Part 2 of Our Crazy Airport Experience

Although it is possible to get help traveling as a brain injured person, as explained in last week’s blog, this week I will talk about the rest of our crazy experience.

On our way to visit friends, going from Colorado to Indiana, our first flight landed in Dallas Fort Worth Airport. If you haven’t been there, I will tell you, it is an absolutely huge, confusing airport and we had a 3-hour layover there. A few minutes before landing there, we showed our paper that said DPNA- Disabled Person Needs Assistance, to the stewardess. She contacted someone to meet us as we got off the plane that was supposed to get us to our gate before our next flight. We told the man that met us that we needed to use the bathroom before he took us to our gate. When we came back to the gate from the bathroom, he was sitting in the driver’s seat of a cart full of people. He looked at us and said “You took too long in the bathroom. The cart is full.” There was an empty cart nearby, so I showed the paper I had written DPNA on to the driver. The driver looked us up and down, waved his hand in the air in front of us and said, “NO ride!” as if he assumed we didn’t need it. We looked at him in disbelief and told him we needed a ride. Again, he said, “NO.” Now, very upset, I looked around and saw a third cart. We told the driver what had happened, and he told us to have a seat on his cart. He buckled us in for a long ride. We were so glad we didn’t have to walk because the route had many twists and turns, and our gate was quite far away. We never would have made it without being confused. Once driving, the man talked to us about our experience and called his manager on his cell phone. Handing me his phone, he told me to explain what happened. The manager said he would take care of it and apologized profusely and told us that was NOT supposed to happen. When we got to our gate, I approached the lady at the check-in counter to show her our DPNA paper. She looked at it and said when it was time we could pre-board. When it was time to board, she called our names on the intercom, and we were first to board the airplane. Before landing, I showed the paper to a stewardess, and she had someone waiting for us when we landed. This person took us to the luggage claim area. We enjoyed an action pact 4-day girl’s trip with our friends in Indiana.

Then it was time to come home. While checking our luggage in at the airport, I showed our DPNA paper, and a worker escorted us to our gate. We again pre-boarded for our flight to Dallas Fort Worth. Towards the end of the flight, I hesitantly decided not to show our DPNA paper to the flight attendant because Veronica said, “Let’s try this ourselves.”  Again, hesitantly, I said, “Okay, but if we need too, we are asking for help.” We walked off the plane and walked directly to the flight board to see what gate we needed to go to. This was going to be a 4-hour layover. It must have been too early to be seen because our flight number was not on screen. We walked to a check-in counter and asked if they could help us find out which gate would be ours. They said it was in Terminal B. Luckily, we landed at a B gate, so we thought we were on Easy Street. You would think our gate would have been close by, since it was in the same terminal, but it was not. As I said before, this airport is huge, and nothing is close together. We walked a ways, found our gate, and sat down to wait. After being told by my husband before our trip to check the flight board frequently, and after sitting for a while, Veronica found the nearby flight board. Good thing she checked. Our gate had changed. We went to the posted gate. Once there, we spoke to the lady at the check-in counter and she suggested we check the board again one hour before our flight to Colorado, to make sure our gate had not changed again. So, that is exactly what we did. Upon checking the board for the last and final time, we had discovered our gate had changed, yet AGAIN! We could see as we walked to the waiting area that it was full. We looked around the very busy airport and decided to take a seat on the cement floor against the wall of the walkway to wait the last hour. Now I want to tell you, things were getting rough. I was getting overstimulated, and we were very tired by then. We were dropped off at the airport in Indiana at 2pm for a 4pm flight home. We got to Dallas Fort Worth airport at about 6:50pm and our next flight out wasn’t until 10:50pm. Thankfully, it was a short flight back to Colorado Springs. We live only 10 minutes from the airport and by the time we got home it was 12:30am. What a LOOOONG day! Both being brain injured, Veronica and I were so exhausted and out of it for the next 4 days. I know that seems like a long time to recover, but what an overwhelming experience. We flew home on a Sunday, getting home at the wee hours of Monday morning and we didn’t feel like ourselves again until we woke up on Friday. What a crazy, stressful trip! I know, it was by choice. It was definitely a learning experience. The whole thing was really hard for me. I had anxiety from the time we planned on going when the tickets were already purchased until the time we arrived home. Anxiety was a problem the whole visit partly because I was in different surroundings around people that had not experienced us as brain injured people and I really didn’t know if they would understand. My husband takes good care of us and with him around I know everything will turn out. I had to do that. It was a lot of responsibility. Veronica did great. We are Veronica’s guardians, and I am comfortable taking care of her at home. I think a huge stressor for me was that not only did I need to take care of myself; I also needed to make sure Veronica was ok, taken care of, and I was trying to help her behave appropriately with many reminders and buffering along the way in unfamiliar surroundings and with friends we had not seen for 15 years. We made it and it is good to know I can do it if I have to. However, I surely do not want to travel again anytime soon.

Now, if you would like to know more about our trials, triumphs, and adventures please read my book titled,

A Miracle a Day, One Day at a Time: Hope After Traumatic Brain Injury

https://store.bookbaby.com/book/a-miracle-a-day-one-day-at-a-time

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Travel safely and have an absolutely beautiful week.