Skip to main content

The One Where I Nearly Didn’t Get On The Plane






It was the afternoon before I was due to fly to London Heathrow, where I had a hotel booked near Terminal 3 so that I could catch my 8:00 AM Virgin Atlantic flight to Montego Bay the next morning. I was finishing my packing when I noticed that my neck was itching. By dinner time I had fully broken out in hives.

It got progressively worse through the night. By the time I got up at 6:00 AM, I was shaking all over from the heat on my skin against the cold of the morning.

Despite dosing up on all the antihistamine tablets I could find, by the time I was at the Premier Inn at T3 I was not only feeling terrible, but panic was setting in. That night I phoned my husband, who pleaded with me not to go. Meanwhile, my sister was kicking herself because on my last visit to Italy only a couple of weeks before, she had given me a supply of essential medicines, including antibiotics to take to Jamaica, but no cortisone tablets, which she had in the house and which would have almost certainly cleared the hives very quickly.

I considered my options, which were pretty grim on a New Year’s Eve Sunday evening, when the only chance to see a doctor would have been a trip to A&E. Should I call my travel insurance and see if I should start a claim? By that point the hives were clearing on one part of my body only to move to the next available bit of real estate. I was itching like hell and freaking out because Jamaica is the last place you want to find yourself in if you need medical care.

It was almost 11 PM when my friend H, who was flying with me the next day, phoned me. In her other-wordly calm, reassuring voice, she talked me off the proverbial ledge. She said she just knew that I would be ok, but she would pack some extra long sleeve clothing for me so that I could cover up. ‘But I’m three times the size of you’, I protested. ‘They’re stretchy’, H said.

And so I got on the plane the next day. Let me tell you, a 10-hour flight is torture when the inside of your feet and ankles itch like hell. Unsurprisingly, I got very little sleep - and I’m the kind of person who is out the moment they fasten the seat belt. 

I landed in Jamaica still itching and with a basic plan of going to see the resort nurse the next morning. But miracles do happen and by the next morning, I had a feeling that the worst had passed, and, as H. had predicted, the hives gradually cleared, leaving me with large purple bruises on my shins. ‘You can cover those up with make-up’, H said, exultantly. 

No make-up was needed in the end - by Pictures Day my legs looked almost normal. 

I learnt a few lessons from the experience:

  1. Always keep a supply of cortisone tablets.
  2. Never again travel over New Year’s Eve/New Year’s Day.
  3. Travel with a friend like H.


Before flying to London
The night before Jamaica
On the mend


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hanson Day 2019: a Recap

Registration To everyone’s surprise, registration opened before the event had even officially started, on Wednesday afternoon. I don’t know if that was planned, or if it was a last minute decision, but it was a good idea regardless. It’s obvious that more and more people are arriving to Tulsa earlier in the week, so it makes sense to try and register as many attendees as possible, as soon as possible. So by late afternoon on Wednesday I had my bracelet, my tickets and, most importantly, my EP. I’d lugged my trusted old MacBook Air and an external CD drive all the way across the Atlantic with the sole purpose of being able to listen to that EP straightaway so I headed back to my hotel room for a very exclusive Listening Party. ( Check out this blog again soon for a full review of the EP .) Storytellers Setlist This year’s Storytellers was effectively an acoustic show, centred around the Underneath album. It’s a golden combination for me, as I discovered the b...
1 comment
Read more

A BTTI 2017 Post-Mortem - Part 1: Dissecting the Shows

It was only going to be a ‘once in a lifetime’ experience: the solo sets had sold it to me, and besides, I’d never seen Hanson play with the full band. A one-off. Yes, it was only going to be a one-off. Well, that was 2015. On a grey and wet British New Year’s Day, I boarded a Jamaica-bound flight, ready to do it all again for the third time in 2017. Those who have read my blog posts from BTTI 2016 might remember that I wasn’t exactly awestruck by last year’s event: I’d found the shows lacking something, not to mention I'd been left seriously disappointed by Isaac’s solo set (for an Isaac ‘girl’, this is a serious matter). Aside from having fallen in love with Jamaica, I guess my mixed feelings about 2016 were part of the reason for wanting to go back: I had such fantastic memories of the 2015 shows in Cancun that I wanted another taste of that experience. I knew BTTI was more than a holiday with friends: it was a chance for me, as a European fan, to load up on Hanson conc...
8 comments
Read more

Is this In Real Life? A review of Hanson's 2019 Fan Club EP

I was in my hotel room in Tulsa when I first listened to the EP. I’d ferried my trusted seven year old MacBook Air all across the Atlantic, complete with an equally old and battered external CD drive, with the sole purpose of ripping that CD the moment it was in my hands and listening to it in religious contemplation. Compromise The first song in the EP, "Compromise" starts with a piano and guitar intro, and instantly puts me in a state of acoustic bliss that reaches its nirvana as Isaac’s voice comes on some twenty seconds later. Before you can scream ‘Isaac lead’,  Zac takes over vocals on the second verse,  with the final part going to Taylor. After my initial split second of disappointment, it made complete sense: it’s a song about compromise, shared among the three brothers and layered with their trademark harmonies in between each verse. What is that if not a perfect example of musical compromise? Thematically, my first thought was that the lyr...
Post a Comment
Read more