Failure to Take Meds Disrupts Flight

July 4, 2014

in Illness/Medical Stories

Flight from Amsterdam – Seattle. Window seat middle of plane. Ninety minutes into a seemingly long and uneventful flight the lady in the row in front of me starts flopping around like a fish out of water.

A doctor on board determines that she’s having an epileptic seizure and does his best to help. I have never seen a seizure before and it was pretty alarming. After a few minutes she starts to calm down; the doctor tells the attendants she will probably sleep now and she does.

I look out the window and this fully loaded 747 is dumping fuel; looked like fire hydrants on the wings and we are turning around and going back to Amsterdam. The entire plane let out a moan and sank into this mutinous despair. Ninety minutes later we land in Amsterdam and the lady is escorted off the plane. She had woken up and told attendants that she had forgotten her meds that morning. Unbelievable.

We sat on the tarmac 4+ hours because they had to find her luggage. Can you imagine that job. We get a fresh crew because the original crew would be out of time before reaching our destination. The whole flight took I think 19 hours, 350 passenger schedules destroyed, airline dumped 10K worth of fuel in the ocean and paid for two crews, all because a lady forgot to take her pill.

{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }

madachode July 7, 2014 at 1:39 pm

The ignorance of some people, perhaps one should have did the plastic bag over the head and into the cargo hold trick on her instead.

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luccia July 16, 2014 at 8:04 am

People forget once in a while stuff.

But I’m sure the woman did it on purpose to incontinent you.

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Dee September 20, 2014 at 4:52 pm

Medication for seizures is not "once in a while stuff". It's something you take on a daily basis at the same time every day so really your comment doesn't even apply in this case. As to making the author incontinent, well that just not the way being incontinent works.

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James September 21, 2014 at 9:23 am

Even if daily, someone who is inexperienced with time zone travel could get confused. Seattle if 9 hours behind Amsterdam. I've seen veteran travelers add instead of subtract.

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Sherrie June 27, 2015 at 11:14 pm

but if the meds are that important, wouldn’t you take extra time to check time zone charts and be sure when to take the meds?

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pitigoesnz September 27, 2014 at 6:41 pm

Inconvinience? Although I suppose you could be so angry as to be incontinent. 🙂

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CJB September 6, 2014 at 8:47 pm

Wow, just wow. I feel that somehow that woman should be held responsible for all the chaos.Or at least banned from flying. Obviously she knew she needed her meds, that was probably not a new situation. When you have to take meds every day you don't forget!

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Maggie May 13, 2015 at 1:53 am

We all need to take responsibility for our health issues. You just never know who might be affected!

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Maggie May 13, 2015 at 1:54 am

I can't believe they just dump all that fuel into the ocean! Can't we come up with a better idea?

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