Mute Articulations

A most unfortunate, yet interesting ailment has recently befallen me, and I have had no choice but to reflect upon its consequences (and of course, solicit the attention of my dear readers).

Inevitably this time of year, on long trips across the country trapped in a steel tube filled with
germ decimators  passengers, we flight attendants tend to pick up what is known as "the crud."

This consists from a varying list of symptoms, including but not limited to: cough, runny nose, fever, chest congestion and sinus discomfort. However, this time another symptom has cropped up which I literally cannot explain.

To put it more plainly, I cannot speak. That is not to say I have been struck dumb like the story of the disciple Paul on the road to Damascus, but rather my voicebox has become afflicted with laryngitis.

If you can imagine the sound of a bagpipe left out in the rain and played by a goat, this is very similar to the noise created when I try to converse. Out of pity and respect for the ears of my friends and colleagues, I am left with no other alternative than to respond with hand gestures, nodding, winking and interpretive dance rather than utter an offensive note.

The resulting silence has given me ample opportunity to reflect on what it means to be mute in a profession which requires an incredibly amount of communication.

• Darcy asks me questions, only to remember after a long awkward pause (to my great vexation) that I can't answer.
• A flight attendant assumed I was painfully taciturn when she asked, on my flight to Charlotte, whether this was my final destination or not.
• A police officer in the employee parking lot thought I was terrified when he asked me how my evening was, and I just gaped at him.
• A very annoyed traveler in the Charlotte airport blustered past me after inquiring which was the fastest way to get to concourse C.
• I would be completely unable to play a competitive game of "Marco Polo"
• I've seriously considered learning sign language, and have a much deeper empathy for Helen Keller's lot in life. The woman was a saint.

We really don't know just how much we rely on our vocal chords to relate with other humans more than when we can't utter a sound. It calls into question our intelligence, empathy, and even our self esteem when we can't communicate verbally. If it weren't for my ability to read and write, I would be completely trapped in a silent, white-washed world where I was a second-class citizen; capable of watching but not interacting, influencing.

If I got called on a trip tomorrow, I would be powerless to do my job; much of which requires me to greet, answer questions, brief passengers, and issue instruction.

I ponder the fate of early humanoids who first formed language to share with each other. How painful it must have been until actual words were shared and understood!

I plan on going to the doctor first thing in the morning and getting some blessed antibiotics to end my silent misery. Thanks for listening....with your eyeballs.

To see the original location for this post, click here

Winged Whimsy Weekly

Well, its that time again where I share with you my favorite snapshots from the week. I confess, some weeks I dont have too much of a camera bug, but I think I still got a few good ones.

But first, I'm going to whine a little about Christmas. One of the unfortunate side effects of my job is if I don't fly very much, I still get paid a salaried amount, but without any of the nice per diem pay for overnights on trips. In addition, I don't have any opportunities to get money from crew cash (the credit card applications we get paid $50 each for on acceptance). So, my upcoming paycheck looks pretty pathetic to say the least. What's worse is normally the check on the 15th is our big boy, which we rely on for financial legroom (read: Christmas presents for others).

I realize I'm complaining when I get to sit around, do practically nothing all month and still get paid a salary, but there definitely is a trade-off you know? I'd rather be working my butt off and making a decent check than sitting bored out of my mind in Charlotte and getting bupkis.

*sigh*

With all that aside, I had a fabulous week (and by week I mean month) of doing next to nothing.

Darcy got a Twinkie making machine. He mixed all the secret ingredients (for the Twinkie and the filling) and made some delicious treats which we took to a holiday party. We're doing the same thing for another party we're going to tonight and it should be just as fabulous!

The results of our toils: fresh, homemade Twinkies. Believe me, they're even tastier than the manufactured kind!

On a shopping trip to Bed, Bath and Beyond, Darcy became acquainted with the likes of a massaging chair. I was afraid he'd never move again.

Can you see what those clever BB&B employees spelled out? Made me giggle.

On one of the miraculous days that I actually flew to Philly, I saw real live snow on the ground. As a bonafide Southern girl, this is practically a phenomenon. Exclamations were made. Unfortunately I couldn't jump out of the plane and go make a snow angel.

