Up, Up, and Away

Remember when air travel used to be pleasant? Yeah, me neither.

My sisters and I flew quite a bit when we were kids because our parents were divorced and didn’t live within driving distance of each other. We were three bored and poorly supervised girls on a plane, and no amount of free playing cards and wing pins would keep us quiet. When the magic ink pen word search and connect-the-dot books lost their thrill, we would occupy ourselves with making sculptures out of our untouched microwaved “chicken” and “potatoes” or sticking sanitary napkins in the sick bags. It would kill an hour and a half, and then we would be either with our father or back at home, none worse for the wear.

Air travel today isn’t the Norman Rockwell painting that it was for us back in the 70’s and 80’s. Now, you have to get to the airport two hours early. You have to fret over your suitcase’s weight more than your own. You have to hope the over used and under serviced self-check-in kiosks function. You have to partially disrobe based on the whims of your jaded TSA agent. Sometimes it’s your shoes, sometimes your jacket, sometimes your belt, none of it consistent. You are subjected to the caste system implications of by-zone seating, after you have already experienced watching the wealthier and more frequent travelers taking advantage of the fast-pass system of security clearance.

If you are lucky enough to board and have room to stow your carry-on in the overhead bin and not under the seat in front of you, you then sit and wait. Is today the day the plane leaves on time? Is your flight lucky enough to not have mechanical difficulties?  Is there a storm brewing in the opposite corner of the country that somehow is causing delays in your faraway and poorly connected part of the continent? Did you flight crew show up? Are they rested and sober?

If all the stars are aligned and the gods are smiling on you, you might just take off on time, which is also not really a fair description of departure and arrivals. In case you never noticed, airlines pad their flight time to avoid costly fines due to too many delays. So your flight that looks like it’s two hours really only takes an hour and a half. Sometimes you arrive twenty minutes early, or so you think. Win-win, right?

We used to pay for the convenience of air travel, and it was a comfortable and pleasant experience. Now, it isn’t any of those.

When my family and I travelled to London and Paris, we got the best and worst of both worlds. We tried to save a buck or two on flying to London and back home from Paris, which meant we had two stops in each direction. It saved us almost a thousand dollars on airfare, but you get what you pay for, amiright?

We left our home town and flew to Washington, D.C., and luckily, it was uneventful. We checked in and passed security in plenty of time to sit and wait for our zone to board last. I popped half a Xanax and don’t really remember much of that flight.  After a quick connection and another half a Xanax for me, we landed in Ottawa, Canada. We were in another country. You might say it doesn’t count, but my passport stamp disagrees with you.

Immediately, we knew we weren’t in the U. S. The border agents were polite, and the rest of the airport staff was extremely friendly. Seriously, those airport Canadians could give us Southerners a run for our money.  In fact, one lady we spoke to at the information desk asked us where we were from, and when we told her South Carolina, she told us she always wanted to visit our state.

“Really?!?” we said in unison.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s warm there.”

We charged our electronic devices and tried to find dinner somewhere other than a Tim Horton’s, which seemed to me a Canadian Arby’s and thus still not anything I wanted to eat.  After waiting for a thunderstorm to pass (who knew they had lightning in Canada?), we boarded our first international flight to London.

I expected the plane to be bigger.  I also didn’t expect the sleeping pods of first class to be so amazing, but they sure looked like they were as we walked past them to get to our economy seats. We did have video screens in the back of the head rests, and each of us had a complimentary pillow and blanket waiting in our seats, so it wasn’t too shabby. We all settled in and waited for take-off, which I am pleased to report was uneventful.

Immediately, we were served a full dinner at almost eleven at night. My fifteen year old daughter was next to me and also high on Xanax, as she seems to have inherited my fear of flying. When the flight attendant stopped at our row, he offered us food trays and then a choice of red or white wine. My daughter didn’t know what to say, and started mumbling about how she was fifteen and didn’t know what she was supposed to do and didn’t think she was old enough to drink, you know, playing it cool, but he interrupted her again. “Red. Or. White.” It wasn’t so much a question as an order.

“White,” she meekly responded.

And thus my daughter was served her first alcohol, which is a fabulous way to wash down that Xanax she took, as she sat next to the Parent of the Year, also high, with a bottle of red wine on my tray.

I don’t really remember much after that. At some point, they collected the trays and dimmed the lights. At some later point, they turned up the lights and forced a moist package of banana bread on each of us. And then, there we were, Heathrow airport in London.  The return flight from Paris? Well, that, my friends, is a story for another day.

My point is, if you have to fly, fly first class or overseas or both. If not, take a Xanax. Don’t be scared to wash it down with a little bottle of wine. If a fifteen year old can do it, so can you.

Mise en Place

[Part two. If you read the last disclaimer, it still kind of applies, only this one isn't as gross for you squeamish types.]

After a few weeks of not thinking about my surgery, I now had to face it. Today was my pre-op appointment for my surgery tomorrow, an endometrial ablation.

