Loose Strife

Natalie, Joe, and the four of us left on a Wednesday for Arkansas. First stop was, unexpectedly, Northern Virginia. Our flight was delayed departing from Connecticut because of reported weather troubles at our layover airport, Dulles, outside of D.C. It was a good thing we weren’t flying: tornadoes were spotted nearby and the control tower was evacuated at one point. But when we finally did arrive at Dulles we missed our connecting flight by about ten minutes. (Later I learned that the plane sat on the runway and didn’t actually take off for another 5 hours!) There were no other flights for 24 hours.
Lucky for us we could stay with family — Laura, the girls, and I went to my parents’ for the night while Natalie and Joe slept at Elena’s. The bad news was that I hadn’t thought to put Laura’s medications in our carry-ons. Instead, they were in checked luggage and there was no way to get our bags. I tried. The fact that the vast majority of luggage actually makes it to its final destination is really amazing. In a situation like ours with bad weather, the airline’s automated bag scanning and tracking had no record of any of our bags’ stops, yet ultimately our bags beat us to Arkansas. Via what route, nobody knows. But they were there when we arrived.
At the time, though, we worried they were lost or might be further delayed, since nobody knew where they were. Laura had cut her dosages in half to last through the next day, but somehow I had to arrange for new medicine for Laura in case our bags were lost.
Obtaining narcotics and chemo drugs was unlikely to be simple. The morphine that Laura takes for back and leg pain is a controlled substance and a prescription must be physically delivered to a pharmacy. The chemotherapy drug Xeloda is about $400 without insurance, but our insurance doesn’t allow refills for the same drug until the dosage schedule for the current pills is completed. But solving these problems turned out to be easier than I thought — mainly because cancer patients usually have assigned case managers who, theoretically, help deal with the health care bureaucracy. In our case, it worked.
I called her case manager and she quickly pulled some strings so that insurance would cover the drug costs. And I called her oncologist’s office and they sent an overnight Fedex prescription to a Little Rock pharmacy. Problem solved!
Coming back was just as bad. When we arrived at the Little Rock airport in the early evening everything seemed to be running fine. Our bags were checked and we boarded the plane to Charlotte, NC. The plan taxied towards the runway and then stopped. We were told that there would be a 15 minute “ground stop” due to bad weather in Charlotte. Soon we heard that the ground stop was lifted, but our flight could not take off from Little Rock for another 40 minutes. Then we were told that ten people would miss their connection in Charlotte and the plane was returning to the gate to let these passengers off. Back parked at the gate the US Air agent rattled off at least a dozen destination over the plane’s intercom; anyone heading to these places had to get off. Our destination, Hartford, was not mentioned. But then the gate agent said that everyone should just get off the plane and all the passengers would be rebooked!
Now back in the terminal, all of us stood in a long line to be rebooked by a single agent. And then they announced suddenly that anyone who wanted to go to Charlotte should get back on the plane. There was panic as people tried to determine what was the right gamble. What about connection availability tomorrow?
I figured it was better to stay in Little Rock where we had family than in Charlotte. (The airline won’t pay for overnight accommodation because the problem was originally a 15 minute weather delay.) To try to get seats as quickly as possible, I called an airline agent to rebook on my cell phone. The agent quickly switched us to the first flight out of Little Rock and told us to pick up our boarding passes in the morning. We spent the night with Laura’s cousin in North Little Rock.
The next morning I called US Air to make sure we were ticketed correctly and was told we were. Karen dropped us off at the airport and said, “if you have any more troubles, you have my number.” And I said, exhausted and annoyed by our second overnight delay, “there will be no other problems!”
When I got to the ticket counter, the agent told me that a mistake had been made in our reservations and we didn’t have seats. The flight was now (surprise!) overbooked and we would have to take another flight.
I was furious and demanded that they seat us. “No, I won’t take the evening flight and get stuck in the same summer afternoon storm delays. We’ve already been delayed a day. I have two small children and my wife sitting over there in the wheelchair has cancer and she will run out of medicine if we don’t get home today. I’m not joking!”
There. I really did it. I played the cancer card. I felt like a jerk. But I was also angry and wanted to go home. It was true that Laura’s prescriptions would have run out if we stayed another day, but is it really right to make some other innocent passengers suffer because of me? The manager came out and said that we would get on the plane. They would bump the last people to check in. She quickly tried to finish checking in the people standing in line behind us so they could close the counter and, in her words, the late-comers would be “SOL”. When we got to the gate, they still had to bump two people and give them flight vouchers. But we got on the plane.
I’ve always felt contempt for assholes who make a loud scene for special treatment. Now, I hate to admit it, sometimes being loud does make a difference. And it sure helps to have a cancer card in your pocket to play.