What I Did on my Winter Vacation

It's been awhile since I posted, I know.

I was recently on vacation, had a fantastic time. I spent a few days in Miami Beach with my boyfriend Mike and my best friend Ron. To be honest, I was rather unimpressed with Miami and would probably rather vacation somewhere else next time. I mean, it wasn't terrible, but it wasn't quite as glamorous and I'd heard it used to be. And I had recently read in a column that South Beach's heydey was long gone, and it's more desolate and full of D-listers (I know I'm not exactly an A-lister) who cling to a bygone era.

I found that to be mostly the case. I didn't see any wild parties, and I didn't see many rolling caravans of partygoers -- not that I needed to. It was generally quiet and unassuming, and I was fine with that. Our hotel was a nice little villa right on Ocean Drive overlooking the sea, and from what I can tell, there's only one "hot" strip in Miami Beach -- the area off of Jefferson Drive. If you ask me, it was a replica of Eighth Avenue in Manhattan (lots of New York expats here I guess). The exact same restaurants: Cafeteria, Sushi Samba, Food Bar, Bice, even Tasti-D-Lite. That strip was filled with many other needlessly expensive restaurants, and the rest of Miami was bursting with pastel neon signs, right out of Miami Vice.

I will say, however, the people are quite beautiful. And I noticed that even if you had a busted face, your body was still nice -- everyone works out, everyone is tan. I thought the attitude factor in Miami was exponentially higher than New York yet without cause.

Don't get me wrong, however; I still had a nice time, and I'd probably go back for a quick visit. The weather is unbeatable during the winter months, and the local Cuban food is quite good. Just not sure I could quite live there.

Then Mike and I boarded the Big Gay Boat for a Big Gay Cruise. Imagine it: 3200 screaming queens afloat on the Caribbean Sea. What a blast. I've never seen anything quite like that boat: fourteen stories, five pools, five hot tubs, a rockclimbing wall, a gym (I stayed away from that part), a helipad, a basketball court, an ice skating rink, two performance theaters, a mini-mall, 24-hour buffet stations, shops, a galleria, art galleries, a casino, three dance clubs, countless bars, an internet cafe, a library, and a partridge in a pear tree. There was so much to do during each day of the cruise that there is no way one could participate in everything.

Our surprise guest performer was Margaret Cho, who was hilarious as always, trying out new material. Would you even believe CHARO was on that boat? And would you believe she's a world-class flamenco guitarist?? Who knew?

And like any large gathering of gay boys, you begin to notice cliques and groups: the leather bears, the twinks, the tweaked-out meth-heads, the older gentlemen, the gym bunnies, the dancing queens, the only-fit-in-a-gay-ghetto types, and a large array of middle-aged average joes. A day or two into the cruise, attitudes and defenses drop, and you start to meet people you ordinarily wouldn't talk to, which is interesting. At dinner, they enforce a multi-party seating rule where you and your friends sit at a large table with others, and you're forced to mingle. A good idea in theory, and it mostly works, but sometimes sparks fly because you can't just force people to like each other -- especially drama queens.

We had three ports of call: Cozumel, Grand Cayman, and a little portion of Haiti that is walled-off and privately owned by the cruise ship company. Cozumel was a blast -- Mike and I rented scooters and went around the island looking at Mayan ruins (not giant pyramids like I was expecting, but impressive nonetheless), and I ate fish tacos by the sea. Hurricane Wilma had really done some damage to the island, and it was a bit sad because you could see where the money was being spent post-hurricane: on the tourist areas, which are the money-makers. So we saw large hotels in excellent shape next to huts that still were roofless and barely inhabitable.

Next was Grand Cayman. It was fun, and call me stupid, but I was unaware that it was largely a religiously conservative British commonwealth. Apparently our boat was the big source of controversy for the day. There was a little church right off of the dock, and there was a small throng of locals sitting out there staring at us. I later found out that they were standing there in silent protest against the gay cruise -- I had no idea. I was taking pictures with the locals, smiling, completely oblivious that they were protesting my presence. Typical hypocrites though -- you flash a Visa at their shops and they'll bend over backwards to accommodate you. Not to mention their shortmindedness -- remind them that eating shellfish is prohibited not two verses away from their oft-quoted Leviticus "abomination" line repeated ad nauseum, and they always say, "that was a different time." Duh. As a sidenote, I have never once heard one simple, cogent argument countering the convenience-of-religion argument. I posit that people simply pick and choose those biblical texts that say what they want them to say: don't do this, don't do that, don't sleep with men. Yet conveniently they forget that there are many other neighboring texts that prohibit mixing linens, eating shellfish, instructions on how to be a good slave, dishonoring your parents at the expense of death as punishment, etc. And not one person will defend those other edicts from the Lord. At the risk of sounding blasphemous, those moronic protesters should really take a look at their own hypocritical practices before they start preaching anti-sodomy to someone else. Who knows how many of them went home that night and gave cunnulingus or buttfucked someone? Gimmie a break. I know more than one of them were eating shrimp on the dock.

