Woman's belongings 'thrown out' after suffering miscarriage on honeymoon cruise
A devastated Brisbane mother who suffered a miscarriage during her Carnival Spirit honeymoon cruise has accused the company of throwing out her belongings.
What was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime and signal the beginning of a new family for Christine Lim, went horribly wrong just three days after leaving Sydney on a Carnival Cruise Australia tour to New Caledonia.
Just one day before Christmas, the 41-year-old mother-of-two detected something wasn’t quite right and sought the assistance of the ship’s medical staff.
Already anxious after suffering a miscarriage just months earlier, she and her new husband sat patiently as they awaited for the results of a medical examination.
“By the time I got to bed rest, I just started bleeding,” Ms Lim told Yahoo7 News.
“They just said to me ’no, this is too much… you’re having an incomplete miscarriage’.”
While she understood the severity of the situation, the café worker said the way in which the matter was managed could have been better.
“They said that they didn’t want to take the risk of anything going wrong with my life and I understand that, but the way they spoke to me after I had just miscarried… there was just no compassion,” she said.
“They said we are not leaving until you get off the boat.
Ms Lim claims her husband, Patrick Beinke, was instructed to stay on the ship while she was taken on a small dinghy to a nearby island before eventually being flown to Nouméa for further treatment.
“A woman followed my husband to the room and watched as he packed me a bag. He was really upset, he didn’t want to let me go by myself but he didn’t have a choice,” Ms Lim said.
‘It could have been handled better’
After being given the medication to complete the miscarriage at the hospital in Noumea, a devastated Ms Lim made her way back to Sydney as she waited for her family and the cruise ship to dock.
She had given no thought to the gifts, including a new pair of sneakers for her husband she had hidden around the cabin as a surprise for the family on Christmas Day.
After she was reunited with her family, Ms Lim enquired days later about retrieving the gifts she had hidden in the cabin.
She claims her tireless efforts to reclaim the gifts were ignored and rejected by the customer cruise line’s customer service team.
“They said that they would have been thrown away, there is a certain time they hold goods and then they destroy them,” she claims.
“My son called and they told him ’no we would have thrown them away by now’.
“This is a massive international company, they need to get their s*** together.”
“My husband and I had been trying for five years, and now this is going to resurface for every anniversary.
“They made a really bad situation very bitter.”
While Carnival Cruise Australia disputes the conversations they had with Ms Lim and her accusations against the “callous” medical staff, a company spokesperson said to Yahoo7 News that the matter of her lost property could have been managed better.
“While the question of lost property might have been handled better on our part, it would never be the case that a guest would be told that the property had simply been thrown out,” the spokesperson said.
“Every effort is made to reunite guests with their lost property as also happened in this case.
“We reject any suggestion that the care provided was anything other than professional and caring which included ongoing care and support for Ms Lim and family members throughout.
“In general terms, our ships have medical centres staffed by highly skilled medical teams who provide urgent life saving treatment.”
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