Death on the Ship

One of the passengers had a heart attack on the excursion bus into Luxor yesterday and died (on the same tour that we took, but on a different one of the 9 buses). He was only in his mid 60s and went to the gym every day. He had complained about a sharp pain in his neck a day or two earlier, but did not think anything special about it. I did not know him. Kathleen knew who he was, but had not talked with him.

There are about 600 passengers and 300 crew on the ship, and the age distribution is skewed high, so we hear that it is not unusual for one death or more to happen during a 4 month cruise.

The wife of this passenger has gotten back on the ship and is sailing on to Cairo. I think this is to do some paperwork at the US embassy. If the passenger had died on the ship, it would have been simpler to get the body back to the US. Because he died in Egypt, they expect 12 days of paperwork before the body can be flown back to the US. They need to establish official cause of death, who has legal rights, etc. Once a body is gone they cannot fix an error, so they take time to check everything out.

This is obviously a tragic situation for the wife, made much more difficult by the special circumstances.

We may have had a prior death on the ship. This happened 6-8 weeks ago. Some passengers swear that they saw a coffin taken off the ship in one port. The only reason that I hesitate to say it happened for sure is that the person who Kathleen thought that was is still here and well. I would bet 80% that this was a separate death.

I don’t mean this as a downer, but wanted to present the full spectrum of what happens during this type of extended cruise.