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The Return of Karen Robinson

Penguin and Karen shopping for hats

I entered the room and set my bags in the back corner of the bedroom, hidden from view from the doorway. Mother kept a very clean home and every time I came to visit, I was always ever so conscious of the impact I was making on her cleanliness. One of my virtues is not wanting to put anyone out on account of me. One of the few ways I could do so was to make things look as neat as possible.
After hanging a few shirts and pants, I took a seat in the big, soft chair that sat in the corner of the bedroom. I had always loved this chair, it had been in the family for about as long as I could remember. I was tired. The altitude was ever present during my visits, but at least here, in their home in Florissant, Colorado, it wasn’t as bad as their last home in Blue River, which was closer to 10,000 feet than it was to nine.
As I rested, a sense of uneasiness had come over me. Here, in this pristine room with the queen bed, royal-looking dresser, glass-topped dressing table, and rustic mountain-scene artwork on the walls, I felt uneasy. This was the first time I had been back in this room since the illness, eight months previous. It had been such a horrid experience that just being back in this space and being reminded of the trauma simply made me feel ill at ease.
The  view from the guest room.

I stood up in what seemed like slow motion, gazing out the window at the mountains and trees and dimming daylight as the sun neared the horizon. The last time I gazed out this window, eight months ago, there was still snow on the ground. The wind seemed about the same- ever blowing from the northwest. On the shelves near the doorway were the same books, nick-knacks and stuffed animals. Mom liked to change things up from time to time, but these shelves had remained untouched for several years, save for the cleaning rags to remove the dust she’s always complaining about. There was the one thing, that for now, made me comfortable about this guest room in my parent’s log cabin house 9,000 feet above sea level. A smiling stuffed clown doll.

Taking it into my hands, I smiled as it smiled back, winking at me. He had a red nose and little hearts at each corner of his smiling mouth. A ring of pink yarn for hair circled his head, leaving a big bald spot. His outfit covered all of his arms and legs with small blue and pink flowers. Around his neck, a pink ruffle. He was all of ten inches in height and perhaps the femininity of him was the reason it was now in Mom’s possession and no longer in mine.
I turned the clown around to look for the name. I always looked for the name and I always seem to forget that next to the name was the copyright symbol- 1985- drawn by hand. Karen Robinson.
In high school, I was very active in various leadership roles. I served on the school’s senate and each year ran for successfully higher offices in the FHA-HERO youth program. The FHA stood for Future Homemakers of America. This was never my favorite part of being involved in FHA-HERO, as I never considered myself in the running for such a life and it sounded a bit girly. The HERO part was my interest: Home Economics Related Occupations.

Penguin’s graduation
Back then, there were three things that I found of interest. Running a hotel, running a restaurant, or becoming a famed architect. My involvement and movement up the ladder to run for a national office in HERO seemed to indicate that I might be leaning more towards a career in hotel and restaurant management. To be safe, however, I chose to attend the University of Houston for the fact that they had among the best schools in the nation for both architecture and for hotel and restaurant management.
Meeting a delegate at one of my national youth conferences.

Being a leader in FHA-HERO meant planning and implementing local, regional, state and even national meetings, events, lectures and activities. From hosting a cable TV show with puppets touting the values of proper nourishment, to being a youth editor for a national teen magazine, there were a lot of fun responsibilities. With these, came the guidance of our advisers. My adviser was a woman who captured my attention from the first moment I saw her. This isn’t to say I had a schoolboy crush on her. Well, at least that I was aware of right away. She was an attractive woman, sure, and still quite young. She stood in the middle of the hallway intersection on the first day of class helping direct students to the proper room. Skyline High School, in the 80s, at over 3,000 students, was the third largest high school in the US, and getting around on your first day on the huge campus could be daunting.

As I approached, I could hear her shrill voice offering help and then sending students on their way. I was lucky enough to know where I was headed- I was always good with maps and had looked ahead of time at the maze of hallways that I needed to traverse in order to reach my home economics class. I have no idea how I ended up taking such a class in my very first semester of high school, but as a freshman I did as I was told. I passed the attractive hallway cop, declining her assistance and took my seat in the corner class room that overlooked the very front of the school.

