browser life

Leaving Sioux Falls on Sunday was pretty uneventful, except for a rude check-in person who decided to pick a fight with me as to whether my wheelchair was baggage. Dan was issued a pass to accompany me to the gate so an airline employee wouldn't have to push my chair. I just managed to purchase a bottle of water (can't bring my own through security anymore) at the gift shop before it closed.

The flight left on time. The guy who sat next to me was nice enough. It was a very bumpy ride, though, and the kid across from me who screamed during the entire flight gave me one hell of a headache.

Things rapidly deteriorated once I reached Denver. I waited until all the other passengers got off the plane, knowing that it can take some time for them to retrieve a wheelchair. But it still had not arrived by the time the other wheelchair passenger got her ride (she was just using one provided by the airline), and I was asked to leave the plane so that the passengers for the next flight could board.

I got to the gate and told one of the people at the desk that I was waiting for my wheelchair to be unloaded from the plane. I was told it would probably take awhile, so I replied that I would find a seat at the gate while I waited. In the meantime, the airplane I had just been on boarded passengers for a flight to Knoxville, and I kept an eye out for any family members but saw no one.

After the flight was boarded, I asked again if there was any word on my wheelchair. I was told someone should be along soon. I was pretty much ignored until I'd been waiting about an hour.

Finally, an airline employee strolled up pushing one of their wheelchairs. I asked where mine was. The employee said he didn't know, that he'd just been instructed to bring one of theirs, so I asked a different desk worker, and she had no idea either but said she'd look into it.

By this time, I had to pee really badly, and I begged the guy who'd brought the airline chair to wheel me over to the restroom. There was a line, and I asked him to wait outside the entrance to the bathroom with the chair. But when I finally got out of the restroom, the employee and the chair were gone, leaving me to hobble back to the gate by myself!

I was worried about where my relatives might be as I had expected someone to meet me. I asked the woman who was supposed to be tracking down my wheelchair where family members might be waiting if they hadn't met me at the gate. She didn't know and suggested that I use a paging telephone, a decent idea except that the nearest one was further away than I could walk!

The journey back from the restroom had left me feeling weak, so I polished off what little food I had in my bag (my choices are pretty limited since I couldn't carry liquids or anything requiring refrigeration). Meanwhile, two more flights boarded and took off from that gate. I had now been waiting TWO hours without my wheelchair or any way to find out where my family members were.

I was exhausted and in agony and was on the verge of tears when my sister, who is seven months pregnant, marched up. She said that because of increased security, no one had been allowed to meet me at the gate, but that after waiting two hours, she had talked someone into it. It would have been nice if an airline employee had informed me of that.

My sister had brought an airline supervisor with her who promised to get the situation taken care of. After waiting some more, we were told that the wheelchair was in baggage claim and that an employee would take me there in one of the airline's chairs. By the time we got to that part of the airport, three hours had passed since I'd landed.

The wheelchair was nowhere to be seen, but my dad and brother-in-law were there with my luggage. We got in line at baggage claim. The line did not move at all.

Another airline employee happened to overhear us talking about my wheelchair and came over and told us that we were probably in the wrong place to find it. He pushed me to another section where the supervisor of baggage claim was. We must have made quite a sight, an exhausted woman in a wheelchair with three family member streaming along behind.

I explained the situation to that supervisor. She told me that a wheelchair wouldn't be in baggage claim. She got on the phone and started making calls.

By this point, we were at the three and a half hour mark, and I was so wiped out that I couldn't think. Guess where the damned wheelchair was? Back at the GATE!

It would have taken another hour to get my wheelchair out to where I was, so we agreed to use the airline's chair to get me to my dad's vehicle and have the airline deliver mine out at my dad's house the next morning. By this time, it was 10pm, and I hadn't had any supper yet. My dad ended up taking me to the grocery store where they have electric carts so I could buy some eggs and cream of rice and some other things.

Hence, it was around midnight that I was stumbling around the kitchen at my dad's house trying to find bowls and utensils and such to cook my supper. Luckily, I can pretty much cook eggs in my sleep because that's essentially what I was doing. I'm supposed to stay upright three hours after my last meal of the day, but I had to cave in at 2am (3am in the time zone I'd just come from) and go to bed.

I did not sleep well at all. I was quite nauseous from my disrupted meal schedule and was barely able to keep the eggs down. I was also in severe pain from head to toe and got nasty foot cramps all night long.

My wheelchair was supposed to be delivered to my dad's house by 10am, so I dragged my pathetic butt out of bed and up the stairs and waited...and waited...and waited. I called the airline and after being on hold for half an hour was told it would be delivered by 3:30. So I read my book, played a video game, watched tv with my niece who was being babysat by my dad and stepmother, and waited some more.

