Sunday, September 13, 2009

Texas Day One

As promised I’m resuming my daily blogging while I’m here in Texas for medical treatment. You wouldn't believe me if I told you about all the fiascoes that befell us. Just to get from California to Texas. Reminds me of one of those Lucy and Ethel madcap adventures you’d see on a late nite I Love Lucy re-run. From our plane departing from LAX 40 minutes late,( thus causing us to arrive at Dallas 40 minutes late), to only being offered beverage service ONCE with no food for purchase offered, not even a pouch of peanuts! (Keep in mind this flight was a three hour flight).


We arrive at Dallas, tired, cranky and hungry, (I had been up since 1:30 in the morning and my caregiver 2:30 to make the drive to LAX in time to catch the 6:50 am plane). Not to mention our arrival was 40 minutes late. (We only had an hour layover). We had to get to a completely different terminal to catch our connection that was leaving in 20 minutes.

So, we did what anyone rational and in a wheelchair would do, asked for help. Only to have one of the drivers for the disabled carts refuse to transport my manual WHEELCHAIR, which in turn caused us to miss our connecting flight.

Our second, second connecting flight was then changed THREE times due to mechanical problems with a plane, mechanical problems with a gate, and frankly I can’t remember or care less what the third reason was. We go to board the flight from Dallas to Corpus Christi (FINALLY) only to discover that they had assigned my caregivers seat five ROWS behind me. (Before you ask, YES they knew we were traveling together and she was a medical caregiver). At this point I wanted to throw a huge hissy fit in the middle of the terminal. I had had enough of flying the airline “doing what it does best” as its slogan says. Fortunately, calmer heads prevailed (actually I think it was a young male airline clerk who was looking at two middle aged women wearing expressions very similar to the one his mother likely wore when he had done something wrong as a child. He caved).

FINALLY, we’re up in the air…..what else could possible go wrong. NEVER ask what could go wrong. To make a long story short because I’ve now been up 17 hours……it involved the airport police in Corpus Christi, a clerk with a BAD attitude and MY personal wheelchair that had been broken in the cargo hold and two MORE hours of our time. Nuff said?


2 comments:

kmilyun said...

Wow what a fiasco , ,,,

My one and only flight change in Texas resulted in the airline clerk calling airport security - guess they thought irate customer=threat=lets call the badges in LOL

and all we wanted was some help with getting the baggage to our new connecting flight because they got us in an hour late.

WE ended up with KRP lugging four large suitcases through the terminal trying to make the flight on time WHEW

Hope the wheelchair is fixable and the rest of your trip goes better and the treatment goes well.

Jan

Herrad said...

Hi Kimberly,

What a trip, like Jan I too hope your wheelchair has been fixed.
Hope your Texas trip is good.
Love,
Herrad