Airplane landings in Europe are not the raucous affairs they used to be.
The touchdown of my first flight abroad, to Hungary in 1997, nearly brought the aircraft’s occupants to their feet in wild hysterics the likes of which I’d only seen once before. This happened after an absolutely heroic landing on Kodiak Island, Alaska, at the conclusion of an approach during which I could make out prayers in at least three languages. Even the landing of my first flight to Ireland with Beth, just a few years before this trip, allowed our flight crew awareness of our appreciation upon landing in Cork. Although, now that I think of it, it may have been the elation of the London Stag’s Night boys at being away from their wives and only a short dash away from the pubs at the root of all of that hooting and hollering. Funny how dignified “Let’s get pissed, Lads!” can sound when shouted by a covey of English barristers.
Only a smattering of halfhearted golf clapping patted the air upon this arrival.
There was a small scurry of activity as a group of teens wagered how far the packet of airline-brand peanuts they’d set a-sliding would make it down the aisle as the rest of us planted our noses into the seats directly ahead. I am usually able to tell whether a pilot was trained in the Air Force or the Navy by how much runway he/she did or did not use—Navy pilots being trained to land on the short decks of aircraft carriers and all. Judging by the two-footed application of breaks by Your Man from Dublin, he’d come up landing on small sand bars and dead-end streets.
As the rest of us checked our foreheads for rug burn, all but one of the teens let out a collective disappointed groan. The lad now pumping his fist and cursing in a midlands accent must have wagered the aforementioned snacks would go the farthest, for it had coursed past the coach seats, through First Class, and all the way to the feet of a cabin attendant at the forward bulkhead.
As money changed hands to the victor, who was still taunting the vanquished with what I can only assume was a cloud of blue assaults (I couldn’t understand a single accented word by this point in the one-sided volley), we were informed of the local time: not even 0500 yet.
I chose this flight to Shannon because of its scheduled 5:45 a.m. arrival. By the time your American passport breezes you through customs and immigration and the rest of your fellow bleary-eyed passengers are assembling around the still silent baggage carrousel, you can be the first in queue when the currency exchange window opens for 0600 and the scones are still hot in the upstairs canteen.
Early winter tailwinds or a yet-to-be-discovered thinning troposphere had pushed us across the Atlantic night in less time than it took Lindberg to pre-flight the Spirit of St Louis.
The tired yet distinguished-looking customs officer gave me only a short, Vatican-influenced glance over his reading glasses when I told him the intended duration of my stay. “Eighty-nine days,” I said. This number was just one day shy of the three-month limit on the grant of a tourist visa. I was, of course, prepared with paragraphs of explanation for the length of my visit: “doing it while I still can, Irish family history, stone cottage, Fermanagh family, Irish puppy ….”
STAMP!
Done, save for a quick red pen circle around the “ninety-day” bit on the visa as silent reminder that I was a guest in his country. He didn’t say “Welcome to Ireland. Thanks for the dollars, Yank. Now go home” … aloud.
* * *
When the charge nurse wakes you for your forth vital sign check of the night and you’re trying to remember if you have to pee and you’ve blocked the anguishing memory of catheter removal or if gravity is now taking care of nature’s call, all you hear is the low humming of a floor polisher somewhere around the corner and the sound of people coughing themselves awake. The same goes for the Shannon International Airport at 0530, except for the peeing part. I was pretty damned sure I had to go.
Did I not mention spastic bladder issues with my old friend MS? Arrrgh!
They may escort over three million people in and out of the country from this relatively small air hub. At this hour, however, that bag of airline nuts could make it from one end of the building to the other without a single person seeing it, let alone be occluded in its voyage by anything or anyone. No one would even be around to lay odds on its potential progress.
Accustomed to their privileged niche in the world, freshly immigration-accepted visitors from “The States” lined up at the car hire desks and begin to huff indignantly that they weren’t being served. Never mind that the cardboard cut-out clock at each counter advises to return at 0600; we have Ireland to “do,” villages to invade, and pubs to crawl.
The sun would not be up for another two hours? So what!
