7 Things you Must do to Survive a Mandatory Quarantine

We have the pleasure of having a guest writer for this post! My mom, Susanne Bywater, has quite the story to tell about being quarantined on a cruise ship and then an air force base. She was traveling on the Diamond Princess cruise ship for 16 days around Asia before this quarantine. On the day they were to pull into Yokohama Bay to dock and release the passengers to go home, they found out they were required to stay on board for a 14-day quarantine due to Coronavirus that one passenger tested positive for. After 12 long days in quarantine, the United States rescued them and brought them to Lackland Air Force Base for another 14-day quarantine. If all goes as planned, she has 1 more full day until she gets her freedom back.

Very fortunately, she and our other family members traveling on this cruise have remained well even though there were more than 600 confirmed cases of the virus for passengers on the ship. After enduring this, my mom, has a few survival strategies that she is going to share with us. Even though this is quite a unique situation, if this Coronavirus is as bad as they are saying, some of us may find ourselves in some sort of quarantine in the future. So save this post for later!

7 THINGS YOU MUST DO TO SURVIVE A MANDATORY QUARANTINE and a few helpful cruise packing tips

Just hearing the words “quarantined” and “do not leave your cabin” takes your breath away. It literally took my breath away. My mind started spinning and I started to feel a bit claustrophobic.

Tip #1: Getting My Mind Straight

Getting my mind straight was my priority. I couldn’t move on to anything else until I got myself squared away. The first thing I had to recognize and admit is that I couldn’t change this. Nothing would change this. I could yell, cry, lie on the floor and kick and scream, but nothing was going to change the situation I now found myself in. It was what it was. I also had to acknowledge that I wasn’t anyone special. There were 2,665 other passengers in the same situation. Also, there were 1058 crew members that were effectively quarantined but they also had to do their jobs and be polite to all of us.

Tip #2: Staying Positive

Right away I made a personal decision to stay positive. Staying positive enhanced my outlook. Did I have down times? Did I question my situation? Did I get angry? Of course I did. I allowed myself those feelings. But instead of voicing those concerns out loud, I prayed about them and felt God’s peace. I am also blessed with a very common sense husband who would walk that road with me. He had his moments but we tried to not allow those to intersect. He would be my rock when I needed one, and I tried to be his rock when he needed one.

Tip #3: Being an Encouragement to Others

Once I had decided to be positive, I could then encourage others around me. They’re in the same situation. Sometimes you are called upon to be a leader. We can all cry together or we can look for the bright side. I just wouldn’t listen to negativity. If another person began being negative, I would deliberately point out the positive, no matter how small.

Tip #4: Reaching out for Help and Support

Knowing I couldn’t get through this by myself, I reached out to my friends and family on Facebook by posting about my ordeal. At first everyone was shocked to find out, but quickly they all started with encouragement. “You can do this!” “This is awful, but we’re here for you.” “Is there anything we can do for you?” “I’ll keep you in my prayers.” “Went to my ladies Bible study yesterday and shared your story. They’re all praying for you.” I was amazed at the outpouring of love for all of us, a good deal of it from people who didn’t know me and whom I’ll probably never meet. Over my many years, I’ve had the honor of praying for many people I didn’t know. And many times, I’ve prayed but didn’t know if it made a difference. I can tell you for certain I felt all those prayers. And they DID make a difference!! So next time someone asks you to pray for them or their loved ones, please do. It may be the most important thing you can do for them. So reach out and ask for help. Be honest about your situation without whining about it. People really do have good hearts and want to help!

Tip #5: Being Willing to Try New Things

For almost four weeks, we had absolutely no say in what we ate. Others made that choice for us. Many times we were served something I thought I didn’t like. Not sure why I thought I didn’t like it. I made a point of trying everything we were served. Most times I still didn’t like it, but at least I tried. I did find some things I liked. So every meal became an adventure. Being hungry won’t help your attitude.

Tip #6: Keeping a Regular Daily Schedule

Living in an interior cabin with no windows, we lost all sense of time. We had no idea whether it was day or night, if we’d slept two hours or ten. Dan and I agreed we needed to maintain a schedule as best we could. When we woke up, we would turn on a few lights. We also made our bed every morning and got dressed. After we were ready for our day, we turned on all the lights except the bedside lights, trying to simulate daylight hours. We would tidy up our cabin. After dinner, we started turning off some of the lights. Later in the evening, we would get ready for bed and turn off more lights. We would turn on the bedside lights and read or watch TV. Finally, we would turn off all the lights except the bedside lights. All of this sounds silly, but it gave us a sense of day and night.

Tips #7: Staying Busy

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Try to keep busy. I started journaling. Writing helps me process my thoughts and feelings. My Kindle was full of books I wanted to read , so now was as good a time as any. Playing cards games will pass the time. I tried to use my Pandora so we’d have something else instead of TV. I got a message saying “Pandora not available in this country.” So make sure you download music, movies, books, etc. you can’t always depend on the Internet.

Other helpful tips and must haves on a cruise

Thinking outside the box in your packing. Many of my friends cruise. Each of them have tips and items they like to take to make their cruise travel easier.

One of these items is a Brita water bottle. Many of us use water bottles on a regular basis, but these have a small Brita filter right in them so you can always have good bottled water. On the ship, water bottles are expensive. This is a great way to save some money. And you can buy replacement filters. I found these at
H-E-B grocery store for about $7. Or, if you don’t have access to H-E-B, look

In a cruise cabin, all the walls, ceilings, and doors are made of steel. There is also limited space in most cabins. Having magnets will help you maximize and organize your space. I bought this cute little set on Amazon for about $6. It has several types of magnets for different tasks and it comes in its own storage tin. There are more magnets in this set, but I only packed some of them.

I used them to hang up the daily paper you get on a cruise so we could always find it. On our cabin door, I hung notes to our room steward. One held my room key card right by the door. To brighten our cabin during quarantine, I used the hook ones to hang souvenirs I had bought. I also used some by the door to hang our masks and gloves.

On a cruise, it’s easy to fill either of these with ice and water/tea/soda or coffee at the buffet. They will keep drinks hot or cold for a long time. In quarantine, they become more valuable as we couldn’t get out to refresh our drinks whenever we wanted. We were limited to whenever the crew came by with drinks and/or ice.

Other things we brought is a nightlight and a good medicine kit, with seasick pills, Advil, diarrhea, cold meds, and Band-Aids. Meds are available on the ship but are very expensive. I went to the Dollar Tree for my OTC meds. They have many brand names and they are in marked blister packs so there won’t be an issue with unidentified pills, either for you or TSA.

As you can see, my Mom and family have had quite the experience being stuck in this quarantined situation. I’m fairly certain she hopes never to find herself in this situation again! But, one good thing coming out of this is that if any of us find ourselves in a quarantined situation, we can heed her survival tips to make our situation better!

Thank you everyone for the prayers and thoughts for our families. We are so thankful this ordeal is just about over and hopefully they can return to their normal lives!