Granny, 83, is kicked off 6-star cruise for having a panic attack
RELAXING in the sunshine with the calm sea behind her, Marguerite Hayward enjoys a sumptuous Mediterranean cruise.
The 83-year-old grandmother, who has mild dementia, and her war veteran husband Fred had spent a week unwinding in their £8,000 suite on board a ship claimed to be the ‘most luxurious ever built’.
But the next day Mrs Hayward lay ‘black and blue’ in an Italian hospital after the couple were ‘dumped’ from the six-star Regent Seven Seas Explorer.
Their ordeal began in the early hours of April 25 when Mrs Hayward awoke from a nightmare and had a panic attack.
Mr Hayward, 87, said that after she ‘started kicking and shouting’ he rang the reception for assistance. The ship’s doctor arrived and gave his wife a sedative.
But in the morning the ship’s officers told them they had to leave immediately, said Mr Hayward. ‘I pleaded with them to let us stay because the ship was docking in less than 24 hours and we would be going home anyway,’ he added.
The cruise firm claims there was ‘mutual agreement’ to leave, but the couple say they were ‘thrown off’. They were handed a medical bill for $1,370 (£1,000), then
‘She was covered in bruises’
taken ashore at the southern Italian port of Sorrento, where an ambulance was waiting with the company’s port agent.
A letter from the ship’s doctor said: ‘Suspected diagnosis: paranoid schizophrenia.’ The couple say this was a misdiagnosis.
At the quay, said Mr Hayward, ‘my wife was asked to get on to a stretcher but she declined, so they manhandled her forcibly’. She was taken to a run-down hospital and put on a drip, while he was told to sleep on a trolley.
Mr Hayward said: ‘She lay for several hours with her eyes closed. Everyone ignored me and no one I tried to speak to spoke English. Marguerite eventually woke up screaming. I was distraught.’
The couple, from Lavenham, Suffolk, had no mobile phone with them, but a British woman in the hospital used hers to call their son Martin in the UK.
Mr Hayward Jnr, 56, flew to Italy and arrived in Sorrento the next day, where he found his mother ‘sedated, on a drip, and wearing a T-shirt covered in blood’.
He said: ‘It was a nightmare. My dad had been abandoned in a foreign land and was on his last legs. My mum, who was walking before, was horizontal and sedated, covered in bruises and soiled clothing, alone in a very basic hospital bed.
‘Nobody at the hospital seemed to know about her dementia and they were obsessed with finding a medical condition. The cruise company were nowhere to be seen.’
His exhausted father flew home and he spent a week caring for his mother and arranging an air ambulance to get her back to Britain. She is now at the West Suffolk Hospital in Bury St Edmunds.
He said: ‘In the [Italian] hospital, she was not looked after well. She was dehydrated and not given food and simply left to lie in bed under sedation, without the care needed to prevent bed sores.’
Mr Hayward Jnr claims he rang Regent Seven Seas for help but was told the matter was in the hands of the port agent and the couple’s insurance company.
Mr Hayward Snr, a former soldier who fought in the Korean War and at Suez, said: ‘She came back from Italy in a very poor way. Her physical injuries include extensive bruising and severe bed sores.’
Regent Seven Seas said: ‘We don’t fully agree with all the claims. The shipboard doctor determined it was in Mrs Hayward’s best interests to receive the attention of medical specialists on shore, to which Mr Hayward agreed.
‘Our staff made arrangements for Mr and Mrs Hayward to be taken to hospital, offered a hotel room, and contacted their insurers.’