The bell rang and in she walked. She looked over her class and right at me, seeming to recognize me from the hallway…one of the few not in need of her direction. She introduced herself as Mrs. DeLong and immediately began changing my life. She saw a young man with ambition and took me under her wing. Four years later she sent me off to college with several academic scholarships, and my whole life ahead of me. We had become close friends and allies. Living with a bachelor father, in many ways, she stood in for the role of my mother.
Along the way I encountered many other advisers to other students in FHA-HERO. Most were from other schools in the area, but a few were there within the halls of Skyline. Karen Robinson was one such person, heading up the fashion cluster. She had patented the clown dolls and made them by hand. I don’t remember when or where mine came to be in my possession from her, but I must have passed it along to Mother for safe keeping. A pink-haired clown was obviously not something a college man wanted to display in his dorm room!
Mom came up behind me, snapping me back to the present in the guest room, and asked if I had settled in. She looked at the clown in my hands and back up at me with a smile.
“You know, you can’t get rid of this,” I told her. “It’s very dear to me.”
“I remember,” she said, “It’ll always be safe here. Dinner is almost ready. Why don’t you come on upstairs and fix your drink.” She was such a sight for sore eyes…and a great cook. I started feeling happy I’d come back home for a long weekend visit, while still recovering from that virus.
I put Karen’s clown doll back where he lived- on the shelves in the guest room- and followed Mom upstairs, thinking about how much I loved Karen Robinson. She was not my adviser, but we had spent a lot of time and laughs together.

Karen’s signature and copyright.
At the end of my freshman year in high school, I was in Washington, DC with Leta, Karen and a slew of other students from Dallas. I was attending the national youth convention for FHA-HERO and we had an afternoon free. The group of us from Skyline gathered in Leta’s room as she ironed an outfit and tried to decide just what to do with our time. There was so much to choose from, being in our nation’s capitol. We had already visited the White House and Capitol building, meeting with our state representatives. Karen had a map out on the bed and rattled off options to the peanut gallery, who would yea or nay them. Every now and then, Karen would take a pause and ask, “What’s this termable root?” “There’s another one…termable root.” “I wonder what this termable root is that I keep seeing.” The suspense was killing me, and again, being good with maps, I asked if I could take a look.
“Karen,” I asked, “I don’t see this termable root. Where is it?”
She pointed to one, then another, and a third. “See- termable root.”

The Tourmobile

“Um, Karen? That’s a ‘tourmobile route’. Apparently, there is a tourmobile that we can ride around in the city.” There wasn’t a person in the room who five minutes later didn’t have a sore stomach from laughing so hard at her pronunciation.

Karen and Leta always got along and would follow me around the country giving talks and lectures at various national and regional meetings. I lost touch with Karen when I graduated, and after a few more years, I would eventually lose touch with Leta. The amount of time between phone calls would get longer. The letters came less frequent. Soon, it was only cards at Christmas. Then, before I knew it, so much time had passed that I no longer even knew Leta’s address. I’d moved to Maryland, and Leta had remarried. We just grew apart.

I’d long forgotten the clown. Completely forgotten about it. Until years later, in the late 90s, visiting my parents in Breckenridge, Colorado and seeing him sitting on the shelf. I took hold of it out of curiosity. I seemed to remember it, but not too clearly. I looked at his neck and found the name. Karen Robinson? I’d nearly forgotten her! I realized it had been so long since I heard from Leta. But before we lost touch, I remember Leta telling me about the passing of a teacher, an adviser, someone I had held dear. It was starting to come back to me. Karen Robinson had died. Isn’t that what she said? That must be why I felt such an unusual attraction to this strange clown. It made me smile, though, thinking about that trip to DC and her ‘termable roots’. Mom was in the next room and I showed her the clown doll. “Mom, you cannot get rid of this clown. Karen made it for me and she died just after I graduated. It’s very special.” So the clown has lived on those shelves ever since, even after the move from Breckenridge to Florissant.
Then, for Thanksgiving 2009, I joined the majority of my family for a gathering at my parent’s ranch in Florissant. Dad was engrossed in learning how to deep fry a turkey. The women camped out in the kitchen pouring over recipes and cooking up a storm. I was feeling the affects of the high altitude more than I normally did. The family had plans for the weekly pot luck dinner and music jam at the nearby Grange, on Wednesday night. It was an activity we all loved, but I was feeling a bit puny and asked to stay behind. I had an array of symptoms I don’t normally feel when visiting home, so I looked up altitude sickness, and nearly every symptom matched; shortness of breath, headache, pain in my chest. But by the time the family returned from the Grange, I was developing spots on my arms and legs and had a terrible sore throat, that seemed to be sore all the way down my esophagus.
My spots in the hospital

