Transition

There always comes a time in the course of the 11-hour flight home from Britain when I ask myself why I am doing this horrible thing to my body.  Fortunately, that point came late in the most recent experience.  With some help from my nephew and a lifetime of not-quite-frequent-enough flying, I was in business class.  For once.  If there was ever a time for such a thing, this seemed the right time.  And despite that head-lolling moment near the end of the flight, when too much sitting combined with too much synthetic fabric and plastic and entertainment screens, after 9 1/2 hours or so...well, there was only a bit left.

Because I'm heading back in five weeks for a bit of UK touring with Marlou's nephew Eliot, it's important to summarize lessons learned.  Business class is all about foot rests and seats with adjustable lumbar supports and backrests that tilt into a near recline.  But all of this requires two hands, and even two legs, to use to any effect.  Not to worry, because the other thing about business class is a staff ratio that has flight attendants within easy reach, coupled with a service-intensive atmosphere.  But I'm not exactly used to this, and even half fear too much help.  Fear?  Well, loss of independence...the humiliating revelation that I am a 62-year-old cripple.  I like to think that I can still stand up an airplane and make my own independent way to the lavatory.

Which was why, at around hour eight with the abstraction of Hudson's Bay drifting by cartoon-style on the video screen map, I began the struggle for the toilet.  This always is a matter of some concern, the urinary experience at 39,000 feet.  I drink as little water as possible to avoid too many trips to the cramped airline toilet.  My constant fear is that I will relax too thoroughly, wake up from a nap and find that urinary matters have progressed to a crisis point...and in the space of a couple of minutes I have to get up on my feet, down the aisle and into the loo.  And this may or may not be possible.  The distance from seat to toilet represents one factor.  My fatigue level represents another, for not only do I have to be up but managing the balance issue as I move down the aisle.  No one wants a middle-aged quadriplegic toppling on their tray table, do they?  And in the worst scenario, I suddenly have to pee just at the moment that the flight goes into those telltale bumps and sideways jolts that make the pilot intone the seatbelt warning.  Trapped, seat belted, urinary urgency...the horrifying possibility of peeing into my pants, the cushy business-class seat dripping...oy.  Just the thought is enough to get the fearful quadriparetic unbuckled, sliding forward in his seat and preparing to stand.

The thing is, there's more to standing than standing.  In full light with the plane parked at the gate, say, rising to my feet is challenging but possible.  The seats are low, my energies challenged, but it's doable.  When the cabin is darkened so passengers can sleep and watch movies and the moving plane is making the occasional tilt, the whole thing changes.  Flight attendants, one in particular, kept telling me to ring my bell, ask for assistance, whenever I needed anything, including standing.  But standing?  This seems like such a minimal requirement for human activity...asking for help every time so degrading...I commence struggling in the dark.  Contrary to everything known about human psychology, I employ the most familiar and least effective approach.  I berate myself.  Stand, you fool.  Move.  Come on, idiot, up.  Now.  And so on.

Naturally, in the artificial twilight caused by too many closed window shades and too high expectations of the videos, I fumble.  My hand shoves against the armrest one moment, slides along it the next.  I try to grab something to push against at the base of the seat cushion and repeatedly slip.  Even in the darkness, this does not go unnoticed.  A male flight attendant appears.  How can he help?  Grab here, I say.  I have to pee.  I accept defeat.  

Inside the toilet, there's blood.  I seem to have scraped something, apparently my knuckles, and dragged bleeding fingers over my shirt and along my cheek.  Which occasions further self-loathing.  Staring at myself in the mirror, toweling at my face, trying to get the blood spots off my shirt, I decide I wasn't meant for business class.  I don't fit in.  This is for cool people.  Not uncool guys with blood on their shirts...and this would be an excellent time for me to finally accept some of the free alcohol flowing about this part of the cabin.  Unfortunately, I keep rejecting offers of cocktails and wine and God knows what else.  Why drink something that stimulates the bladder?

All of which stimulates thought.  There's plenty of time for thinking on flights.  Especially in view of the appalling array of films United Airlines is offering on eight channels.  So, my own movie unfurls...and there are some high moments.  Particularly, back at Heathrow, when I had a sober discussion with an airline agent.  I don't want to be stuck in the baggage claim at San Francisco with a power wheelchair that doesn't work.  Don't push me down to the SFO customs hall in a manual wheelchair and expect the Filipino escort to reconnect my battery cables.  I want someone there to help me.  Help me get the wheelchair reconnected, intact and running.  No problem, said the agent.  I heard her phone in the request right then and there.  He's in business class, she added, a superfluous bit of information that obviously wasn't.

There's a moment that keeps coming back to me.  I was arriving at the University of London residence halls last week and waiting to register.  There was one attendant and two windows.  Where should I be?  Which window?  I turned to Jake, 27 years old, and speculated that I was waiting at the wrong window.  No, Jake said.  We would wait here.  But what if I was at the wrong window?  Jake turned to me.  Wherever you are, Paul, it's the right window.  The attendant is at the wrong window, he added.  I made a mental note to stick with Jake.

And, flying eastbound, I will know better.  Let the flight attendants help me.  Take advantage of the posh travel.  It may not come again.  

And this may not come again, either, the arrival at SFO.  Never mind that SuperShuttle always tells me to phone them when I am actually out at the street.  I was still on board the airplane, nervously waiting to see if my wheelchair was rolling or reduced to rubble, when I called the van people.  SuperShuttle asked where I was.  I lied.  Just picking at my bags.  Which explains why rolling out of the terminal, I saw it, shimmering like a mirage.  A blue SuperShuttle van lowering its wheelchair lift.  I was home by 7 PM, 3 AM London time, but home.  Okay, so my bag was ripped.  There are limits to the strain a suitcase can take.  My friend Arnie helped me unpack, and we barely discussed the suitcase.  There are other suitcases.  There are other trips.  And there is more to come.

Which is really the issue these days.  When I awaken at 4 AM...not too bad, considering it's almost lunchtime in London...I seem to be asphyxiating.  I can't get enough air.  Which isn't at all true, but I worry that I can't get enough air.  I think about what my physiotherapist has told me, how I must maintain range of motion in my chest.  Which has nothing to do with my current experience waking up in California.  The chest stretching is good advice, but I am currently beyond advice.  I have awakened in panic.  I had this sensation when I was shot 40 years ago and lay in a hospital bed getting used to the effects of a half-paralyzed chest.  Diminished respiration was new then...but in the ensuing 40 years, it has become second nature.  But not now, because now there is not enough air.  And what is there to do in a state of panic but find another state?  Like the waking state.  I sit up, watch the room spin slightly, turn on the light and listen to California going bankrupt.  The radio news is oddly reassuring.

Soon I am up, considering tea and remembering that to hear Radio 4 all I have to do is get to the BBC website, turn on my stereo...and there is, and will be, more to come.