Tomorrow in Jerusalem (maybe??)

The date is February 6th, 2019 and I am sitting in the middle of JFK airport sobbing while my dad begs for help from (and eventually threatens) JetBlue customer service. The time is 12:11am and the two of us are supposed to be on a flight to Jerusalem in approximately nine hours. The trip of a lifetime.

Except there's one problem. The freakin' airline broke my wheelchair. We're not just talking about a little scrape. No. The axle for one of the wheels got dented (which can basically only happen if the chair gets dropped ten feet or slammed into by a bull calf). This means that the wheel can't lock into place in the chair frame, making the entire device useless and unsafe.

I am a person who requires my mobility device for survival; if we can't get this chair fixed by the time the sun comes up, we can't go to Israel. My chair is custom-made to protect and support my body, and being in one not designed for me is legitimately dangerous. There's nothing in the world that can act as a substitute for this broken piece of metal. And my dad and I knew it.

Hence my freakout in Terminal 5.

Now keep in mind, we were all too familiar with this scenario. Throughout the years, my chairs have been delivered back to us with broken-off brakes, missing side guards, paint scratches, loose handles, etc. (and that's if we're lucky enough to get the chair back at all). This isn't something that gets talked about often, but airlines are notorious for damaging critical (and expensive!!) medical devices, as well as failing to properly repair/replace them. There are several reasons for this:

1) Employees are not properly trained in how to handle fragile medical devices, using the same techniques they would employ to transport bulk luggage or other, less sensitive items. I've literally watched my chair fall off the luggage conveyor belt from my seat inside the plane, and let me tell you, it's like a punch to the gut.

2) There is no separate storage space. Wheelchairs, walkers, and other aides are places with the rest of the baggage under the plane, causing them to be exposed to other items that move around and hit them hard. Sometimes the devices themselves aren't properly restrained and can ram into walls, flip, etc.

3) There is a general lack of understanding for how crucial these mobility aides are for the people who use them. Having them damaged or lost isn't simply an inconvenience, but a personal threat to independence and safety. Airlines have not found it worthwhile to devote sufficient resources to reduce these issues, like changing the layout of air-crafts to allow devices to remain with their owners throughout the flight, or having better safety and response protocols. Thus these problems continue.

And now we can get back to February 6th. Luckily I have a very persistent father who didn't take no for an answer that night, insisting that there must be someone in all of New York who could make my chair usable. After spending ninety minutes trying to be taken seriously in the middle of the night, we miraculously secured a wheelchair technician for the next morning. My poor dad carried me from inside the airport to a shuttle, then into our hotel up to our room because there were literally no other options. He reassured skeptical me that we'd be okay, and honestly, I didn't believe him.

I woke up the next morning with him sitting on the bed grinning from ear to ear. He told me that our guardian angel, Jerry from Brooklyn, was downstairs finishing up. It was a temporary fix, but a fix nonetheless.

"This chair's so solid, you could take it around the world if you wanted to!" Jerry exclaimed to us later, unknowing of our predicament. Touché, Jerry. Touché.

20 hours later, we touched down in Jerusalem, and were in for another scary encounter: this time it was riding a camel! Lol.

Moral of the story: it turned okay but it very easily could have not. If I had been traveling alone, or didn't have an advocate and the financial resources to get help fast, I would have been shit outta luck. For me, traveling is complicated for many reasons, with just one being the potential for issues like these. It's impossible to prepare for everything, but I do my best and am lucky enough to always have support. Traveling is mega stressful at times but it's always worth it :) Scary camels are worth it!