.
Then it said it is usually caused by trauma. I knew I didn't hurt myself except for the first day we sighted land going into Hilo. I leaned over the balcony railing and felt something pop in my ribs, like I pushed a little too hard. Could it have taken till now to cause an injury, it was 10 days later?
I then did decide to drink some water that I was going to do the night before.
The more I read the more I found that I didn't have any other symptoms such as headaches, dizziness, weakness and visual problems. Then I read some more causes and the one that clicked with Larry was too much alcohol. We had the drink package so of course we had to get our moneys worth but I don't think I had more than 4 drinks of anything on any day and that was over the entire day.
Since I didn't feel sick, my fear of immediately dying were going away but I was still concerned. We were meeting Margie and John (our traveling companions) for breakfast before the tour. They were in the cabin next to ours. Before going out I made one more quick stop to the bathroom and YEA!!! my urine was clear. That made me feel a whole lot better.
We went out and I told Margie and John what happened and we continued discussing my problem on the way to and at the breakfast table. Great breakfast conversation. Then Margie recalled that I had beets at lunch the day before and beets can turn your urine and stool pink/red. Well, as a matter of fact, I had beets 2 days in a row at lunch and they were a large serving, probably more than a 1/2 cup of sliced beets each day. Then I quickly looked up this beet theory and sure enough you can even use beets to track the transit time of your digestion.
We went on our tour and had a great day.
P.S. The following day we arrived in LA to fly home on the Red Eye. I felt like I was getting a cold and when we got home on Wednesday, April 20th, we both tested positive for Covid.
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