Regardless, there was a lovely woman and man I'll never forget who were standing on the entrance to the dock as we were leaving, countering the protesters. They greeted each of us with a warm hug, kiss on the cheek, and said, "God Bless You, God loves you, each and every one of you are a treasure to him, and we hope you come back and visit us on our lovely island." That made it all worth it. Well, that and the $2 coronas on the whitesand beaches while snorkeling with the stingrays.

The final port of call was off the coast of Haiti. Lovely island, but poor as dirt. Literally. Mudhuts could be seen in the hills where the people really do live off the land. Like a Dickensian schism of haves and have-nots, we were walled off with wooden and chain fences from the rest of the population to revel in our buffets, liquors and waterparks. I had a phenomenal time sliding at supersonic speeds down the "world's largest waterslide" and careening over waves in jetskiis, but of course it was tempered with guilt when you can see the faces of the poor children looking at us like zoo creatures from beyond the fence. We were fed a line in which some boat official told us that they opened the water park to the kids when we weren't there, but I wasn't sure how much truth there was to that statement. Anyways, before the locals could rise up and guillotine we Marie Antoinettes (and believe you me, there were many overly-made up patrician queens on that boat), we were yanked back to our cruise ship and made it back to Miami.

Yet somehow drama just seems to follow me around (or is it just me?). The very last night of the cruise, during The White Party (why does every gay party have to have a theme?), Mike and I and some new friends were dancing to some great 80s hits (and there's always gotta be SOME Madonna wannabe vogueing all over the floor, just don't DARE get in her way), when we noticed two people dragging a third along the side of the boat. I stopped and stared for a minute and saw that this person was completely out of it. Whether it was instinct, training, good or bad judgment, I ran over to those two people and asked if their friend was alright.

"He'll be fine," one said, "We're just taking him to lie down in his room."

I took one look at this guy and thought "bullshit."

This man had vomit all around his mouth, his eyes were gesticulating wildly in their sockets, and he was taking very shallow, agonal breaths. I told his friends that he needed to go directly to the medical bay, don't pass go, don't collect $200. This man was in serious trouble.

So I went with them down to the medic brig and hit the "page" button for the nurse. I was slapping this man pretty hard trying to get him to wake up. His friends told me that he was taking GHB and no other drugs. GHB will get you high, but it actually doesn't depress your respiratory center, unless, like this man, you vomit and aspirate and are about to drown in your own puke. I saw a crash cart there in the galley, I ripped it open and put the oxygen saturation monitor on him and saw that he was only satting 78% -- God knows how long he could breathe at that level. At about that time, the nurse arrived and I told her what I knew. She paged the ship doctors, and I prepared the intubation equipment in the crash cart. We set up the suction first and cleared out his airway, vacuuming out copious amounts of vomit from his oropharynx. That did the trick! His O2 sat came up to 98% and he began breathing normally, so there was no need to intubate at this point. The two ship doctors arrived and we transferred him to a gurney; I went with them to the medical room where he was hooked up to a monitor and IV's were started and he got an EKG. To make a long story short, he ended up being fine and was discharged from the medical brig by the next day when I went to check on him.

And guess what I got for all my work while on vacation? A free t-shirt and voucher for dry cleaning to remove the vomit from my clothes!

The lesson I took was this: as much as residency is killing me -- grey hair, expanding waistline, dark circles under my eyes, always sick, always tired -- I guess I am learning something. I discussed this case ex post facto with one of the attendings who critiqued it by saying that essentially, I had done everything correct: airway first, suction, secure the airway, don't intubate unless needed, lay him on his left side in case of further vomiting, paging for help when you need it. And honestly, it was quite nice to know that I could help out in a time of need.

By the time that little scenario was over, I realized that I hadn't even gotten to have one drink before that incident. I fixed that problem quickly and went right back to the party, vomit-stained t-shirt and all.

The vacation finally came to a close, and I hopped back on a plane to cold New York. The airline had lost my luggage again (they lost it on the way to Miami too), but I didn't mind this time -- it only had dirty clothes in it and they delivered it to my door and I didn't have to worry about lugging it around the airport, bus and subway.

I slept very well that night when I got back, and my new tan kept me warm. I will say, however, that I was very apprehensive about going back to the ER in NYC the next day to see what awaited me -- it's always very difficult to get back into work mode after having a vacation. And true to form, I walked into the ER the next morning to be greeted by an insane prisoner who had taken a pen, jabbed it into his right thigh, and ripped it open about six inches, bleeding like stink. Sigh.

More on that in the next post.