Beckles

My worst trip (by a long shot):

Warning: not for the faint of heart

Decided to extend a business trip to DC over the weekend to visit my friend's from college who live in the area. Pixie was living in Chicago at the time and flew in for the weekend also. Stayed at the Hyatt Crystal City (where I stay for business, just got a lower weekend rate).

Saturday night we go out to Annapolis for dinner with a bunch of the college buddies and Pixie. After dinner and some other festivities, one of our hosts decide we should go ice skating.

We go ice skating ... I fall down and I can't get up. It doesn't hurt, but it's bad ... I think I sprain my ankle. One of the rink attendants comes over and he's bending over me (an off duty EMT) and tells me "I'm going to lift you up and carry you off the rink" (he's on skates too). Now, I'm a big guy (on the wrong side of 200 pounds), there's no way this guy's lifting me up when he's on skates and I flatly say "no you aren't." Finally I get up on one foot between two of the rink attendants and get off. By the way, it still doesn't hurt, but it's numb and I'm feeling sick, I think I just sprained my ankle badly. My friends start saying I should go to the hospital, but I insist it will be okay ... eventually they win me over.

We drive around looking for a hospital (had to stop to ask for directions) and I go into the hospital. They take x-rays and the nice nurse is looking at my ankle and comments "When it swells up on the outside of your ankle it's usually not broken" and I say "Good" ... then she adds "but your ankle is swollen on the inside".

Uh oh ... she says it doesn't look good and the doctor will be in to see me shortly ...

Doctor comes in ... two broken bones ... I need to have surgery to fix it and I have two options:

1) Have surgery tomorrow and I'll be in the hospital for a few days after that

2) He can keep me for a few days then send me home to Louisiana to have surgery.

Well, let's see, I get the hospital stay either way, and the idea of picking surgery in Louisiana over Maryland wasn't that attractive either.

So, I have the surgery (after checking with a friend that I could stay with him for a couple of weeks after surgery in the DC area) on Sunday. Now remember, I had the hotel room in Crystal City still ...

My surgery is at 8:00 AM so I told Pixie to call the Hyatt and have them give us a late check out so she could go after I was safely out of surgery. I later found out they would not give her late check out, and needless to say I called them a few days later and laid into them for that.

Anyway, I had to call my boss Monday and tell him all of this ... "Hi, I'm still in DC ... I had surgery yesterday ... I won't be in to work ... for a while ..." (two plus weeks it turned out I would miss work for).

So ... spend a couple weeks in DC recovering staying with my friend and Thanksgiving rolls around ... I had already planned to visit my parents in Western NC for this, and Pixie came too. BTW, traveling in general was not much fun ... had to wheelchair it around the airport, especially in the beginning, because my endurance on crutches was not all that great.

Anyway, that goes fine until the night before we left (except that my Mother got really sick ... uh oh). We were staying at the Hyatt Charlotte, but we had different flight (Pixie an early morning flight, me a late morning flight). Anyway, I'm watching a movie the night before around midnight and I start to feel not so hot. Suddenly I get the worst case of diahreia and I start vomiting, basically simultaneously. This wouldn't be so bad except I'm on crutches with a cast up to my knee! Well, that was a BAD night ... it turned out my mother had given me her little stomach bug (it would eventually strike half our family, including Pixie the next night).

Well ... I managed to get settled down by the time my flight rolled around. I was in coach *ick* ... CLT-ATL went fine ... I was adventurous and had one bag of peanuts to eat and some Ginger Ale.

ATL-MSY I'm on a 767 in about the third row. Now once I was on a plane it was kind of nice because I could move around without crutches by hopping on one foot and leaning on the seats ...

Anyway, halfway through the flight my stomach gets bad again ... I get up and hop back to the lavatory and open the door ... but I can't kneel ... I have this stupid cast and I can't balance ... I vomit into the bathroom ...

This was the most embarassing moment of my life ... I don't know what to do ... I close the door and I'm just standing there. A nice passenger across the way asks if I need help and I just say I need an FA ... finally one comes up and I apologize profusely and explain that they need to close that lavatory until it can be cleaned ...

Well ... the rest of the trip went fine ...