On a trip last year to Bangor, Maine, I fell, broke my leg below the knee in 9 places and fractured my hip. I'm youngish, don't have brittle bones, etc. I just simply fell the wrong way and though I'd never broken a bone before I guess I made up for it big time.

I was in a cast and a wheel chair. I called the airline, Continental, and spoke with a travel rep. the day before we were to leave in order to give them a 'heads-up' on my special needs, etc. "No Problem," I was told. "We do this all the time. It will be easy. Just check in as usual and we'll get you squared away."

HA!

By squared away they meant, showing up at the airport, wheeled to gate and then finding out there was no way down the stairs except to be carried by my husband. Luckily my husband is a big guy. He carried me over his shoulder onto the airplane, a small thing but I didn't care, one airplane would be like another.

Hubby and I got shuttled to Newark, NJ (what a RAT-HOLE airport!) Hubby had to carry me off the plane and into the airport where they radioed for a wheelchair. I was pushed to the exit gate and...no, they didn't have a way for me to board the next flight. They didn't have a wheel chair ready and what they did have (some small contraption), no one knew how to use.

They left me and hubby standing on the tarmack. It's Dec. It's cold, sleeting, with a brisk wind. There is one Continental employee standing nearby holding an umbrella over her head. Hubby and I are not so lucky. Two baggage handlers come up and start talking and joking with the Continental employee and hubby and I are shivering, cursing under our breath and flicking off the ice forming on our respective noses.

I'm then transferred onto the tiny wheel-chair thingy to be loaded onto the plane. I'm the last passanger to board, everyone is staring out the windows wondering what the hold up is. No one can figure out the complicated straps for the chair. I'm told to tie the straps together over my lap and hauled aboard. The person pushing me onto the plane gets stuck on the ladder, shoves and throws me into the bulkhead, broken leg first. I scream in pain. I'm crying. It hurt like...you know.

I continue to cry as I'm hauled to a seat at the front of the plane and after a minute the airhostess tells me to stop crying because I'm causing a scene and upsetting the other passengers. I'm told if I don't be quiet I'll be taken off the plane and another flight out may not be offered to me that day. If I wish to complain I can do so at the next airport. Hubby is speechless. I'm horrified. I"d never been treated like this, ever, by anyone. People around me are grumbling because I'm holding up the plane. I'm cowed by the crowd and cry quietly into a tissue. I just want to get home.

Long story short, we did get home to Texas. I did complain to Continental and they promptly told me to 'stuff it.' Unless I had a written account with everyone's name (and presumably their DNA), their individual jobs, etc. then there was nothing they could, or would, do. I did have surgery two days after landing. It took three months before I could walk and I have had one surgery since and another to go. I'll never, ever, fly Continental again if they were the only airline on the face of the Earth. I'd crawl on my hands and knees first.