I, on the other hand, hobbled my way up the stairs to the IKEA-designed breakfast room and found a hard bench, apparently salvaged from a monastic confessional, and waited for the scones to make their way to the serving line and the world-revered, impenetrable barrier that is the neoprene band across two chromium stations to be removed so I could enter and breakfast.
It’s funny, if you think of it. America is embroiled in immigration reform debate, vigilante “Minute Man” patrols, and plans to wall-in the entire southwest corner of the nation. Why don’t we just raid all the amusement parks and movie theaters south of Denver and string these new-millennium versions of the velvet rope from San Diego to Corpus Christi? Then we could make a bunch of those long, back-and-forth mazes at border crossings just to make sure that only those in the best of cardiac health are allowed to enter via Mexico.
Within moments of deplaning, I was made aware of the return of the on-again-off-again pain of neuropathy in my left foot. Neuropathy (sometimes called neuropathic pain) is a funny thing—and I’m talking funny “peculiar” here not funny “ha-ha.” It’s real pain, sometimes even debilitating pain, but its cause isn’t at the site where the sensation is experienced.
Somewhere along the nerve pathway from where my left Peroneal Nerve finds my spinal cord and the Somatosensory Cortex of my brain, some of that “corrosion” I described had occurred, and I have a lesion. The result of normal signals passing from my foot and leg through this damaged area and on to the pain center of my brain was causing me to feel pain. While there was nothing wrong, as in an injury or burn to that area, the pain was very real. Very.
Neuropathic pain is sometimes described as a “burning” or “tingling” sensation. That may be the case for some but for me it’s more like the acute sensation of striking the “funny bone” in your elbow. It may be called the humerus, but I can assure you there is very little humor in it.
I typically use a technique I learned in a pain management study that retrains the brain’s reaction to pain. Through Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)—the same treatment now used for some veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and some Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI)—I am able to dissect the pain experience from the place of pain, all the way through what I call “the pain onion,” to the pain reaction.
The actual pain never goes away. By controlling the cascade of negative thoughts associated with the pain, I can usually live with the experience, which can last for hours or months.
Today, however, with a multi-hour drive in a manual transition ahead of me and three liver-punishing days with little slumber behind, I chose the pharmaceutical route.
I also decided that it wasn’t a bad idea to pop at least part of one of my anti-fatigue pills. These little puppies are actually an anti-narcolepsy med and cost about as much a semester’s tuition, books, and room & board at Cornell. Many medical insurance policies don’t cover this drug for multiple sclerosis, as it is officially “off label” for MS; mine included. Some MS patients even resort to sharing the med with friends whose coverage does cover the cost.
A quarter of a pill dose can usually get me through a particularly tough bout of MS fatigue, but at a cost higher than coin. The energy “checkbook” of those of us with MS has a finite daily balance and the drug is like a loan shark. To say that we “get tired” does it no justice. We’re talking about lay-down-or-fall-down tired here. The drugs can get me through a day, but I’m only borrowing energy from the next day’s balance. Two or three days running is about the extent of the efficacy in my experience. After that, even the loan shark drug can’t pay my energy debts, and I lose a week to what the medicos call “profound fatigue.”
I decided on a full pill.
The last of my nine-dollar, three and a half ounce, airport-purchased, zero calorie, gluten-free bottled water was used for washing my fangs upon approach, so I’d have to swallow the 800mg horse pill dry. I began saving up spit as I dug through one bag then another to find my prescription bottle. By the time I found the drug and attempted to crack the soviet-designed adult-proof lid (they should use these things as locks on our new border protection system) I had half of Lough Erne—the lake of my ancestral county—in my gob.
As if on cue, a matronly employee of the canteen saw me, puff-cheeked and wrestling with Stalin’s pill box, and came to the border gate. Her warm and distinctive Irish accent (I’m pretty sure she’s from Poland) startled me and I turned my head like a Pavlovian mastiff—my spittle now equally divided between my chin, my sweater, and the confessional bench.
“We’re not open for a tick, but you can come in for tea … if you like.”
The “if you like” was more “iv ug lick” as her brogue foundered into her native accent when she realized the possible error in having invited a drooling lunatic in for tea.