While we’re talking about being shot at… let’s just say that Iraq wasn’t any fun in 2003.
I was flying from Indonesia to Washington DC. I was sick with what turned out to by typhoid. After a layover in Singapore, I get on my very long flight to DC.
Stewardess: "Ladies and gentlemen, the captain has turned on the seatbelt sign, we are now taxiing …
Me: BARF BARF BAAAAAAAARF!
Guy next to me: Shit
Puddlejumper from Jakarta, Indonesia to points eastward in other islands within the archipelago. I was a young teenager at the time.
The turbulence on the trip was something I’ve never experienced before or since. :eek: Small plane, maybe 40 people tops. Everyone were very unhappy campers - we were bouncing up and down and all around like marbles on a water mattress during a major earthquake.
I prayed for death and then my dad, gawblessim, gave me some Dramamine. Whunk. Out like a light for the rest of the trip. Unfortunately, when I came to, I was not over the nausea, which had kept churning away merrily while I was too unconsicous to care. So I remember trying to throw up several times over the next few hours until we hit the hotel and I could pass out again for real.
An acquaintance of mine was on plane that had a refueling stop in Kuwait City in 1990, just as Saddam’s tanks rolled across the border. He eventually made it home several months later, via Baghdad.
I can’t really blame you for that. I mean, when I was coming to the desert our group of guys were treated horrible by the Air Force personnel, and we’re Air Force…going to Iraq…combat flyers who need to get in country. You’d think they would have been a little more careful.
Yeah, our major had a few words to say about that.
Just want you to know I’m sitting here laughing my ass off at this. I just have a vision of this scene in a comic strip with you saying BAAARF into an air sick bag, and the guy next to you calmly looking at you and saying “shit.”
BTW, I think the funniest sound effect for puking is BLAAARGH.
Terminus
Yikes! I’m surprised he made it through that. I saw the airport on March 2nd, 2 days after the Iraqis fled Kuwait. The Iraqis shot hell out of the airport, small-arm fire and holes from tank rounds all over the place. The facade looked like a colander. All things considered, your friend should play the lottery, frequently. 
Regards
Testy
Replace air sick bag with my lap and you have the picture. We literally were taxiing for take off on a 17 hour flight and I puked on myself. I stood up during the taxi to head to the john. BTW, when you do that the flight crew freaks out.
I stood up and they started yelling “SIR YOU NEED TO SIT DOWN, SIR!”
(sees I’m covered in puke and about to hurl some more): “right this way sir, let me get out of your way and unlock the toilet for you, take your time”
Later, they came around with breakfast and when they asked me if I wanted anything, the guy in the seat next to me was shaking his head NO NO NO.
I made a transatlantic flight sitting between a be-robed and bearded holy man of some kind who stank considerably and a woman who ordered fish as her special in-flight meal.
Phase 1 - Returning from Ukraine where we adopted our son, but were not yet allowed to bring him home. We had to change planes in Frankfort, and since it was cold, my wife wore a heavy, furry (but not fur) coat. The German guards insisted on spraying down the coat with some substance for some reason, and were waving their machine guns to get the point across. We barely made the flight, had another layover in DC, and ended up sleeping overnight in the terminal because our final leg to Atlanta was cancelled due to the weather. It was lousy, but we figured we were through the worst of it, and it wasn’t so bad because we are used to travelling. Which led to…
Phase 2 - The Suckening - 30 days later, late February, we are returning back from Ukraine with our new two-year old son, who has spent about three days with us at this point. We have only a single layover, in Amsterdam, and because we knew our window of time to get to the connecting flight was limited, we checked in our stroller with the luggage, and I would just carry my son, rather than fumble with the stroller. We get to the plane in time, and sit on the tarmac, and sit, and sit, for about 4 hours because Amsterdam was going through ‘their worst snowstorm in 40 years’. While we sat, they cut off the engines to save fuel, which made the plane hot, and that, combined with the very late hour in the evening, led to our new son, who spoke no English, to cry and scream from rashes that were developing all over him.
The plane had a doctor on board who looked at him and recommended we get him to a doctor in the airport asap. Finally, after those 4 hours, no flight was going to happen, so we get off, take him to the doctor where he gets prescribed a lotion, and then we need to sleep. The hotels are all booked, the chairs are all taken, so I take off my coat and make it into a ‘mattress’ for the boy to sleep on the floor. The wife uses her coat as a blanket for him, and we both got on either side of him and tried to sleep (apparently I succeeded and scared off some Japanese folks sleeping nearby with my snoring). The next morning and the wife gets in line for 3 hours to get new tickets while I try (and fail) to score food for us because the banks in the airport are closed and I have only US and Ukranian cash, none of which was any good as far as I could tell.
Not a big deal considering some of the stories here, but I once flew an air bus (I think it was ATA) next to some Indian/Pakistani family who decided to bag their heavily curried lunch.
I freaking HATE the smell of curry. Hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it.
Hate it.
This past July 4th I was headed to Colorado for a wedding, following by a couple of days my family who’d already gone up. The morning of the flight I’d laid in bed awhile, not really feeling too good, kinda sick to my stomach.
