Feeling Ill and Anxious on a Flight (...and how to deal with it)

Aug 19

Aug 19 Feeling Ill and Anxious on a Flight (...and how to deal with it)

Feeling ill is horrible. Feeling ill when you’ve got a taxi and a plane and a train and a bus to catch is worse.

Before a recent flight, I found myself during “that time of the month”, feeling a bit nauseous and chronically tired. Nothing too unusual and nothing I couldn’t handle, I thought to myself as I locked my front door at 4am and jumped in the car.

A couple of hours later however, it was an entirely different story. I’d boarded an hour and a half flight and my stomach felt like something was trying to break out from the inside. A dull, aching pain that, no matter hard I tried to sleep, listen to music or do my yoga breathing, just wouldn’t go away. I felt so bad that my hands were shaking and I was sweating. Every move made me feel like I was going to be sick. Plus, the seatbelt signs were on and I was in the windowseat. I.e. I was completely trapped.

This is probably my definition of my worst nightmare. I haven’t talked about my anxiety much (I feel the word is bandied around too easily on the internet), but I get it, pretty badly. When I finally stood up to make my way to the loo and got trapped behind the food and beverage trolly, things went from bad to worse. I could feel the entire back half of the plane staring at me as I clutched desperately at the top of a nearby seat as what felt like knives tore at my abdomen. I started retching just as the air hostesses finally let me past, and I locked myself in the toilets.

I looked in the mirror, and no matter how shit I felt, I had to laugh at what I saw. I looked like the colour of a kale smoothie and my hair, a lion’s mane at the best of times, was positively bouffant with the nervous energy. But best of all, my eyeliner seemed to have migrated and found a comfy place to settle for the winter halfway down my cheeks. Cheers, Maybelline.

The next ten minutes were spent in a turmoil. This pain won’t away. I’m going to be sick. Oh god, I’m being sick. This hurts, so much. I sound like a drama queen – but when you’re in the air, you have an hour and a half of this, and you know you’re going to be out of the country for a few days, and you’re really not sure whether mother nature is just reminding you she’s the mother bitch or if you’ve actually got food poisoning from that chicken, the world feels pretty dark for a minute.

I emerged looking like a pasty green gremlin, with the vague notion of politely asking the stranger next to me for the aisle seat, sticking on some Taylor Swift and hoping for the best. But when I came out I ran into one of the air hostesses, and inexplicably uttered “I don’t feel very well”. I really don’t know why. But I’m glad I did, because not only did she provide me with a sick bag (low point) but also a big glass of coke and some Buscopan. She also let me stand at the back of the plane with the rest of the hostesses, right next to the toilet, because I really didn’t feel like making my way back to 5A and doing the walk of shame again in three minutes time. Plus, having these women around me made me feel strangely calm. It’s my period, I told them, in between gulps of coke. I think it’s trying to kill me.

“Ah,” the beautiful ginger one muttered in sympathy. “When we fly with our period, it’s…” a gesture of a blade across a throat – “not good.”

I felt more chilled out in my little girl power bubble at the back of the plane, but still not any less in pain and vommy, when another older guy joined me. After a couple of awkward seconds, he asked me if I was ok. At this point I was pretty sick and tired of feeling like crap so blurted out “I feel sick and weak and I’m on the first day of my period and I just want to feel better”. Poor man.

His response? “Oh. I’m a nurse. Tell me, is this normal for you?”

It sounds silly, but sometimes I feel like certain people are dropped into your life at very specific points for good reason. At first, when talking to the random nurse guy, I kept thinking “This is very nice, but I still feel sick. Very sick. Too sick to be standing here. Oh god, I’m going to be sick on you…”

But he started talking to me about his family, his holiday to Barcelona, how I should consider CBT for my anxiety. Whether it was the coke, the buscopan or the distraction – or a mixture of all three – I started to feel better. More animated. I started answering his questions with more than “Yes, I’m sorry, I just feel so sick…”

“I’m Charlie, by the way.” He told me, just before he returned to his seat. “And you take care of yourself. Give yourself a break. It’s not your fault you feel ill – you’re only human”. And with that, he was gone, before I could even apologise for my appalling chat.

Yep, feeling ill when travelling is shit. But it’s not your fault. And I did learn a few invaluable things which can help:

Do not, I repeat, DO NOT fly on the first day of your period if you can help it.

Coca cola makes everything better. It brings you back to life.

Buscopan also has magical powers.

Ask the airhostesses for help.

Trust me – they’re nice and they have the drugs.

You’re allowed to stand in the back bit with them until you have to land.

Distracting yourself is a really good idea.

Don’t care what the starers in the aisle think.

It’s ok. It sucks, but it’s ok. It’s not your fault and you’ll feel better soon.

It was only when I returned to my seat to make sure Phil didn’t think I’d fallen down the toilet that I wondered why Charlie was at the back of the plane in the first place. And why I hadn’t spotted him on my walk back down the aisle. Neither did I see him back in the airport, though I did look out for him to say thank you.

Maybe he was a ghost. A spectre. A guardian angel. Or maybe he was just a lot quicker at getting through baggage reclaim than me.

Have you ever felt really ill when travelling? What do you do to make yourself feel better?