The procedure is about as much fun as it sounds; the doctor inserts a device into my uterus to ablate, to destroy, my endometrial lining and thus hopefully eliminate a monthly, or in my case, more frequent than monthly shedding of my unused potential. Sometimes this is accomplished through burning, sometimes through freezing. In my case, it is a newer method that uses a tool to take measurements of your uterus before shooting a mesh liner to cover the entire inside of the uterus to burn off the lining. Think of a picklepicker that has the web shooting capability of Spiderman. The entire thing takes about five minutes if all goes well, and it doesn’t require general anesthesia, which means less recovery time. Sounds like a piece of cake, a piece of disgusting, burned, ablated cake, doesn’t it?

I usually see my doctor at a satellite office, but the surgery was to be performed at the main office near the hospital. I thought my pre op appointment was going to be there too, so I left a good forty minutes early since I don’t exactly live close to the hospital. I made it there in plenty of time, found decent parking, and walked into the office with fifteen minutes to spare, just enough to deep breathe my way to a lower blood pressure.

Except I was wrong. My pre op appointment wasn’t there; it was at the satellite office. Which meant I had to get back in the car and drive another forty minutes to get to the correct office. I practiced relaxation breathing techniques as I rushed across town, arriving fifteen minutes late and more than an hour after I left my house. It was an inconvenient mistake at most, but there was no way my blood pressure was going to be normal.

I worry a lot about my blood pressure, which is, of course, the best way to make it high.

Luckily, the office staff knew to expect me to come flying in all crazed-like. A nurse took me to a little triage room and took my blood pressure, which I nailed, then started asking me a bunch of questions about what kind of pain medicine I liked.

I have had a few surgeries in the past, and what I have learned from them is this: pain medication is not my friend. I’ve tried most of them, and experience has shown that if I swallow it, nine times out of ten, it’s going to come back up. I envy Rush Limbaugh his ability to develop an unhealthy relationship with pain meds.

I explained my predicament to the nurse, who assured me I would be just fine with lots of ibuprofen. I looked over the paperwork she gave me which said I was supposed to start taking 800 milligrams of the stuff at least three times a day two days before the surgery. So much for that. She handed me one prescription for a vaginal suppository that I had to get from a compounding pharmacy, and then followed that up with a list of the only three pharmacies in town that might possibly have it. I looked at my watch, thought about how I had time to get that medicine and also pick up my children from school, and asked what would happen if I couldn’t get it. She assured me I would be just fine, it just helps with the pain. She handed me another prescription, this one for a medicine to help relax my cervix.  Lastly, she handed me a prescription for one lonely Xanax, which I could have taken right about then. After telling me, again, it was all going to be just fine, she led me to an exam room to wait for my gynecologist.

My doctor breezed into the room and started reviewing my stack of prescriptions at light speed. She is a very competent doctor, but I swear she was a tornado in a past life. She comes in all blustery and leaves before you know what hits you. She explained how to use all my medicines in rapid fire. One pill goes into my vagina at bedtime. I take the other of the same one with my breakfast. I bring a Xanax with me to take along with my vaginal suppository.  The bad part was every time she said the word "vagina," she spread her legs a little bit and pointed between them, as if I wasn't quite sure where my vagina was.

I asked her about the suppository, since I just didn’t see how I was supposed to get it before 8:30 the following morning. She told me it was morphine and belladonna, but it would be okay if I didn’t have it. But breakfast I had to have, so make it a good one. Why? Because that’s too much medicine on an empty stomach, she told me. She then stressed the importance of me taking ibuprofen before I get there in the morning. I was beginning to think that this allegedly five minute easy procedure was going to be five minutes of pure hell.

As she left the room, I asked her how often she performed ablations. She said all the time. In fact, they are so easy, she never got to do hysterectomies anymore. I almost felt reassured. I grabbed my stack of prescriptions and paperwork and scooted out to the car to call the short list of compounding pharmacies. Lucky for me, one of them was only a twenty minute drive away and, lucky for me, had my suppository in stock.

I walked into the pharmacy, and it was like walking into 1960, except there was no lunch counter. I am pretty sure the items on the shelves were older than me, as was the dust that covered them. I talked to the pharmacist, who was the nicest, calmest lady in the history of drug stores. She looked at my prescriptions and then asked me if I had started taking my ibuprofen yet. I told her I had just come from my pre-op appointment, so I didn’t know I needed to until about thirty minutes ago. She just opened her eyes real wide and didn’t say a word.

“This is going to hurt, isn’t it,” I asked her.

“It shouldn’t be that bad,” she said unconvincingly.

While I waited for my medications, a few other people came into the store, all regulars and known to the pharmacist by name. They too looked like they had been coming here since at least 1960. I snuck out to the car to pop four Motrin and get that in my system, then went back inside to clarify some questions with the pharmacy technician, mainly which pill went in which orifice at which time. I had pills for my mouth. Pills for my vagina. Pills for bedtime. Pills for breakfast. And pills to take to the doctor’s office. No wonder it only took five minutes or so for the surgery. All the prep work was done before, by me.

I left the pharmacy and drove another thirty minutes to get in the car pool line in time to get my daughters from school. I stopped along the way to get some fast food, which I abhor, since I didn’t have time for lunch. I sat in my car eating salty chicken tenders and wondering how bad tomorrow was going to hurt. The afternoon felt like “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles,” a movie I hate more than any other. There are two kinds of people: those who love that movie, and me.

My doctor really should have given me an extra Xanax.