Trip type: Personal

Airline: Delta

Route: MSP – BDL

En route to Connecticut for Thanksgiving with a squirrel-y 1.5 year old in tow (more on that in the next post…), we heard one of probably the top three things you don’t want to hear from your flight crew: “Is there a doctor on the flight? Or a medical professional? Please meet us in the back of the plane immediately.”

Although it was a small plane (2×2 – not an ideal size for corralling a child who has finally decided he wants to walk and is hell-bent on doing so at every opportunity), there were a surprising number of people who stood up including a general practitioner, an ophthalmologist (how many times do you think the eye doctor wishes it were an eye emergency so he could save the day?), and a couple of nurses. I chalk this up to the vast and experienced medical industry in Minnesota.

A young man in the back of the plane had a seizure and was laid out in the back galley of the plane. There was some debate about an emergency landing but luckily he came around and had medication with him as this was a preexisting condition. I would later see him at baggage claim and he couldn’t have been older than college-aged, on his way home for the holiday with his family. I can’t imagine how scary it was to have that happen while flying alone (or how terrible it was for his family to learn of the episode occurring while he was in flight) but I’m incredibly grateful there were medical professionals and a calm crew on hand to help out.

As it turned out, we dodged an even bigger travel bullet as we were flying the Tuesday of the Thanksgiving week. The next day the East Coast was walloped with a nor’easter that canceled thousands of flights. Although it seemed like more of my typical bad flying luck, it turned out to be a good thing we flew when we did!