Wheels Up!

Here’s the second in what’ll likely be a series of posts about the trip I just took because I went on a week-long vacation in a different country, guys!!! (Emphasis very much my own.)

Until a mere few weeks ago, it’d been many, many years since I’d last graced an airport with my presence, let alone boarded a plane. In my pre-epilepsy era, I travelled frequently and with great gusto both far afield and less so. A subdural hematoma I sustained after exploratory brain surgery put a damper on that. Suddenly, there were a whole bunch of overwhelming variables to consider. Coping with everyday concerns took priority over pretty much everything else.

With greater neurological health, however, has come a greater desire to hit the road and expand my horizons. If you scan my 2024 posts, you’ll see/recall that my husband and I have approached our reacquaintance with travel methodically, beginning with a single night in a downtown hotel and building from there. Through a series of trips, we’ve tested the waters and gained confidence that we can tackle longer adventures.

If I remember correctly, it was after our first night out of the city that we decided that it was safe to start planning a—gasp!—vacation far enough away to necessitate a flight.

It was important that our first destination be North Carolina. It’s where my husband grew up, and it’s a second home to me, one of the few places I feel truly at ease. The idea also held symbolic weight since it’d represent our triumph over something that soundly defeated us back in the summer of 2016, when we were set to meet my parents-in-law at an NC beach. I’d recently convocated and had epilepsy surgery scheduled for late fall, and in this gap between one intense period and another, my husband and I really needed that trip, a chance to replenish our emotional stores. It wasn’t meant to be. Indeed, for frustrating travel-insurance-related reasons, we had to cancel—a responsible decision that I’m still a little bitter I was forced to make. Now that I’m more medically stable than I’ve been in a decade, though, I can enter the United States with the comfort of knowing that in the very small chance something goes awry, we won’t be burdened with a lifetime of medical debt. You better bet that I wasn’t going to wait long before figuring out how to take advantage of one of the many perks of managing to stay out of the hospital. As I’m sure we can all agree, being transported in the back of a speeding ambulance isn’t an ideal kind of frequent flying.

In retrospect, I was probably more confident about how I’d handle the flight than I had the right to be. After we booked our tickets and made accessibility arrangements with Air Canada, I promptly relegated practical travel logistics to the back of my mind, focusing instead on enjoying the summer. My biggest concern about the flight wasn’t, say, how I’d get on the plane but rather how I’d use the lavatory should the need arise. (My solution was to avoid drinking for hours before take-off. Do not recommend.)

Not to claim that anxiety didn’t creep in. Determined to give the task due diligence, I did extensive (internet) research and consulted my occupational therapist, as well as a friend who happens to be a flight attendant. Weighing the pros and the cons, and both grossly overestimating my abilities and failing to adequately take into account the extra-bad foot that I injured in an unfortunate power-chair accident, I concluded that I would use a cane and the aid of my husband and the seat backs to make my way from the door of the plane to my seat. This intuitively felt like definitely the right decision. Given the extent to which my intuition has betrayed me over the years, my unwarranted faith that I could avoid enplaning and deplaning with an aisle wheelchair should’ve been my first clue that the more appropriate option would be swallowing my pride and requesting a service that’s presumably offered for a reason.

As soon as we arrived at the gate, I realized that I had once again made a horrible mistake.

This is where whatever saint looks over those poor souls who commit travel blunders smiled down on me. By pure coincidence, there happened to be another wheelchair user preparing to board. A pair of employees stood by with a cute little chair much different from the torture device I’d imagined the aisle wheelchair would be, and the gate agent assured me that it’d be no problem for me to use it, too. The process was swift and painless.

In the air, I felt like a kid flying for the first time. Every thirty seconds or so, I leaned over and whispered I can’t believe this is actually happening can you this is actually happening we’re in a plane, see, see into my husband’s ear. I readily accepted an in-flight beverage and package of stale cookies, forgetting my own “don’t drink as to avoid having to pee” rule. We landed, I hopped on a second aisle wheelchair and transferred to my own chair, which was fully assembled and in one piece, and we made our way to baggage claim.

After stopping at the nearest bathroom, of course.