Medical & Illness
SPRAINED AND DRAINEDI am currently sitting in the Atlanta Airport. It is 6:52 am. Yesterday at 4:30 am I left my house near Boston to travel to Minneapolis. Walking out of my house I sprained my ankle. Needless to say I was a bit late getting to the airport. After hobbling to the airport from the Economy lot (because the closer parking was under construction), I would have still made the flight because I checked in from home. Unfortunately the security line was miles long and I missed it. So then I sat at the gate - too injured to go home - propping up my foot (in the only part of Logan without ice) until 7 pm. But my flight to Atlanta was delayed so I missed my connector to Minneapolis. They did put us up at a hotel where I got 4 hours sleep only to return to the airport and wait standby this morning. The conference I am going to is only 4 days long and I have spent one entire day trying to get there. I have rescheduled my pick up 4 times. And I am mostly wondering why you have to go to Atlanta to get to Minnesota anyway. 5/08 | <<Latest Stories
IS THERE A DOCTOR ON BOARD?
My husband and I were traveling with our two children (aged two and five.) The flight was uneventful but then we were delayed after landing as we waited for an open gate. After sitting with no air flow for half an hour the plane became quite hot and stuffy and apparently a pregnant women on board began having some complications. The flight attendants explained that there was a pregnant lady having problems and called for a doctor on board. I attempted to hide behind the children's books that I was reading as I scanned the flight for some other doc to answer the call. I am a pathologist and although I am a doctor, my patients are typically already dead. Given that I hadn't delivered a baby in years, I glared at my husband, a dermatologist, seated two rows behind me who was hiding behind his magazine and probably thinking about the many years since the last time he delivered a baby. Fortunately after what felt like eternity, a woman seated a few rows away finally jumped up an announced that she was an OB nurse - the perfect person to take this call. 11/07
UNCARING HUSBAND NEEDS A HEART TRANSPLANT
I travel a lot for business. I started this at a fairly young age, so I was a bit inexperienced in the ways of the world. But I have always been an accommodating person, I don't complain much and I take it all in stride. It must be my Midwestern background. Anyway, I was on a flight home from Philadelphia to Minneapolis. It is a fairly long flight as it is, but was made even longer by a rugby team of 14 - 15 year old males, most of who had never flown before. They proceeded to drink all fluids on the plane as we sat on the runway waiting for storms that were apparently everywhere else in the country to clear out. Oh yea, did I mention that it was about 103 degrees and humid out and that the pilot had turned off the engines so that we wouldn't need to refuel or lose our place in line? Yea, I have tried to block that part out. Let me just say it was about twice that temperature inside that metal tube sitting in the midday sun. BUT the best part was the lady sitting next to me - I was window seat, she was middle and her husband was aisle. She was on her way to the University for a pancreas transplant, and because of this had moved up to my aisle to be closer to the front of the plane. Yes, a transplant. So, she is sick as hell and not happy because we are sitting on the runway for an hour and half (understandable). She is hungry and thirsty because she is basically getting off the plane and into a surgical room so she cannot have anything. Her husband is eating her snack so she is getting more and more upset and he does NOTHING. She is making about a million phone calls from the seat back phone trying to figure out if she is going to make it in time for her pancreas, and to make it even better, she decides to ask me (ME!), a 22 year old kid, what I think would be better - an ambulance from the airport or a taxi? How am I supposed to know? Personally, it's no question - you are about to die - take an AMBULANCE! Get this plane in the air. Now. Please. Someone. I didn't move the entire time I was on that flight. Not once. I barely breathed. Lady - I hope you made it OK. I hope the transplant worked for you. Husband - I hated you for many years for not comforting your sick wife and sitting there eating cookies and apples while she was starving. I have gotten over it now. But I always wonder when the next transplant patient will be next to me, and I try to get a seat closer to the back of the plane in the hopes of avoiding that situation. 11/07
DJ BECOMES MD
On January 2007, I was returning home from spending New Years with friends in NJ. The flight to St. Louis was to take about 3 1/2 hours, and it was a VERY early flight. Still slightly hung over, I boarded the plane expecting to get some sleep on the way; that didn't happen. The flight was bumpy. As the captain announced that we were now passing over Indianapolis, a panicked flight attendant ran past me. The woman sitting a row in front of me on the other side of the plane went limp. The flight attendant knew no first aid including CPR. As he gets on the intercom, he asks for a doctor on the plane; none responded. Luck just had it I was the only one on the plane that knew any kind of medical care. So I, being a DJ, turned into the in-flight doctor. I started performing CPR on the woman that had a coronary mid-flight. Everyone on the plane was great in assisting me with supplies I needed. The pilot came back to speak to me during the process to see if we needed to make an emergency landing in Indy, even though the remainder of the flight would have taken the same amount of time. After finally bringing life back into the woman and calming her two young children, we landed. The pilot announced that everyone was to exit the plane so the EMS team could enter and take over for me. The process went smoothly. The EMS team loaded the woman onto the backboard and rushed her to the hospital. The startled crew finally calmed down. Nothing scarier than a flight crew with shaky knees. They thanked me with two mini-bottles of whisky. Come to find out the woman was a Hollywood producer and a RN. She had no prior medical conditions and is now back in perfect health and back in CA. Scary part is that the flight crew had no medical knowledge. Had I not been there, those two young children would not have their mother today. 10/07