When the sun came up on Thanksgiving Day, I was even worse. The red spots were larger and had spread and were sore. I could barely walk. My headache was so large, it was like a hat that extended several inches around my head. I could barely swallow. It was time for the emergency room. From there, I wound up being taken to the hospital in nearby Colorado Springs and remained there for five horrifying days.
They never figured out what I had. They knew it was a virus, but had no idea what kind, or where I got it. After ruling so many things out, it was obvious that as a flight attendant, I had picked up something from work- something from one of my flights. I asked the doctor why no one else in my family got what I had. I was told that viruses can affect one person very differently from another. I endured five days of that huge headache, five days of misery and pain, spots all over my body and at the apex of the experience, a fever of 106.5 degrees. I felt like I was going to die. I begged to be put into a coma. I welcomed death.
After I recovered, I returned to my parent’s home in the mountains. The family had all gone home. There was no more turkey. I had missed out on the deep fried bird and turkey sandwiches. But in all honesty, that was the least of my concerns. Still not feeling well, I longed to be back home with my sweet cats, Adelie and Phoebe. But I still had a lot of recovering to do and spent all day in bed. With the family now gone, I was moved into the guest room.
All day, in the living room next to the guest room, Dad watched his westerns. Guns, explosions, stampedes, moos, yee-haws and wagon trains- I wanted to die all over again. Those were the last things I wanted to hear as I recovered, and I barely had the energy to launch a complaint. I was not well enough to fly home on my own, so I called my best friend, flew him out and he helped me fly home three days later. I wanted out of that room so badly, and with that visit eight months later, I still had that uneasy feeling of being there. Things were still so fresh in my mind.
As I slowly recuperated from the virus…much too slowly for my tastes…I discovered that I had melanoma. I half cried and half laughed. After surviving the Thanksgiving virus, was I now going to be taken by cancer? But like the virus, in the end I wound up beating the disease. It would take a surgery and a month of recovery, but I was still out of work from the virus, which left me dazed, dizzy and fatigued. I was unable to work for eleven months, and returned too soon, at that.
In a period of four months, I had looked death in the face twice and come out the winner. This awoke in me a strange and profound need to get in touch with my past. I began to search for things, histories, people I’d lost touch with, places I’d gone. I found my best friend from third grade… and the strangest thing in the world was that he was now living two towns from my parents in Colorado and had even jammed at the weekly Grange pot lucks. I also got back in touch with Leta, who had since earned her doctorate and was still involved with things at Skyline, but was about to begin a professorship at a Dallas area college.

A very young Penguin with his grandfather and mother.
It had been over ten years since I last went to Dallas to visit family and friends. It was after talking to Leta, and her urging me to come visit, that had me plan on doing just that. It would be a whirl wind tour of my old home town, with so many friends and family to see. But in my brushes with death, it was important for me to do so.
Leta and I were close in high school. My father traveled often and it was not uncommon that I would stay in Leta’s guest room. I had met her entire family and even gone hunting on her family’s farm in East Texas. So when I made plans to visit after my illness, she made a big deal of it. Her husband was out of town, but she assured me that I’d get to see her mom and sister- her father had sadly passed. But then she told me of another guest who would be coming over for dinner. I was stunned. I was stupefied. Who was invited to come over and catch up? None other than Karen Robinson!
I felt like such a fool. It wasn’t Karen who had died after graduation. I guess I’d not completely paid attention when she had told me. Who was it, then? I was too embarrassed to ask her, so I just acted cool about it. “Karen? I’d ‘love’ to see her again!” I told Leta. I was almost more excited to see Karen, risen from the dead, than anyone else in Dallas!
We had a magical time at Leta’s house near White Rock Lake. Karen came by and we drank wine and ate King Ranch casserole. We laughed about the termable root and enjoyed the evening catching up. Karen now lived a few blocks from the condo where I spent my years in high school. And now that Facebook was alive, she and I connected there often.
Karen and Leta
I never told Leta this story, and certainly never told Karen. But then I got a call from Leta in August of 2016. “Karen has cancer. She’s undergoing chemo, and it doesn’t look too promising for her.” I was crushed. I’d lost her once. I knew what life was like thinking she was not in it, but she was back now, and this was just beyond cruel. Damn you cancer!
Just in the previous year, Mom had found a lump in her breast. It turned out to be a rare kind of cancer. She underwent chemo and had the lump removed. I had never been more scared of mortality than seeing its face in that of my own beloved mother! She lost hair and wore wigs and hats. She put up a very brave and strong front. She was more positive about life and events in it than I’ve ever known her to be. That strength and positivity is what helped her win the battle with cancer.
Leta and I at the State Fair

