Chicago O’Hare Airport 17 February 2009

I don’t sleep well the night before I leave. I keep waking up, afraid that my trusty cell phone will betray me and not go off at the intolerable hour of 5 AM. When I wake up, I leap out of bed, check my phone, and then go back to bed and think about my latest Mindat experience. At 5 AM the trusty cell phone does indeed go off: I get up, get dressed, discover that the hotel’s continental breakfast is not yet ready, get into my car and drive to the airport, defying the Tucson Effect by only making one wrong turn that is easily remedied with a U-turn. I check in, find real coffee and a muffin, and soon am boarding the plane that will take me to Chicago.

Despite Forrest’s ministrations, my back goes back into spasm somewhere over Oklahoma. I fear I may have blown a disk. By the time we land in Chicago every false move is an agony; I enlist the aid of the flight attendants and get a wheelchair ride from the plane to my connecting flight to Philadelphia.

If I wasn’t in so much pain this would be funny. O’Hare is one of the world’s busiest airports, and here I am, riding along piled down with computer case, backpack and CPAP machine, my fate in the obviously powerful hands of the young Russian girl pushing the wheelchair. She maneuvers skillfully through streams of commuters, past businessmen and women oblivious to all but the person on the other end of their cell phone connections; she must be using the Force to clear a path for us through walls of oncoming traffic. People walk out in front of us and I think, “I hope they don’t drive like that.” If they live in Chicago, they probably do.

We continue on, past shops and restaurants. Naturally, it’s some distance between the gate at which I arrived and the one from which I will depart. I remark that it’s a good thing I didn’t try to walk this. The Russian girl acknowledges tersely. I don’t think she knows much English. Her driving is flawless: there are no sudden stops or turns; confident that people will get out of our way, she does not veer from her course.

We arrive at the gate and she unloads me and my carry-on luggage. I’m feeling very protective of my backpack, which has all of my goodies from Tucson in it. I politely ask the man sitting next to my luggage if he would be kind enough to keep an eye on my stuff while I go talk to the woman at the check-in desk. When he says yes I gimp on over and the desk attendant puts me in first class without a second glance. If I wasn’t in so much pain that would be kind of neat. I wonder if they make first class passengers pay for their lunches too.

I determine that I will call my doctor once I am on the ground and in my own car in Philadelphia. My back shouldn’t have gone out again so easily: I was as careful with my bags as I could be and it was too early in the morning for me to be tense. It’s true the airplane seats aren’t terribly comfortable and this could in fact be the root of the problem.

Despite all the back pain, this trip home is actually smoother and seems much shorter than the trip out. When we reach Philadelphia, there is a wheelchair waiting for me; my suitcase is one of the first ones off the plane; the Microtel guy arrives nearly immediatley; my car starts; and I make it home in record time, where my husband, who has been in Afghanistan for the better part of six months is waiting for me.

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