What would you do in this case. Vacation tour cut short by unusual medical emergency...
We are in Kauai vacationing. Today we want on a booked catamaran tour up the Na Pali Coast. Half the tour was very successful. But...
After reaching the end of the coast the boat turned around and started to head back. On the way back we were scheduled to do snorkeling and a beach lunch. However there was a teenage company trainee aboard who got sea sick and wasn't feeling well at this time. We all thought it was just motion sickness but he started to go downhill quickly and it became apparent to the crew that something was wrong with him. Luckily one of the passengers was a DR and another was a nurse. They asked if someone had a blood glucose meeter with them, I couldn't tell if anyone managed to vet him one. As time went on he became more and more delirious and it became apparent we had to rush him back to shore. He was incoherent and making odd arm gesticulations and sounds. It seemed at first people thought he was in diabetic shock, no one knew if he had diabetes though. As time went on though I heard the crew and a number of others say that it seemed like he had taken some drugs and was having a bad trip. I'm no expert but it seems like a rather strange time to drop acid or the like, when you are on the job as a trainee deck hand. On the other hand the way he was acting DID strike me as more trip like. He was brushing his hands around his face all the time as if to ward off stuff and making odd noises. Apparently even the DR thought it was drugs. Anyway we managed to transfer him to a small boat that met us 1/2 way and they rushed him to shore. Last I heard he was stable in the ambulance. Hope he's OK. Only annoying thing was that about 1/2 the tour activities were canceled and we were not offered a refund. We went to the office to see if they might do something for us.
I'm of 2 minds about this. If the kid had some kind of non self induced medical emergency then I have little issue with the way things went down. If on the other hand it's as the crew and DR was saying that he was tripping on something then that makes me mad. The kid is endangering his life and the lives of those on board PLUS ruining a trip we all paid for. In this case I think we all deserve a full refund.
Few other passengers seemed to care much one way or the other though which seems odd to me. The rest of the crew was still very nice but they made few concessions to either refund us, extend the trip or offer anything extra.
Either way I hope he is well, he looked like he had no idea where he was and that looked really scary. However to me the two different scenarios are very different and deserve different outcomes. I'd still like to see something done in the way of compensation if the drug story turns out to be true.
At any rate I don't know bow to feel about this exactly. I feel like I'm being a right wing pig thinking that we were wronged when the kid was the one suffering. Especially when the other customers didn't seem to care so much. How should I feel about this.
How would you feel in this circumstance ? What would you do know?
UPDATE: OK we got a partial refund which we are happy with. This is the difference between the package we paid for and a cheaper package that doesn't normally include the snorkel and other things. They said they were looking into giving this to us, however when they phoned back they didn't offer this immediately. Instead they wanted to give us a rain check for another tour, no thanks we only have 7 days and have other plans already. But we are happy enough with what we got, would have been nice of them to be more for the coming with it I guess. Hope the kid is OK.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Doesn't matter if it was recreational drug use or not.
I'm going because of business on Tuesday, but taking the day before and the day after for ME!
First time on Molokai! Still need to do Lanai and Kauai!
