Newlyweds Brant and Danielle Aymond booked a week-long Norwegian Pearl cruise through the Caribbean for their honeymoon in November.

During the trip, while Mr Aymond was paddle boarding on a coral reef in Honduras, he fell off the board and onto sharp pieces of coral that “sliced” both soles of his feet.

“It’s just unfortunate. I fell off and there was a piece of coral that came right up under the water that I didn’t see. So I landed right on it,” Mr Aymond said.

He decided to seek medical attention on the ship, which was docked at Roatan, Honduras, rather than a local Honduran clinic, as the couple had taken out extra medical insurance coverage.

A doctor on board stitched up Mr Aymond’s foot wounds and said the injury wasn’t bad. And despite his “searing pain”, Mr Aymond was prescribed only ibuprofen and an antibiotic that was later found to be for intestinal bacteria, and not to treat wounds, New Orleans’ WWL-TV reported.

“He [the doctor] said everything’s good, we’re going to clean it out and we’re going to stitch it up,” Mr Aymond said.

But the pain so was bad, Mr Aymond spent the last four days of the cruise in bed.

Weeks after the couple returned home to Louisiana, an infection in Mr Aymond’s worst wound got so bad, he had to have emergency surgery to avoid amputation.

An X-ray at a hospital revealed the cruise doctor had stitched up his feet with pieces of coral still lodged inside, and that he had a severed tendon.

“That infection spread for two weeks,” Danielle Aymond said.

“He could have lost his foot. He could have lost his life.”

Mr Aymond, a US National Guard soldier who lives in Louisiana, is now walking again and in rehabilitation, although he is still in pain.

Mrs Aymond said it took two months of constantly calling Norwegian Cruise Lines to discuss the treatment her husband received on board.

In a statement to WWL-TV, the cruise company said: “Norwegian is fully committed to providing medical services through licensed physicians and nurses and all of our ships feature medical facilities that are built, staffed and equipped to meet or exceed the guidelines established by the American College of Emergency Physicians.”

But the Aymonds are now warning people not to rely on the medical provisions on cruise ships.

“Your backup plan can’t be that the boat is going to handle it,” Mr Aymond said. “You’ve got to have another route.”