Holiday dinner and gift exchange at Mt. Vernon Restaurant with old friends

Sky Snippets: Medical Emergencies On A Plane

image courtesy of MSN.com

Before I begin, I'd like to clarify that I am not medically trained and have very little knowledge of how to save a life beyond the standard CPR course we were given in initial training. A great deal of responding to an isolated emergency effectively is being at the right place at the right time with a pinch of luck and some quick thinking. There are people far better suited to help folks who need immediate medical attention than I, but at 35,000 feet in the air sometimes the flight attendant is a passenger's best hope. In other words, I don't want to take more credit than is due.

With that said, I've had 2 serious medical emergencies on my flights. On the first, I was working the flight, but on the second I was just a passenger commuting back to my base in Charlotte.

The first time, an elderly gentleman had a heart attack. His wife frantically pushed the call button on the overhead panel. I was not the first flight attendant to respond. The first one immediately called the Captain to notify him of the emergency situation incase an emergency landing may be necessary. The Captain calls Medlink (the doctor service providing advice and remote care to flights), and the second flight attendant besides myself decides to station himself outside the door near the flight deck incase the old man is faking us out in order to create "a distraction from a terrorist attempt." I still think this was kind of silly (this was an old white guy who joked with me as he got on the plane about how to make a "pine soda" with a toothpick and water), but they thought it was necessary.

Once I figured out what had happened (the first flight attendant, in her anxiety, forgot to do an ALL-CALL and let me know at the back what was going on) I grabbed the AED, and asked the first flight attendant to help me carry the gentleman to the back galley so he could lay flat (there was NO way I could carry him by myself and yes, normally I would not lay someone on a probably-not-terribly-sanitary galley floor but let's remember this was an emergency).

After we got the gentleman on the floor, I ascertained that he did not have a pulse and was not breathing. I told the other flight attendant that I was going to begin chest compressions before removing his shirt/chest hair and using the AED. She protested, because at his age, she thought I might break a rib. I was kind of confused at her response, because I felt it was safe to assume he'd rather have a broken rib than be, you know, dead.

I began chest compressions. We're taught to do 2 rounds of 30 chest compressions, with mouth-to-mouth breaths in between. The gentleman "came back" in the middle of the 2nd round of compressions. It was the most surreal feeling...to realize I had made a difference in this man's life....perhaps even the difference of whether or not his wife would have left the plane a widow.  He seemed confused and very exhausted. We alerted the captain that the gentleman had come back to consciousness, and we landed as soon as possible to hand him off to paramedics.

The second time, I was practically asleep, about 30 minutes from landing in Charlotte. Its a short flight, and I usually try to either read or take a nap (sometimes a combination of both) on the way back. On the little CRJ's that take me to and from my beloved home, there is only 1 flight attendant on board, and usually I'll introduce myself as a fellow FA when I board. This girl on our flight couldn't have been older than 18 or 19, and she looked brand new.
Suddenly I see someone pressing the FA call button frantically, and I see our FA run to the row of passengers where the commotion is coming from. She looks very worried, and runs to the back and grabs the AED and PSK (passenger service kit).

She takes a look at a passenger (who I cannot see) and motions for me to come up. At this point I'm thinking....uh oh. Either a passenger is really angry and she needs some backup in diffusing it or someone is in trouble.
"This lady isn't breathing," she says, "I'm going to notify the captain and see if we can land in Knoxville."

"Did you check her pulse? " I ask, almost like a robot.

She had not. I do so, and the lady most definitely has a pulse. However, it's true that she isn't breathing and her face is almost a purpleish color. The flight attendant didn't want to touch the lady; too afraid to do something wrong and make it worse. However, I was of the opinion (given the fact that she was blue in the face and gurgling ominously) that if we waited much longer she probably would pass out and/or die from lack of oxygen. It was around that time that I noticed she had the kind of chain around her neck that dog tags are held on, and I remembered from training that sometimes people with specific medical needs or allergies wear identification. Sure enough, she had notification that she had a severe nut allergy. While I didn't see anything of the nut variety in the vicinity, I did notice a half eaten bag of Chex mix. To this day, I'm not sure if this was the culprit, but it was enough for me to ask the flight attendant to grab the lady's purse and see if there was an EPI pen.

