Monday, September 27, 2010

Flying with Ativan Man

There are times in the year when I am a shit magnet. Shit seems to fly at me from the most random and unexpected encounters. I’ve made peace with this aspect of my karma but there are still days when I have no choice but to shake my head and laugh at my weird luck. I was reminiscing on my shit magnet status with a few folks when I remembered Ativan Man. Ativan Man is someone I was seated beside when I was flying out for my vaykay. He was so normal as to be almost invisible. This is, until the airplane’s ‘fasten your seatbelt’ sign dinged on and the engines started to rev up. That’s when Ativan Man suddenly got extremely anxious and started digging madly through his bag while hyperventilating. I tried to ignore this for as long as I could but it was clear that I would have to intervene. I very reluctantly turned to Ativan Man and asked, “ummm what’s up?” “Need my pills! I NEED MY PILLS WE’RE FLYING!!!!!!!!!!” was his response. Only with my luck could I have been seated next to a man afraid of flying who didn’t pre-medicate. Before I could get another word in he started to wildly gesticulate towards his hands complaining that they were becoming numb and tingly which elicited the unwanted attention of the next row. People thought that I was travelling with him while I tried to avert their gaze and wished that I could sink to the bottom of my seat and stay there forever – or at least until the plane landed. But I put on my nurse face (again reluctantly) and told him to start deep breathing while I found the conspicuous orange container in his bag. I opened the bottle for him and he took half a tablet. I encouraged him to take the other half. He did. Twenty minutes after take-off, he was snoring with his mouth open and turned towards me. I landed six hours later with my hair smelling like old coffee breath.

12 comments:

OMDG said...

Aw Maha, you're such a good sport. Please tell me he woke up and didn't have to be carried off the plane.

Unknown said...

Maha, as a mental health nurse I laughed at your blog Flying with Ativan Man. Great blog! Thanks for the laugh this morning. I really needed it after the week I had last week.

StorytellERdoc said...

LOL...this was a funny post! The last sentence killed me! And I could clearly picture you averting your eyes and scooting over away from "your husband" soas people wouldn't think you were together.

Thanks for the laugh to start the week, Maha. I hope this finds you well.

Grumpy, M.D. said...

That's great. Hope the rest of the vacation went better, and you got to wash your hair.

Robert said...

Tee-hee, coffee breath hair.

therapydoc said...

Flying is so relaxing, right?

Maha said...

OMDG - he woke up looking like he had the best sleep of his life. I wanted to kick him but I stuck to glaring.

Glad my crappy flight made everyone laugh! :)

woolywoman said...

Next time get him to take it under the tongue- SL ativan is the best ever for getting people to shut up.

Sarah Glenn said...

I take Valium for my own flight issues... and the key is to take it BEFORE the frickin' plane takes off so it can take effect BY the time the plane takes off!

Sorry for your coffee breath hair. I only breathe on my REAL spouse.

ativan said...

I've been taking Ativan for over a year and a half. It's a wonderful quick cure for anxiety. I recently have been going through some rough times and my anxiety has been through the roof. But thanks to my wonderful doctoring staff, I have been handling it very well.

pharmacy online said...

i Like Mushrooms)))

viagra generic said...

That was an interesting piece of information on handwriting analysis. Please post more about graphology. Thank you!