I had already wanted to visit Dallas in October. I’d not been to the state fair in fourteen years and it had been five since I last saw Leta and Karen. Now that Karen was ill, I just had to see her. Leta initially made things sound bleak, she wasn’t feeling well and seemed reluctant to receive visitors. I wasn’t sure that with my track record of visiting Dallas if I’d ever get to see her again. It was paramount that I do so on this trip!
Fortunately, Karen was having a good day when I was in town and agreed to be taken to lunch and then hoped to do some shopping for cosmetics and hats. Shopping with women is not something I enjoy, but spending a day with Leta and Karen, much like the old times- just replace the school with a shopping mall- was magical.
We dined at Keller’s Drive-in, a Dallas institution, sitting in Leta’s Texas-sized pickup, munching on burgers and drinking beer. Then the secrets started to come out!
While in Washington and Salt Lake City and Chicago for our summer meetings, when the students went to their rooms for the night, the advisers were hanging out drinking a bottle of vodka that Leta had brought! Knowing some of the students, I’m sure it was quite necessary! Karen claimed that when she first found out about the vodka being in Leta’s bag, she was shocked, but it certainly didn’t stop her from assisting in emptying it!
It was my turn, so I told of the time when we were all supposed to be in our rooms asleep, but the noise forced one of the advisers to come knocking on the hotel room door. It was the girls room; we shared four students per room. I would be in big trouble were I discovered to be in this room at this time of night. I hid behind the curtains and listened as the adviser swore she had heard my voice in that room. They all denied it, saying it must have been the TV, which was still playing. She eventually bought it and closed the door, telling the girls to get to bed! Giggles ensued and I eventually snuck back to my own room.
Penguin in the girl’s hotel room

Leta, Karen and I laughed at the secrets we could now divulge; that, and how nice it was that we could openly consume alcohol together. Wasn’t it fun- all of us being adults now? It was hard to believe that it was thirty years ago when I graduated. So much time having fun together had been lost. But now, here we were, trying to make up time while one of us potentially had so little. Damned cancer!
In a moment of silence, between swigs of beer in the giant pickup under the old tin roof of Keller’s Drive In, I pulled from a bag I had brought with me that silly clown. Karen gasped, then squealed, asking, “Is that one of my clowns babies?” She turned it over, “Yep, there’s my copyright. You’ve kept this all these years?”
I told her how it had been at Mom’s since I graduated, but I had just been there a week prior and knowing that I was coming to Dallas, I decided that it was time for the clown to live with me, and I wanted to show her that I still cherished it. She nearly cried, as she fussed with his hair and ribbons. Leta noticed that a few ribbons were missing and asked if he hadn’t at one time had a hat. It had, so stated Karen. Leta exclaimed that new ribbons could easily be reattached. They were the least of my concern. Seeing Karen’s happiness was the most precious thing.
Karen receiving her penguin at Keller’s Drive In

 Then, from my bag, I pulled out a stuffed penguin. “Karen, as you know, I have thousands of penguins at home, and I’d like to start giving some out to friends, so I brought this one for you.” I handed it to her as tears formed in her eyes. She tugged on the little scarf and looked at me and we hugged as best we could between the front and back seat of that huge truck. She named him and for the rest of the afternoon held him and gently brushed his head with her thumb.

Just before Christmas, 2016,I found out that Karen’s chemo was not working. The doctors felt six weeks was about all she had left. Again, I felt completelydevastated. To think someone dead for so many years and then to find out that they are still alive, and then to find out that they are dying, only then to rebuild a strong connection. It was messed up.
Because I had her back I thought that there was time. So much time. I was wrong. There is no more time. Karen died on Monday, January 23rd. As much as I had hoped to see her again, the last time I got to be with her was that cold, damp day in October, going from store to store in Dallas looking at and trying on hats to hide the chemo-hair loss. This one for the cold. This one to go with dark outfits. That one for dressy occasions. She bought way more than I thought she’d ever need- enough for many years of chemo!
She was in such a good mood that day. She smiled often and hardly complained. She was positive and upbeat. There was much life left in her, but she tired easily. I’ll never forget all the laughs and the way she held that little penguin and how anxious she was to take photos together.

Leta, Penguin and Karen October 2016
Watching Mom gather such strength and positive thoughts, and then seeing Karen doing pretty much the same thing, knowing she has many friends and family to care for her and help bring her spirits up, I had such hope that she could be around for many more years of me driving to Dallas, eating Keller’s burgers and drinking wine all while laughing about termable roots. Gather close your loved ones, we’re never promised tomorrow.
My clown baby