About 2:30, we got a message from the delivery guy saying that he'd been to the house and no one was home, which was a lie as the dogs would have barked up a storm had anyone come by. My dad called the guy back and was told that because he'd already headed to Greeley, he wouldn't be able to come back by until 8pm! Then we got another call about 7:30 saying it would be about two more hours.

So it was about 9:30pm when the dogs sounded the alarm, startling the delivery guy so badly that he almost fell backwards down the stairs! But he had my wheelchair at last, all in one piece. What sucked was that I'd wasted one-third of my trip waiting for it.

Tuesday was my appointment with my rheumatologist. He was quite surprised to see me, and even more surprised by the trouble I was having with the doctors in Sioux Falls. He said there was absolutely no reason to doubt his diagnosis of Sjogren's as lip biopsies don't produce false positives.

He said he was extremely burned out on filing out the same disability paperwork over and over for long-term disability insurance companies and Social Security as he had already told them multiple times that I was permanently disabled. He said that even if there was a cure for either the Sjogren's or the fibromyalgia, I would have to be cured of both in order to improve enough to be able to work again, which is not likely. But he agreed to provide the documentation and prescriptions I needed.

Unfortunately, since he is from back east, he doesn't know of any rheumatologists in Minneapolis, Omaha, or the Mayo Clinic that he could personally recommend. He strongly urged me to find someone, though, as he was uncomfortable with the idea of me not being monitored by a rheumatologist at least every six months (I was going once every three months when I lived in Denver), and he knows I can't afford to fly to Denver more than once a year. But now that I have some recent documentation to give the long-term disability insurance company, I can take a few months to find a rheumatologist closer to Sioux Falls.

After some bloodwork, my appointment was complete. Since my sister and her husband were coming over to my dad's later and they were gonna have pizza (which I can't have on my gluten free diet), I asked my dad to swing by Wendy's so I could grab some chili. Finally, some family time that didn't involve hanging around an airport.

Once we'd finished our respective suppers, I got to look at ultrasound pix of my sister's baby. I was astounded at how clear they were and how much they can zoom up these days. One had an outline of a foot that was so close you could see every single toe; another showed the baby with the arms curled under the head in a sleeping position.

After my sister and brother-in-law left, I watched the news with my dad and stepmother. On it, there was a story that the space shuttle Atlantis would be flying over Colorado in about an hour and would be visible to the naked eye. I was skeptical I'd be able to see anything with all the airline traffic lights in the sky, but I stood on the deck at the appointed time, and sure enough, there were two very faint but solid white dots traveling in a straight line from the northwest to the southeast, disappearing over the horizon after about two minutes.

The next day was the last one already. The airline had had a nationwide computer meltdown that morning that either stranded or delayed 200,000 passengers, but my flight was still listed as on-time because it wasn't scheduled to leave until 3:45. Still, we made sure I headed over to the airport with plenty time to spare in case things were chaotic.

Good thing we did. Every single parking space at the airport was full, and you're not supposed to park in the drop-off location for any more time than to unload (more security restrictions), so there was no way for my stepmother to get me in my wheelchair to the check-in desk. We flagged down a cop and told him our situation, and he radioed into the airport to get someone to escort me inside right away.

Luckily, Denver International Airport has reinstated curbside check-in, so for a $2 fee, I was able to take care of my baggage while waiting for an airline escort. A bonus that I didn't know about was that if an airline employee escorts you in, they get to butt you up to the head of the line for security screening. Awesome because otherwise, it would have been about an hour wait.

Another good reason for arriving early was that my plane was leaving from gate #86! The airport extended the concourse a few months ago to a total of 95 gates. There were dozens of wheelchair passengers besides me because the concourse looks to be over a mile long.

The downside of being brought to the gate by an airline employee is that they have no obligation to hang around once you're there, which means if you need to pee or to get some water, you're on your own! Luckily, the restroom was somewhat close, and there was a restaurant selling bottled water about three gates away, so while maneuvering the chair to each of these was quite painful and exhausting, it was not impossible. I don't steer very well due to incoordination and go slower than most people walk, but I didn't whack into anyone, so I consider my ventures to be a success.

Unfortunately, while I was in the bathroom, the airline decided to move my flight to gate #95! I didn't even know about it because there were literally hundreds of stranded passengers lining the concourse and it was so noisy that I couldn't make out anything that was said on the PA system. I wheeled out of the restroom to find gate #86 empty, which was bewildering as there was no way I had the strength to propel myself to the end of the concourse.

Luckily, the woman who had originally checked me in at the gate hadn't left yet, and she volunteered to get me to the new location. So I still got there on time and didn't hold anyone up. But I was relieved to take off without any further chaos.

Home again, home again, jiggity jog.