Sick at 35000 feet above

Travel tips: How to avoid carsickness, seasickness and airsickness... Be careful what you eat. And stay home.

― Charles M. Schulz, The Complete Peanuts, Vol. 16: 1981-1982

Imagine breathing in and out at the same time: you couldn't get any air, and would soon pass out. It's the same with multi-tasking.

- Michael Powell

It is generally inadvisable to eject directly over the area you just bombed.      

 - US Air Force Manual quotes 

Health is not valued till sickness comes.

-Thomas Fuller (1608 - August 16, 1661) was an English churchman and historian

I stepped onto a plane for the first time in my life in 2004.

But after 2009 in particular, my life has been extensively spent at airports and hotels. I have flown very frequently, both officially and personally. There was a point of time when I used to be on a flight every other week. In fact the past four weeks itself, I have done a two flights every week plus another add on, totalling to nine flights. There are a couple to follow next week too. That comes to 11 in five weeks!

There have been days when I have gone from Madras to Bangalore in the morning, Bangalore to Hyderabad / Kochi for a meeting in the afternoon and checked into Bombay for the night after a flight from Hyderabad / Kochi. In all these seven years, I would have flown about 300 odd flights in my life, so far. I am not exaggerating - every other person flies these days - but this is the truth.

Hence I have got used to waiting at airports for security check-ins, for flights to arrive, for flights that have been delayed, waiting inside the aircrafts for them to take off -  all these years. I go to airports well in advance before check- ins, complete all security formalities and keep walking about. In fact at most airports, I just walk in and out like a zombie as I have been in most of them.......multiple times.

Thus, for me, 'airport' / 'aircraft' life is nothing strange. It is a de rigueur and I am comfortable flying every time. At the least, I am not uncomfortable. I have not experienced any discomfort or uneasiness inside flights or airsickness as they call it. Some people have the airport syndrome....where the cacophony of the persons and activities in the airport causes you to become uneasy. Airsickness is something we all know. It is a form of temporary sickness caused due to physical and mental elements of the body. Your brain could get conflicting signals. You could feel like jumping off the flight, walking around etc.

Hence on my flight to Bombay from Hyderabad last Friday night, I was unprepared by what was to happen to me for the first time. The flight took off on time at 7:05 pm and was air-borne.

I invariably book the window seat and this time it was no different. The middle seat is obviously not preferable as it is torturous and the aisle seat is something where you have to keep adjusting your arms and legs every time passengers and air hostesses sashay up and down the aircraft. So I endeavour to book the window seat as far as possible. Sometimes, window seats are available at the last rows of the aircraft but I still take them. They are perhaps the most 'private' seats in a plane - at the least one hand can be rested without disturbance.

On a flight, I either listen to music with my phone on flight mode or read. I cannot sleep on flights unless I am dead tired, which is very rare. Even so, I cannot sleep for more than 20 minutes.  

Coming back to this flight, two ladies next to me - appeared acquainted - were chatting with each other. I was listening to music for around 30 minutes. On seeing the battery drop to 9%, I switched the phone off. The airhostess provided me the food booked on the flight, which I promptly took placed inside my bag as I did not feel like eating.

Around ten minutes later, a strange thing happened. My mind suddenly appeared to be talking to me. My body appeared to be mildly shaking and I felt restless. Something appeared to pound my head. I asked for a cup of water and gulped it down. No avail. Then I tried to down the juice given by the airline down my throat, but I did not feel like taking it in. In fact, I felt like vomiting. I could not concentrate. I thought of getting up and going to the washroom but there was a long queue already. Then the head started to ache. Ache badly. I suddenly felt tired and very uneasy. It was some discomfort that I have never experienced before. I tried to look outside the window and concentrate on something, but since it was night I could see nothing but black. Nevertheless I continued but I could not focus after five minutes. Voices started sounding inside my head.  I felt like telling the ladies to keep their voices down but, for as a sign of good deportment, I did not. To be fair, they did not appear to be too animated or loud, but it was very difficult for me to bear. The smell of the food served added to the nausea. I folded my hands, tried to recline in a non-reclining seat being the emergency exit, stretched my legs, tried to do neck exercises....all futile attempts. I could say I felt claustrophobic. I wanted the plane to land.  Desperately. At 35,000 feet in the air, you can't do that at the drop of a hat. Not that otherwise it would have happened. I tried to close my eyes and attempted sleep. In vain. I buried my face in my palms and tried to remain like that. Then I looked at my watch and gauged that it would take another 45 minutes for the plane to land. Painful. I did the same attempts for the rest of the 45 minutes but they were perhaps the most testing minutes I have ever experienced on a plane in my life.  

I was the most relieved person on the plane when it landed.....more than even the pilots. The effect was such that, once on the taxi, I asked the taxi driver not to switch on the air conditioner in the car, fearing that the plane experience would repeat. He said the rate includes the a/c. "No problem, I will pay for the air conditioner, but I don't want it," I said.

Once I reached home, I had sandwiches and made myself a really hot and strong brew of coffee. A rare occasion when I had a coffee before hitting the bed! I have another flight in two days. For the first time in my life, I am feeling weird about flying.