I’ve never told Karen this story, and I hadn’t planned to. I hoped she could have read this to know how much she means, not just to me, but to so many. I hoped she understood that everything in life is temporary. I thought I had lost her many years ago and held close a cute little clown she had made. While I will continue to do so and will always cherish being able to tell inquisitors the story behind the cute little clown doll sitting high on my shelves in my living room. I realize that life is so much more than the trinkets we collect.
Life is about the moments we share, the growth we attribute to others, the respect and admiration we have that gives rise to someone who, to the world is but a stranger, but to me and those who know her, is a gem. A giant. A source of laughter and great pride.
As a teacher and adviser, she has touched so many young lives as they find their path to a bright future. As a mother, she has nurtured life into the world itself. As a grandmother, she held dear the future she helps create. As a friend, she is a bright light in a sometimes dim place. That light will not extinguish now that she has left us. Her light only shines brighter. Her struggles are not in vain. They inspire others and carve deep into us a love and appreciation that will always endure.
Her loss leaves many of us sad. This story began with a part of my past that was painful. I was able to overcome the obstacles and reconnect with a very special lady as I helped her endure her pain. I was lucky enough to have had her in my life twice. I cherish our final embrace and saying “I love you, Karen. I’ll see you real soon,” half knowing I probably wouldn’t, but praying that wouldn’t be the case. I was hoping for a miracle and for her to beat cancer as Mom and I did. She was strong and loved, but they say the good die young.

Penguin and Karen on what Leta said was her last good day.

Karen was a very special lady. I’m richer for her being in my life, and I can look upon her clown baby with his missing hat and smile at one of the mementos she left in my life. My cherished little Karen clown. And I can surely look up at her riding that great termable root in the sky.
I love you, Karen Robinson

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Defeets part 2: Eight Doctors Running

On my flight home from Lima, my feet were still smooth but my scalp began to itch. It felt so good to graze my fingernails across it. This is something new; my head never itches. I asked the flight attendant who had also had a massage with the blind women on our Lima layover to take a look. Did I have lice? What’s going on up there?
She quickly inspected my balding, graying head of very short-cut hair and informed me that I had a sun burn. It was red. I did walk for about an hour in the overcast weather blanketing Lima that day and had failed to wear my hat until the walk back to the hotel. Damn. After my bout with melanoma, I really try to avoid being in the sun, or even under cloud cover, knowing it, too, can cause sun burn. I was relieved to hear the cause of the itch was not lice.
Red, splotchy face and scalp.

So I thought nothing of the fact that my scalp was still itchy the following day. I had only 31 hours off before another trip to Lima. I returned to the airport not only with my scalp still itchy, but now my chin, sides and neck itched as well. It wasn’t very bad, although I did think it peculiar. The thought of calling in sick crossed my mind, but I wound up dismissing it as being overly cautious.

Flash forward to the airplane- halfway to Lima. The service was done and I enjoyed a conversation in the aft galley with one of my flying partners. My feet felt itchy and taking my shoes off to rub them felt like bliss. My head itched, my underarms itched and now I was feeling like my lips were twice as thick as normal, and a bit numb. I was very much aware of the fact that my face was possibly growing red as we continued talking. When the conversation came to a conclusion, I eased into the lavatory to take a look.
Shock and horror.
On my arms were these large, raised welts. They itched so badly, at times I thought I’d go insane. OK, something was very wrong. I returned to the aft galley and found another flying partner filling cups with water. I asked if she had any medical training. She didn’t, but casually said that our purser was a nurse, as she continued filling the plastic cups.

The welts I found under my arms.

When I approached the purser in the forward galley and asked for a moment of her time, I had a quick flashback to being a general manager and asking such a question and realizing that they were freaking out; not knowing why the hell I was asking to speak with them privately. She walked with me to a well-lit part of the galley and I shared my new-found illness. It’s always something with me, it seems.

Step one: contact the pilots so they can get in touch with the in-flight medical department.
Step two: take a brief medical history of the patient. Oh, my gods, that’s ME!
Step three: make an announcement asking if there are any medical professionals on board.

I’ve been the one to make such announcements numerous times. I’ve seen the reactions of the patents, which range from complete acceptance that medical help is needed, to complete denial, and a feeling that there is no reason to alarm anyone. I knew exactly how these patients felt. As the doctors began to assemble in the forward galley, I felt the redness in my face was no longer a result of this illness, but for the embarrassment. The first doctor seemed to arrive before she finished making the announcement. The second doctor was right on his heals. The third approached from the right aisle. The fourth followed back on the left aisle. Within one minute, there were no fewer than 8 doctors gathered in the small space.

