I had an interesting experience on the Easy Jet plane from Edinburgh to Luton (a one-hour flight south). Most of the journey, I was fine until the last leg of the flight. Slowly, I realized I was feeling nauseous and what I thought was motion-sick. It was weird because I’ve never gotten sick on a plane before. I stopped reading, thinking that would help. I tried to take a nap, but I kept getting awakened by a really sick, nauseous feeling. I thought I may throw up, so I grabbed a paper bag from the front pocket, but it wasn’t quite the same urge.
I started to feel dizzy. I wanted to tell Ben a few times that I felt sick, but I believed that bringing attention to it and having him ask me a bunch of questions would only make matters worse. I thought if I ignored it, perhaps mind would win over matter. Not so much. I drifted in and out of consciousness (trying to nap) for about ten minutes until it got to be too much. All of a sudden I felt very awake and realizing everything was starting to shut down around me. The sound dimmed, everything started going dark. I felt prickly and I realized I was in a cold sweat and could barely move. I thought, oh shit I am gonna faint. I could tell because it was the same feeling I’ve gotten when I have come close to or got heat stroke. It felt like… crap, really. I immediately felt like David after the dentist, “Is this gonna be forever?”
It felt really really awful and I couldn’t even say anything. Ben was asking me something. He must have realized something was wrong cause then an Easy Jet crew member was next to me giving me water and talking to me but I couldn’t really understand her. It was like I was underwater. I sipped a bit of water. She told me to rest my head against the seat in front of me. That made me feel better until it made me want to throw up after about 2 minutes so then I sat back again. I couldn’t get comfortable. I stopped drinking the water because it made me feel sick. After a few minutes, I started to become more aware of my surroundings. Ben said some of the color was returning to my face, which was a relief because he was pretty worried when he first looked at me and saw my face had gone white.
Slowly I was able to hear and understand things again. A stewardess brought me a bottle of water and I finished my glass too. She said this happens to passengers sometimes because their airline do very fast descents and not everyone can handle the quick altitude change. I’ve been traveling by plane since I was about 8, and nothing like this has ever happened to me. It was weird and scary, but once we landed I felt better almost immediately. The crew really was very attentive and concerned so I appreciated that. Ben carried my backpack out of the plane (and onto the tarmac, strangely enough) for me and I sat at baggage claim for awhile while he got our luggage. My arms felt weird like I was in the middle of giving blood.
Once I had dinner, I felt back to normal, but that was a crazy experience. I have to thank Ben for booking those tickets. It wasn’t till AFTER that flight that he said, “Oh, well I guess that’s why they have the nickname Queasy Jet!” 