Do planes count as public transport?
I went travelling in Central America last December and, just in time for the journey home, got scarlet fever. Contrary to what you might believe from reading 19th century novels, scarlet fever is very rarely fatal. It is however hella nasty. It started with just a few blotches on my abdomen, which I just assumed were insect bites. A few hours after they appeared, I got on the plane home with a Spanish-based airline whose name may or may not rhyme with "Siberia". I hate this airline. On a 12-hour flight a few weeks previously, they had deigned to give us only two tiny glasses of water for the entire journey, which I'm pretty sure is some sort of human rights violation. They had also played really shit music of little kids singing Spanish Christmas carols for half an hour after take-off and half an hour before landing, which was bad enough to make anybody consider infanticide. I was already a bit apprehensive about the return journey.

So I boarded the plane, found my seat and settled down for ten hours of fun. An hour into the flight, I began to feel a little queasy. I forced myself to eat some of my dinner, reasoning that it was all I was getting for the next several hours. Big mistake. I drank the only glass of water I would get until breakfast.

I waited.

I didn't feel any better.

In fact, I was feeling much worse. The contents of my stomach were threatening to make their way back into the outside world with alarming speed.

It was then that I discovered that the lady sitting next to me was too large for me to even consider squeezing past, and refusing to get out of her seat. So I jumped over her and legged it to the bathroom. Then I discovered that the contents of my stomach weren't actually going to make a hasty exit at all, and I was going to spend the next hour or two in the bathroom trying to vomit.

After some time I began to feel inexplicably better and returned to my seat (jumping over the fat lady again). Two minutes later I was DEFINITELY about to vomit, spectacularly and uncontrollably within the next few seconds. I grabbed a sick bag, leaped over my seat mate, made an undignified dash for the bathroom and *just* made it in time. It was probably the most unpleasant vomiting session of my life. It was so acidic that it felt like someone had taken a blowtorch to my throat. When I emerged shaking from the bathroom half an hour later, I tried to find a stewardess - surely they would give me some water under the circumstances. But I could only find one sitting alone at the back of the plane, and she was asleep. And I was too much of a wuss to wake her up. Besides, I was about to vomit again.

This happened several times over the next couple of hours, through some pretty unpleasant turbulence I might add. I kept thinking I was feeling better, that there couldn't possibly be anything left in my stomach, returning to my seat, and then having to jump over my seat mate and sprint to the bathroom again. Passengers who were awake were watching the action unfold with increasing fascination, disgust and sympathy. For most of the time, I just stayed in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet listening to my iPod, without which I'm sure I would have gone completely bonkers, and occasionally turning round to vomit.

Finally, I emerged from the bathroom for the umpteenth time about 8 hours into the flight to discover that finally they were serving breakfast. I got myself a glass of water and went back to the bathroom, to discover that they were all occupied. So I sat myself down on one of the chairs just outside the toilets that the stewardesses sit in for take-off and landing. A few minutes later, one of the stewardesses serving drinks strode up to me. Now, I was sitting outside the bathroom, looking like death, shaking, shivering, clutching a sick bag in one hand and gingerly sipping a glass of water with the other. So I thought it a reasonable assumption that she was coming over to offer me some sympathy and ask if there was anything I needed. Not to tell me off for sitting in her chair, which was what she proceeded to do. I just gawped at her and stood up like a good girl.

A couple of hours later, it was time to go back to our seats for the long-awaited descent to Madrid. About five minutes before landing, I felt the urge to vomit AGAIN, despite the fact that I had puked up the water and had literally nothing left in my stomach. I was buggered if I was going to chunder into a sick bag in front of everyone. I leaped over Fat Lady for the last time, skidded past the rows of bemused passengers, any attempts the stewardesses tried to make to usher me back to my seat were met with a desperate "VOY A VOMITAR!!!" I think they concluded that it was best for all concerned if they let me use the bathroom.

Remember the shit Christmas music I said they played during take-off and landing? Well, whilst my entire body was convulsing with the supreme effort of ejecting the now-scant contents of my stomach, the soundtrack of my vomiting was a bunch of odious children singing, "Navidad, navidad, hoy es navidad!" (goes to the tune of Jingle Bells, to give you some idea of just how annoying it was).

I staggered, shaking and shivering, off the plane (having first taken as many sick bags as I could carry) and into the terminal building, called my mother and begged her to buy me some anti-vomiting pills and rehydration drinks and meet me at Heathrow in four hours.

Then the diarrhoea hit. My God, it wasn't pretty. It was totally uncontrollable, like pints and pints of water were just pouring out of my arse. It got to the point where I had half an hour before my flight left for London, and I was still glued to the bog. I had no choice but to take a massive dose of Immodium and hope for the best.

As I was going through security to get to my connecting flight, the battle that my now-paralysed bowels were having with their contents gave me the most horrendous stomach cramps. I ended up lying on the floor, doubled over and moaning in agony. The security people wanted to call an ambulance but I used my best Spanish to explain to them that there was no way in fucking hell I was missing my flight, staggered to my feet and limped over to the gate.

The rest of the story isn't all that interesting - I made it onto the plane, got to Heathrow in one piece, all my luggage was waiting for me, my mum picked me up and I even managed not to throw up in her car.

Although I got over the acutely ill phase of the illness pretty quickly, it was several weeks before I got a diagnosis, discovering that millions of nasty streptococci were having a party in my throat the day after I'd snogged my ex.
(grandmasterfluffles Come to my Armageddon party on, Thu 29 May 2008, 16:29, 2 replies)

poor lamb!
i had that when i was a kid, it was horrendous
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Thu 29 May 2008, 17:54, closed)

public transport or not
a story with that many bodily fluids deserves a click.
(Bazongaloid, Thu 29 May 2008, 18:10, closed)