I was both a patient and a working flight attendant. My first reaction was to inform the still arriving doctors that we had enough volunteers, but asking if anyone had any specialization in dermatology. No one indicated such. One of the doctors present was a man I had spoken with before we left Houston. He informed me that I was in good hands, and that the doctors present were all going to a medical conference in Lima!
After all was said and done, I was given Benadryl from the medical kit, followed by a shot. This did the trick and my itchiness was alleviated. My crew demanded that I sit out the service, but I did do some work while they were in the aisle, cleaning the galley and closing out the liquor cart. The Benedryl made me quite drowsy and I finally crashed in the van on the way to the layover hotel.
Many culprits were recommended to me; shellfish, fabric softener, fruit cake. The only thing I could think of was the massage by the blind woman. She had massaged my head, which is where the whole thing started. She had her hand everywhere I was itching, and it all started only a few hours later. Thank goodness I didn’t get a happy ending!
The view from my Lima hotel

Upon returning to Houston from this trip, I saw a doctor immediately when the office opened. He gave me another shot and some pills that wiped me out, but helped control the itching. My palms were red; I called it my stigmata. My arms itched as well as my scalp. Twenty-four hours later, it was all gone; crisis averted. I have never had such a reaction in my life, and I hope to never have one again.

I don’t know what this means for the future of my getting layover massages. I likes me some good massage, and the blind woman did a really great job. I don’t know what type of oil she used on me, and it would be difficult to find out. This experience has me thinking I won’t be returning to the blind women after all. Such a shame, too. But oil’s well that ends well, as they say.
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Adventures in Flight: So What is it that you…do do?

Everyone, it seems, can relate to the airline industry. Everyone has airline stories- good and bad- and seems to love sharing them, regardless of who might listen. Most times, I’m happy to talk shop with others, that’s what having Airline Disease is all about. But there are times when I enjoy one of the more popular perks of being a flight attendant- not taking the job home.

You may have flown next to a flight attendant and not realized it. We are keen to changing out of uniform any time we can and many flight attendants are even known to hide bag tags that can give them away. I know when I get a first class seat, I want to fit in and just be a customer; able to enjoy the privilege of flying in first without being looked down upon as just an employee by someone who paid thousands of dollars to sit next to me (I know, I’m worth it!).
Many flight attendants keep an assortment of stories at the ready for the question, “What is it that you do for a living?,” but are just not in the mood to hear horror stories or to be asked a ton of questions. Imagine a long day flying across timezones, dealing with screaming, unruly kids, attention-needy business passengers and the companion animal who tried to bite you every time you walked past. You get to your layover hotel, starving and in need of an adult beverage. You plop your bags down, shower the day’s scum from your body, dress in humane clothes made of natural fibers and find your way to the hotel bar. Ah, human time, at last. Then the person next to you, already on their 4th beer asks what you do for a living.
Some of the better skilled flight crew are quick to bring out one of an assortment of talk-killing jobs; “I’m here for a plumbing convention,” or “I’m an accountant for a bakery that specializes in fruit cakes,” or, “Oh, I’m just a process server, still looking for my piggie. So, what’s your name?” Yes, the faces are often priceless and it squeezes the life out of the desire to get to know you. “I’ll have the flat-bread pizza and keep the ‘Ritas flowing, Barkeep!” Peace at last!
One of the riskiest things about this job is being in a metal tube with germ-carrying folk who love to share them. I’m always afraid my doctor is going to think I’m a hypochondriac, but fortunately, the tests are always coming up positive for this and that. In the past year, I’ve had Type-A influenza, numerous colds and now, strep throat twice! So off to the doctor I go. It was a slow Saturday at the clinic, (my regular doctor’s office was closed) so I got to see every staff member in attendance, you know, to justify the numbers. Check-in lady needs this filled out and a copy of my ID. Nurse 1 takes my temp and vitals. Nurse 2 takes my history. The doctor comes in and this is where it all falls apart.
After asking if anyone in my household is ill, he asks what I do for a living. I tell him, and am next asked for which airline. With the straightest of face he then has the balls to ask me if I could get him a discount ticket. Really? I didn’t think I had a fever, surely I’m hallucinating. “I can buy you a drink,” I shoot back, dryly.
Doctor Nuts goes into a few minutes of wondering why ticket prices don’t go down when gas prices do and how you buy a ticket thinking you have a great deal, but then find that you have to pay for this and that and if the bag is over 40 pounds you pay another $5 per pound and suddenly I am not listening to him any longer, but begin looking at the art selected for the walls of the exam room and wondering why it is that I can’t get my photos in a place like this. If I didn’t look sick before, my face was contorted in pain now from hearing him drone on and on and he picked up the pace, perhaps afraid I was about to pass out.
He finishes his portion of the visit and nurse 1 returns. She must have spoken to Dr. Nuts about me and wants to know if I know her sister, who also flies for my airline. Of course, I don’t, and I just want my shot and prescription so I can go back to my little cave I’ve made in my bed at home. A typical guy, I don’t do ‘ill’ very well.
I’m asked to see the receptionist to handle the last of my paperwork and she, too, had a bad flight she just had to share. I’ve heard the stories, and I drown her out as I listen to a woman in the waiting area who in the next 4 minutes would say the word, “like” at least 30 times. “It was, like, the best thing I had like, ever seen. And he was all like, I told you. Like, didn’t you hear me say that before? But I was like, well, you like, say that stuff all the time, and like, I just sort of like, ignore it…” Were there a gun within reach I’m not sure if I’d have shot her, or like, maybe myself!