Yep. She had one. I told the flight attendant to take the epi pen and use it on her inner thigh, but she wasn't sure how to use the epi pen. Neither was I, but I had a basic idea of how it worked, and I removed the cap and stabbed her. Within a few minutes, the lady's natural color returned to her face and she relaxed. We were able to make it to Charlotte and get some immediate medical attention to her after that.

Here are a few tips I came up with in retrospect if you ever run into an emergency aboard a plane. Again, I'm no professional, but some of these tips definitely helped me in a pinch and the rest are things I WISH I'd thought of.

• You can't be afraid to do your job. Communicate the problem to the Captain and the other flight attendants, but trust your training. If no one else is helping, do something. It may be the difference between a passenger's life or death.
• Trust your instincts. If you a passenger and your neck hairs bristle and you get an ominous premonition that something is wrong, check it out. A lot of times the passenger may not be able to let you know they are not ok.
• See if there are any medical personnel aboard to help out. In both my cases, there were not any to be had, but in most cases there will be a doctor, nurse, paramedic or even medical assistant available.
• A lot of times, people are nervous when they travel and will bring medications, EPI pens, identification tags, etc. Look for these if there is a problem. It may give you a valuable (and time saving) insight into the emergency situation.
• Refer to the manual under emergency situations if something is happening that you can't immediately identify. They have good descriptions of different medical conditions/reactions and clues to figure out which one it might be.

As always, good luck, keep your wits about you and you just might make a difference!

This post can be found at its original location here

An Unexpected Roadtrip

Grandmother and I this Thanksgiving

In a job with infinite (read: free)  logistical possibilities, one would think it would be easy to get home for the holidays.

Wrong.

Maybe if you’ve worked for your airline for 25+ years you can rest assured that time with loved ones won’t be impeded, but as a new hire flight attendant you’re told not to make plans. As I’ve mentioned before, everything is rewarded based on seniority and this most definitely includes times off. Since my airline has been hiring like the dickens this year, my seniority as a reserve has skyrocketed and I’m pretty much able to get the time off I want every time.

But November and December are a different kind of animal.

Not only does everything want Christmas off, they want New Years Eve and Day too. And let’s not forget Thanksgiving.

I decided to be “smart” and not even bid Thanksgiving off. Why set myself up for disappointment, you know? I told myself it would be best to let people with kids and husbands get successful bids for holidays off and I’d just be the bigger person and celebrate it at some other point in time but not actually on date(s) that the Hallmark cards and Seasonal Sales tell us.

I managed to keep this cavalier, up-beat attitude until my mother casually mentioned that she and my father would be traveling to middle Tennessee to visit my 91 year old grandmother for Thanksgiving. (For those of you just tuning in, Darcy and I had a lovely visit with her in August, which I documentedin this post). 99.9% of the time, we spend Thanksgiving in Chattanooga and cook dinner around 2 and are done eating by 4. We then turn on a football game and drift in and out of consciousness for the rest of the day.

When I heard this news, I was really depressed. My little optimistic veneer of “oh it doesn’t matter” vanished and I realized how few Thanksgivings might be left to get to visit Grandma. In addition, when I found out I would be on a trip to Las Vegas for Turkey Day, a city entirely dedicated to superficial fanfare, I dreaded missing out on quality time with my family even more.

Then something amazing happened.

I was sitting in my hotel room in Orlando, bawling to Darcy about how much I missed everyone back home, and planning to meet up with an old college acquaintance who happened to be in Vegas on a business trip, when I got a call from Scheduling. Apparently some flight attendant who was also in Orlando had gotten sick and they needed someone to take their place on an early flight to Philly the next day. What this meant for me was I would not go to Vegas, but get paid for the rest of my trip (2 days worth) to fly to Philly and then go home.

Translation: I was given a PAID opportunity to go home and spend time with my family.

This turned out to be easier said than done, however. The closest airport to my grandmother’s home is Nashville, and I searched all possible flights from Philly to Nashville. As it turned out, the last flight to Nashville that day would leave 30 minutes before I even arrived in Philly. Big bummer.

A few quick searches showed me the last flight from Charlotte to Nashville would leave before I could get from Philly to Charlotte as well. I tried everything I could think of. Philly to Washington DC to Nashville? Nope. Philly to Charlotte to Chattanooga and then drive to Nashville? Too late. It began to seem like nothing would work out after all. I called my dad, with a heavy heart, and explained the situation to him.