Once at the airport I ate a cheeseburger, thinking something greasy might make me feel better and, if nothing else, just to get something in my stomach. It didn’t work. As we boarded and taxied to the runway, I really started to feel pretty nauseous. Unfortunately, my seat was midway up the plane and a window seat. Were I to get sick, bailing toward the bathroom wasn’t going to be easy. Then the guy next to me turned all Chatty Cathy. “Where are you from? Where are you going? Where’d you go to school? What do you do for a living? How big are your kneecaps?” Normally, I’d humor him but feeling so poorly all my answers just kinda sounded like “Urp.”
As soon as we took off, even before the seat belt light was off I excused myself and headed for the rear. The flight attendant, after reminding me no one really was to be out of their seat yet, could see distress written all over my face and let me stand in the rear galley and nurse a ginger ale (ail?).
I kept hoping I could just get sick, because then you always feel better afterward. Finally, that time came, I stepped into the bathroom and gave back everything I had. It didn’t work. I kept getting worse. I now was feeling sicker than I’d ever felt in my life, kind of a blinding nausea and here I was perched over a public shitter 30,000 feet in the air and hours from touchdown. Plus I knew soon other people were going to be using that toilet for other things and that the next time(s) I stuck my head down there it might be doubly unpleasant.
For the next couple of hours I stood back in the galley, periodically getting sick and the three flight attendants became increasingly concerned. I was without question the sickest I’d ever been in my life and really began to wonder if I might pass out on the flight. I was aware my thinking was becoming unclear, the questions they asked became harder to answer.
As we finally began to descend, the FAs asked a guy seated near the rear to move to my original seat (the plane was full) so I could sit near the bathroom. I couldn’t even do that though and, although it was against all regulations, when we landed I was in the bathroom again, bent over the toilet, locked in dry heaves and covered with sweat.
I don’t remember everything that happened, although pretty quickly the Captain of the plane was back there with me and over the intercom they were asking people to depart quickly or to clear a path. He asked me some questions then literally carried/drug me up to First Class where they stretched me out. By this time a bunch of paramedics had come on the plane, as well as a high-ranking Continental representative.
One paramedic, concerned that my breathing was rapid and that I was becoming unresponsive said he was taking over decision making for me and called for an ambulance. I remember the Captain telling everyone all preps for the next flight were off until I was taken care of. It truly was the weirdest feeling, just being sicker than a dog and really too weak to even give a tinker’s damn about all the fuss being made, something that normally would have mortified me.
As they loaded me on a stretcher and wheeled me past all these passengers waiting to board, I wondered what was going through their minds, what on that flight made this passenger soooo sick?
They put me in the ambulance and as soon as we start to move with me looking rearward… woof, here it all comes up again… not that I really had anything left to give.
About 3 hours later, after an emergency room drama w/ cardiac monitors, anti-nausea injections and a bunch of IVs full of Lord knows what I’m feeling relatively better, still like crap but at least ambulatory.
A cab to get my bags, I rent a car and am on the road and wondering just what in the hell just happened to me. Whatever it was, a hearty thank you to all the nice folks at Continental Airlines, the paramedics at Denver International and the doctors at the Aurora hospital.
Oh yeah…the bill. :eek: Thank goodness for insurance.
Lieu - what the heck did you have?
lieu, was it food poisoning?
They narrowed it down to either some bug or the onset of diabetes. The hospital did find some biologic component and a high blood sugar count. Along with the IVs they gave me a bunch of antibiotics to stay on for a week or so. Subsequent blood sugar tests have been normal, so I’m guessin’ just some very virulent bug.
That’s interesting, that you couldn’t get anyone to take USD in Amsterdam. You’d think they’d get a lot of it.
Ale, although “ail” is somewhat appropriate here too…
BTW, that was a hell of a story! This really captured that ER-night feel for me:
I wish I didn’t know what that felt like!
I remember the Captain asking me “Did you bump your head?” because there was a red spot on my forehead. It was from being perched over the toilet when the plane landed… my head came down and bounced off the seat. Kinda funny now but at the time I was thinking “ohgodohgodohgod…”
The night before, there was a grad school party and having gotten there five minutes after the appointed time, we were faced with no food left. I decided it would be good to drink copious amounts of gin anyway.
Hungover me heads onto the plane from Chicago to NYC and am dry heaving next to a pleasant concerned family who thought I was sick from flying. I played it off and made it through that leg. Next leg? The poor same family in the row with me. :o
But a friend just told me about how her plane had to take “emergency evasive action” (i.e., a nosedive with power cut) to avoid a midair collision. Holy shit. I’m glad she’s around to tell of it.
Wow. Nothing nearly as exciting here.
My worst flight consisted of a 3-hour long journey from Detroit to Seattle, being stared at the ENTIRE time by a little girl dressed entirely in pink and carrying a plastic *NSYNC backpack. She was sitting across the aisle and a little forward of me, so she actually had to physically turn her body in the chair so that she could stare at me properly. It only took about half an hour before I started thinking uncharitable thoughts about her, and by the time we landed my sister (who had been sitting next to me) was physically restraining me from saying anything.