Feeling bad is bad. Feeling good is where it’s at. Feeling bad and having to hear someone’s negative stories about your career is worse. Maybe for this doctor’s visit, I should have said I collect deceased animals for the city. No one likes to talk about road kill, or if they do, that might be one interesting conversation.  
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Passenger of the Day: All in the Family

I’ve been very lucky in the arena of medical incidents in my career. The first one I had was within my first few months of flying. It’s one of those things you never forget, like your first kiss, your first speeding ticket or the first time you realized you hate fruit cake.

I was working on a 727 and we were taxiing for takeoff from Chicago. There was a commotion a few rows from the back of the plane; a man was having a seizure and the passengers around him began to go crazy. I heard someone yell for a spoon to put in his mouth, something you never want to do. If anything, too many people already have silver spoons, but never place anything in the mouth of someone in the throes of a fit.
He recovered quickly and was taken care of by medical professionals, who were able to enter the plane via the air stairs in the tail of the aircraft. What a wonderful feature to have, as it saved us from taxiing all the way back to the gate.
On another flight bound for Ontario, CA, we had to divert to Las Vegas for a woman who had the worst panic attack I’ve ever seen. We were only 90 minutes late to Ontario, and could have arrived sooner, except that we came in so fast, we had to wait for the brakes to cool down.
My favorite experience (if you can call it that) was on a flight where I was the purser and a man had fallen ill on our way to Washington, DC. I called for medical assistance and a doctor came forward, as well as a nurse. They tended to the patient and the flight attendants working in the back took over as I returned to first class and continued to communicate with the captain. The captain asked me if it was serious enough to divert. The doctor, upon my asking this question, suddenly went from saying this was serious and the guy needed medical help right away, to saying, no, I think he will be fine to get to DC. Obviously, this doc had an important engagement he didn’t want to miss. It was too late for a good tee time, so who knows…
Mostly, I encounter people who simply need a bit of oxygen. We ask for medical help, and I don’t think I’ve ever been on a flight where there was no one available. The key is to ask for anyone with medical training. If you ask for a ‘doctor on board’, you may miss someone who could be a vital help, as even a veterinarian has the basic skills to assist where no one else does.
The worst we get is the occasional vomit on the floor, which we must clean up. I had one so bad, I worked for half an hour with a beautiful plastic apron and mask on my face, sprinkling lemon scented powder all over the mess, scooping it up with a flimsy scooper and finally placing down a large blanket to cover the mess.
Keeping my skills current, I was recently on a flight home from Lima, Peru. I was working the aft galley and a woman looking a bit pale entered. She didn’t speak English, but we had 2 language qualified flight attendants in the galley. She was not feeling well and clutched the walls. She went down and someone shouted for oxygen, which I obtained. I knelt down, turned it on and began to place the mask on her. She shooed it away and rolled to her side. Someone said she was going to be ill and asked for a bag. I moved back, praying it wasn’t going to be of the projectile variety.
She recovered and I got the oxygen on her and a call went out for medical assistance. Shortly, we had an RN and a doctor, who seemed very comfortable taking her pulse, comforting her, moving her purse out of the way. I had taken gloves from the AED to hand to him and thought it very odd that he refused them. No one refuses gloves when dealing with bodily fluids! Turns out, the doctor was the woman’s husband. He spoke to the language flight attendants and mentioned that she was also a doctor.
Soon, another woman, young, attractive, straight black hair, was hovering nearby, offering her medical assistance as well. I told her that with the doctor and the RN, I felt we had it covered. But this was not just another soul offering medical assistance, it was the couple’s daughter. It was then that I noticed the doctors very nice gold watch and the patient’s leather Gucci purse. I wanted to ask if the daughter was single! Was everyone in their family in the medical field?
In the end, our patient recovered quickly, which was a good thing, as the bag that was delivered for her to be sick in was clear and I could see that, like me, she had the chicken for dinner. The sooner we got that out of the way, the better we’d all be! She soon was on her feet headed back to her seat. Another happy passenger taken care of by a team of well-trained flight attendants who were happy to assist and to do what we do best…take care of passengers.
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Passenger of the Day: Mr. Ebola

Health scares come and go and I’ve never understood them, nor have I fallen for them. I remember in the months after 9-11, the media going berserk about a few cases of possible ricin; a poisonous white powder found in packages sent to a few of our leaders and possibly left in aircraft lavatories. To watch the news, one would think a ricin apocalypse were on the brink of breaking out and if we didn’t heed the warnings of the talking heads, we’d all parish to bequeath the planet to the cockroaches. But I don’t recall anyone dying from it in the US (and I am unable to find reports of deaths on line in writing this).

