To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heaven. I may not have the wisdom of Solomon (or Pete Seeger) as elucidated in Ecclesiastes in the 10th century BC but fate certainly impacted my purpose under the heaven recently. A bit pompous and presumptuous I know, but there are times when we face our mortality and come out the other side. What is the reason for this uncharacteristically spiritual intro to what is usually an irreverent decidedly unspiritual diatribe on this blog? Let me explain.
We left the good ship Azamara Journey on Saturday morning and made our way to Lisbon Airport. Our British Airways flight to London was delayed by 40 minutes but no problem because we had a two hour connection time for our Qantas flight to Singapore. At this stage it’s worth pointing out that the ticket was a Qantas ticket, not a British Airways ticket. The significance or otherwise of this is about to become obvious. Our Lisbon/London flight was further delayed by 20 minutes because we couldn’t fly over France – air traffic controllers strike. I could make jokes about this but the consequences were too serious.
We landed at Terminal 5 at Heathrow an hour late and the CB and I commenced our sprint across to Terminal 3. Our Qantas flight was leaving from Gate 1, the closest you would think. No it was the furthest away. The Departures board said “Gate Closing” so the race was on. We got there completely knackered and sweating profusely. The gate was still open but we were greeted with the news that BA had cancelled our tickets because the minimum connection time had been breached. You can imagine what happened next, especially when a handful of people who arrived after us were allowed to board.
To exacerbate the situation the Qantas staff were the epitome of indifference and arrogance. When told BA had cancelled our flights, I “politely” informed them we had Qantas tickets and BA had no right to cancel them. Take it up with BA was the response from Qantas. Fire up that computer and uncancel the tickets I said. Take it up with BA they said, because BA cancelled them. The rage was approaching Rambo proportions by this stage. When it became clear that we weren’t getting anywhere (we already knew they didn’t give a shit), we seethed our way back to the BA Service Desk at the other end of Terminal 3. You’d think the distance would have given us a chance to calm down. Instead the CB’s anger fed off my anger as we approached a perfect storm. 1+1 certainly did =3 in this case.
What made it worse was that I had been through similar situations in the past. I had been met getting off flights to be fast tracked to the next flight due to flight delays. The usual “do you know who I am” arguments also held no water – we were travelling biz class and I’m a life-time gold frequent flyer with Qantas. The least BA could have done was meet us off the Lisbon flight and give us the news then, rather than let us blow numerous gaskets getting to the Qantas boarding gate only to be told it was all in vain.
By the time we got to the service desk the BA people had already worn a tidal wave of abuse from another passenger in exactly the same situation as us. Cutting to the chase, I had banished the CB to a seat about 10m away lest she strangle someone and was waiting for my turn to get our new arrangements from BA when I dropped my boarding pass. On reflection, I decided I hadn’t dropped it, it had fallen from my left hand. I struggled to pick it up – my fingers were not cooperating. I picked it up with my right hand, stood up and addressed the BA lady as follows “kqergqeyurfgyrf”. This was rather disconcerting because I wasn’t aware I could speak in tongues, let alone Swahili. Then it hit me. Like a brick. I beckoned the CB with my right hand because my left arm was impersonating a French air traffic controller and when she arrived I said “jweiufhbdvdywgdstroke” through the right side of my mouth which was still sort of cooperating.
The CB leapt into action announcing an emergency to the whole terminal and demanding an ambulance. An hour later, after drifting in and out of incoherence and having been attended to by a para medic (who rode through the terminal on his bicycle), we set off for the best stroke hospital in London – Charing Cross. The best part of this whole episode was being in the back of an ambulance with sirens blaring and lights flashing, just for me.
As the ambos wheeled me into the hospital I could see a posse of white coated medical practitioners poised to climb all over me as I reached them. Seconds later one was shoving a needle into the back of my right hand another into the left and attaching both to tubes, one was shoving a needle into my arm to take blood another into my finger for a blood sugar test, one was ripping my shirt off, sticking electrodes on my chest and attaching wires to it, another was taking my blood pressure and I had a gizmo stuck on my finger. While all of this very well organized mayhem was going on another doctor was shouting at me “Ignore them and look at me. How many fingers am I holding up, what day is it….” and other questions to test how Joe Biden I was.
After the initial tests were conducted, within minutes of arriving, I was told they wanted to administer a new clot-busting stroke drug with a 35% chance of complete success, 60% chance of partial success, 4% chance of causing bleeding on the brain and a 1% chance of severe bleeding. I assumed this last one was a euphemism for something more final. We went for it and minutes later it was being pumped into my left hand. It needed to be injected within 4 hours of the stroke if it was to work. We beat that by hours. After a CT scan an ECG and an MRI the next day plus constant heart monitoring and assessment by various doctors, physiotherapists and occupational therapists it was decided the drug had worked exactly as it was supposed to and I was discharged Monday night, having been admitted late Saturday night.
I could have been discharged early Monday afternoon but the excellence of the NHS’s medical staff (“thankyou” seems infinitely insignificant) is not necessarily a reflection of the NHS’s administrative efficiency. I discovered this inefficiency is also inherent in other large organisations namely, British Airways and Heathrow Airport. When we left the airport on Saturday night in rather a hurry, we left our luggage in limbo. Getting it back was a saga in itself and a story for another day. Suffice to say the CB and I are now stuck in London because I can’t travel for two weeks. But flights have been rebooked, insurance has been sorted, accommodation is confirmed and luggage has been retrieved. We have a blue llama attached to one suitcase and a pineapple attached to the other. These were key according to the BA lady who went out of her way to find them.