What to Know
A Louisiana woman and her boyfriend are in thousands of dollars of debt after she was seriously injured during an incident. Kirsten Lindsey was on her first cruise ever aboard a Carnival ship with her boyfriend and his family. During a stop in Little French Key in Roatan, Honduras, Lindsey decided to sign up for the rope swing experience while off the ship. As she made the jump, she was injured in her groin area.
Initially, she didn’t think the injury was serious, but within hours, she was in severe amounts of pain. The damage from the injury caused her to be airlifted back to the States, where she has remained hospitalized.
The story sounds terrifying.
In a Facebook post on July 15, 2026, Blake Ford, Lindsey’s boyfriend, shared the harrowing story in great detail along with a video. He made the post from a Florida hospital where Lindsey was receiving treatment.
According to Ford, there was a retrieval line that wasn’t properly affixed to the rope swing. When Lindsey began to swing, the tag line tightened between her legs just before she dropped into the water.
“Kirsten, being the badass she is, walked back to where we were being transported from, laughing off the pain. We both thought it was nothing more than a scratch,” he explained. However, by the time they returned to the ship’s port, Lindsey required a wheelchair to get back to their room.
Once they made it, Ford called 911.
Lindsey was then taken to the medical center on the ship, where she was “shaking and screaming from the pain.” She was given pain medication and monitored for several hours. During that time, her groin area swelled to “roughly the size of a baseball.”
They had three options for further treatment.
Doctors told them they could do an air evacuation, visit the ER in Cozumel and figure out their own way home to Louisiana, or remain on the cruise and stay in the ship’s medical facility. Given the severity of Lindsey’s injuries, Ford “immediately” chose air evacuation.
He was then told the evacuation required a $20,000 deposit and another $30,000 upon arrival in the U.S. They still requested the air evacuation. While they waited, Kirsten Lindsey stayed in the ship’s medical room, where it cost $75 an hour to be treated. Insurance would not cover the cost.
By the time they arrived at a hospital in Fort Lauderdale, Florida “Kirsten had spent approximately 26 hours in the ship’s medical facility, which alone came to around $3,500, including the physician, medications, procedures, hospital care.”
The couple started a GoFundMe.
After adding up the costs from Lindsey’s injury, the couple realized they had no choice but to start an online fundraiser.
“The financial impact has been overwhelming,” the fundraiser reads. “Between emergency transportation, medical expenses, travel, lodging, lost income, and the unexpected costs of getting ourselves and our vehicle back home, the expenses continue to grow.”
Currently, the goal is set to $16,000. According to the couple, that money will go towards emergency medical expenses, hospital bills and any follow-up care, the costs for the air evacuation and transportation, and any travel and lodging costs associated with them being away from home.
They eventually made it back to Louisiana.
On July 19, Ford posted that Kirsten Lindsey was hospitalized yet again.
“They were completely shocked she was even discharged from the last hospital so early but now thank god we’re home and with OUR doctors and not the ones carnival sent us to!” he wrote.
“Everyone that’s seen the injury has never seen anything like it but they are doing everything they can to prevent permanent damage to her… grapefruit sized lady bits.”
According to KTAL, she was undergoing a second surgery at CHRISTUS Highland Medical Center to address the injuries.
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