When SARS broke out, I lost my job for a few months because people stopped flying. When first reported, again, one paying attention to the news reports would think the world were about to end. A report issued in the early months advised those paying attention that a common disease like influenza kills 20,000 people every year; 200 times as many people who had died of SARS.
But new health scares are what sells. Bird flu, penguin pox, fox news syndrome, hokey-pokey disease and most recently it was Ebola getting people’s attention. There were 18 cases of Ebola in Europe and the US. But to hear the chatter from friends and even some of my flying partners, you’d think there were a few zeros behind those 2 digits. I spoke to a friend who told me he’d kissed someone who had just been to Africa, and he was waiting for the incubation period to end to see if he had contracted the disease. Dr. Penguin assured him that, while he may have contracted something, a deadly African disease was not on the short list!

During the scare, friends asked me what procedures and training we have undergone at Mother Airline in the wake of this new threat to our way of life. In return, I tell them I no longer pay attention to the news reports!
Our training is already in place for dealing with health issues, and since this latest one, named after an Italian bowling score (ebola a perfect game-a) is only spread via direct contact with bodily fluids, and not an airborne contagion, I’m not all that concerned. Our universal precautions and frequent hand washing do the trick.
This isn’t to say that I totally ignore what is going on around me. I have the information I need, I have the tools and smarts to deal with the risks, and I have the knowledge that I have a greater risk of dying in a car wreck, from a tragic incident involving a mule or being hit by a fruit cake. Contracting the Ebola virus is extremely unlikely, but unlike with a mule, the potential threat is serious.
On a trip, to Oahu, Hawaii, I was in the aisle with the beverage cart during our initial service after taking off from Houston, when the girl I was working with came up to me with a bit of a frantic look on her face. “Why did they board the duty free catalogs and remove the Sky Mall magazines? We don’t sell duty free going to Hawaii. This gentleman in the hat asked to buy some cologne and I told him we don’t sell it. Then he told me he was disappointed to hear that, since he left his back at home in…” wait for it… “NIGERIA!” (Cue the music of impending doom.)
I looked over to see a very healthy looking man about my age, dark, black skin, nice shirt and a silly trucker-style ball cap, looking through a magazine. Yeah, he’s a killer, and he’s my passenger of the day; Mr. Ebola.
We advised the other crew members of the man on board who was transiting from a region of the world known to have a contagious disease, as we are trained to do. What didn’t help things along was that a woman in 3A got sick in the first class lavatory after asking for an air sickness bag, and the flight attendant came to ask me if I thought we should lock it off. I asked if she had made a mess in there, but the flight attendant was too scared to open the door to take a look. She wanted to ask if the woman had come from Africa, but was too frightened. To quell her fears, I went to the woman and first comforted her, “I hear you’re not feeling well, is there anything I can get for you?”
“Oh, no, I’m feeling much better,” she said, and she looked quite chipper and was smiling. She assured me that she had just had too much chai in the airport; 2 cups, back to back, in fact, and now that she got it all out of her system, things were feeling normal again.
“That’s great, and you do look very well. By the way, have you been traveling to any place that would be of concern to us?”
She smiled, knowingly and I got the answer I suspected, a ‘no’. I informed the nervous flight attendant, who seemed to have a large weight taken from her shoulders, and she thanked me profusely for dealing with the situation for her.
Later in the flight, I was told the story of when Mr. Ebola walked to the aft galley to purchase some food. In handing over his credit card, he first licked his finger, as if he were thumbing through the pages of a book. Ebola or not, that was sort of gross. I asked if surely she didn’t handle the saliva-soaked credit card after his doing so. No, she turned around and got a paper towel from the dispenser, took the credit card in the paper towel, never touching it, and returned it to him in the same fashion. Nice.
I’m very sensitive to the manner in which I pick up trash from passengers. Five years ago, I contracted a virus, most likely from flying, that nearly took me from this mortal plane. I always use a bag for picking up trash and always wash my hands afterwords. I’m cautious, but not paranoid.
After we landed, a group of us went to dinner, and while the Giants played Kansas City on the TV, I asked, “Well, now that we all have Ebola, who’s buying dinner?” Nervous looks were thrown around the table for a second, and upon discovering that none of us had bought into the fear, we all had a good laugh. Penguin 1—Ebola 0.