KIDNEY STONES AND EVA: THE DREADFUL DUO
I had travelled to beautiful Fort Huachuca, Arizona, to attend a military conference. Unfortunately. I was forced to spend the three days of the conference in the local hospital enduring treatment for kidney stones. Following surgery to remove said stones, I was released (with a final dose of Demerol and other pain meds) and subsequently driven to the Tucson airport by an outstanding young soldier who apparently was unable to read the signs that clearly stated “Tucson Airport This Way.” Rather than walking me in, he slowed down and allowed me to leap out of the vehicle to go to the ticket counter. After checking in, I staggered thru the airport looking for my gate. Success! As I boarded the flight, I informed the less-than-cheerful flight attendant (whom I shall refer to as “Eva”, as in Eva Braun) that I had just been released from the hospital, and needed help putting my pack in the overhead storage bin. Eva’s response: “There’s no way I’m touchin’ that pack – I can’t afford to go on disability”. If I hadn’t been rendered mostly incoherent by the drugs, I probably would have stuffed her in the overhead bin. Luckily, a guardian angel, in the person of a little old Dr. Ruth look-alike, grabbed my bag and easily tossed it into the overhead. I thanked her, and collapsed into my seat. We arrived in Phoenix, and I found I had to stagger thru the airport (again) to change planes. At least I wouldn't have to put up with Eva the Flight Attendant, or so I thought. As I walked down the ramp to board the plane, who should greet me but . . . Eva Braun. Apparently, the crew was also changing planes – what luck! She gave me an icy stare, but before she could tell me why she couldn’t assist me I walked right past her. I collapsed into my seat and didn’t wake up until I reached Seattle. Needless to say, I have never (and will never) fly XXX (rhymes with Flamerica Chest) Airlines again. 10/07
THE LINGERING AROMA OF VOMIT
Once when I was flying to New York from Phoenix, I developed the stomach flu. After a nauseating one and a half hours into the flight, I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to resort to the white puke bag (at the time I thought I was being generous instead of climbing over people and risk losing my cookies on the floor, or worse yet the people in the aisle seats). Well, I quickly filled the bag and another one at that. I rang the bell for the stewardess to have her throw it away. When I showed her the bag, I was astonished by her reaction. I figured, “Hey, they deal with sort of thing all the time.” But no, she turned her nose at me and told me to put it under the seat! I was shocked. Not only did the people next to me have to deal with the sound of my retching, but now they (and I) had to deal with the faint but lingering smell of puke from the bag and the fact that it would be under the seat for the rest of the four and a half hour flight. 10/07
FLYING THE SICKLY SKIES
I was the inflictor of hell on a flight from Heathrow to Dulles. Toward the tail end of a month long trip to Kenya, several members of my class had battled some mysterious stomach ailment…you see where this is going. By time we had connected from Mombassa to Nairobi and landed in London, I thought I had made it free and clear…until my knees buckled in a duty free shop and the only thing that held me up was my index finger hooked onto a display of Tolberlone bars as I started to go down. I was helped back to our waiting area and then on to the plane to DC. My stomach was reeling and my skin color had dropped a few shades and started to take on a green hue. As soon as the seat belt light went off the guy in front me cranked his seat back….bad news buddy. Then the smells hit. The lady two rows in front wearing the perfume. The flight attendants in the galley preparing the meals… It was starting to get ugly. The carts started rolling and I had to bury my face in a pillow to minimize the smells. The male flight attendant joked that I apparently had a grand old time in London. I glared at him. Then the bottom dropped out and I needed to hit a bathroom pronto. Remember…guy in front me has his seat cranked all the way back. I jostle him all over the place trying to GET OUT. I bolt to the bathrooms. There’s a line 6 people deep. With my hand over my mouth and panic in my eyes I ask, “Is this the line? This is an emergency.” A different flight attendant glares at me and says “Honey, with all the passengers on this plane and only 6 bathrooms, everyone is having an emergency.” THANKFULLY, the passenger next in line asked me if I was going to be okay. I said, “No” and he shoved me into the next open door. Let's just say, I made it, barely. I finally make it back to my seat. After, 3 or 4 more trips to the bathroom, the guy in front of me insisted on leaving his seat back. Glaring at me every time I attempted to get out and run to the bathroom. At this point I had thrown up every possible fluid in my body. I was exhausted, gaunt, sweaty, smelly. You name the nightmare – that was me. My stomached started to turn again. I tired to lift myself out of the seat and realized I had lost all my strength. I couldn’t get up and maneuver around the seat. I asked the guy to move. He informed me it was his right to recline the seat. That’s when I grabbed that beautiful white bag in the seat back in from of me and shared my misery with all those around me. I had to do that somewhere between 2 or 3 more times before he finally moved. By then, I was the waking dead. I had resorted to lying on the floor by the emergency exit door by the back galley because I could lay down and suck in cold air. I was relegated back to my seat after the flight attendant told me I couldn’t lie there because I was as safety risk. Um.. we’re at 30,000+ feet. I’m spewing germs everywhere and my laying down at the only source of fresh air is a safety risk. umm priorities, priorities. Long story short and several beautiful white bags, a “is there a doctor on board” call, an ambulance on the tarmac, and an over night stay at the hospital, I recovered quite nicely. I don’t know if everyone else did though…. 10/07 Signed, Sick at 30,000
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