Among the 2,400 passengers stranded off California's coast on a cruise ship carrying at least 21 people infected with the new coronavirus, few aboard likely have more to lose than Kari Kolstoe, a retiree from North Dakota with stage-4 cancer.
Kolstoe, 60, said she and her husband, Paul, 61, had looked forward to the Grand Princess cruise to Hawaii as a brief, badly needed respite from the grind of medical intervention she has endured for the past 18 months.
Now facing the prospect of a two-week quarantine far from their home in Grand Forks, she worries their getaway cruise will end up causing a fateful delay in her next round of chemotherapy, scheduled to begin early next week.