“Why not check Philly to Knoxville?” he asked, after a moment’s thought.

It seemed like a long shot, but sure enough, there was exactly one flight from Philly to Knoxville that would leave about 40 minutes after I got there.

“But you’d have to drive to Knoxville and then drive all the way to Grandmas. That would be like 6 hours of driving for you instead of 2.5.”

I could hear my dad smiling on the other end of the phone.

“Honey, I would drive much farther than that if it meant getting to see you. I love you, you know that.”

I’m pretty sure what came out of my mouth next wasn’t English; mainly unintelligible sobs of joy and relief. I love my dad. He is seriously the best father I could ever ask for, and in that moment I savored the real meaning of giving thanks. A holiday like Thanksgiving was about the unpleasant sacrifice our ancestors made to be together in a new home. In recent months, my life has been a sort of pilgrim-like existence…..wandering hither and thither, trying to figure out where I belong in this big, goofy world.

That conversation with my dad taught me that I may be a vagabond right now, but my home is most definitely with them. It always has been and always will be. It doesn’t matter where I am. Like some invisible, unbreakable string, our hearts are linked together and the sacrifices we are willing to make to be with each other are both unconditional and extensive. I am so, so, so beyond grateful for this gift.

Dad and I had a fantastic roadtrip together, wherein we tried to get some T-Day vittles at every single Cracker Barrel from Knoxville to Dickson, TN. And every single time but the last attempt (at around 6 pm), there was no room for one more vehicle at any one of the restaurants. It was hilarious (and a very profitable day for anyone who happens to own a franchise!)

My time with grandmother was priceless. She’s still her spunky, wise, adorable self, and I got to spend hours talking and catching up. I also got to watch Dr. Who with my aunt Betty, and walk all around the 30 acres of property. Tennessee really is beautiful beyond compare (not that I’m biased or anything).

My advice to those constantly traveling this holiday season? Even if you can’t physically be with the people you love, take time to call them and let them know you care. Life is short, and even more so when most of it is spent commuting. Slow down for a minute and savor the people who remember you when you’re gone.

To see this post in its original source, click here.

Winged Whimsy Weekly

Another outrageously long  highly anticipated couple of weeks  month  amount of time has passed since my last smattering of photos from my flight attending life.

You'll have to forgive my tardiness, as I have to import the photos directly from my phone to my email, and sometimes even steal an especially good snapshot from friends. Then, sometimes wordpress takes issue with the size of the photo, so I have to carefully go back through and reduce them all to the same size and ensure they upload. Then, I make sure they're atleast somewhat in chronological order. It's a process and I'm working on it.

I hope the wait is worth it.

[caption id="attachment_782" align="alignnone" width="642"] Playing Pathfinder (a version of Dungeons and Dragons) at Darcy's house. While waiting my turn I got creative and stacked the dice.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_783" align="alignnone" width="642"] I made a new friend! Bryanna is an exceptionally cool lady! We connected instantly over our love of trivia, Sex and the City and bellydance.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_790" align="alignnone" width="642"] ZOINKS! Look at that incredibly handsome young man sporting a bow tie! A friend referred to this look as "Orville Redenbacher's love child".[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_784" align="alignnone" width="642"] layover in Orlando right before Thanksgiving. It was really nice to get away from the cold for awhile![/caption]

[caption id="attachment_787" align="alignnone" width="642"] I had my first experience at Denny's! I tried Bilbo's Breakfast from the Hobbit themed menu.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_785" align="alignnone" width="642"] I got to visit my grandmother in Lyles for Thanksgiving. The way I got the holiday weekend off was kind of a miracle. More on this later.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_791" align="alignnone" width="642"] Watching our friends The Molly Maguires play in Chattanooga at one of our favorite bar's: The Honest Pint. Gotta love having a Guiness and listening to good music![/caption]

[caption id="attachment_795" align="alignnone" width="642"] Belle and I volunteered at United Way for their Angel Tree event. Basically we helped sort toys for needy children. It was so much fun, and our group kept us laughing the entire time![/caption]

[caption id="attachment_796" align="alignnone" width="642"] Blast from the past![/caption]