I want to write about my longest flight ever and the sickle cell boy.
I would want to start with the excitement of boarding the plane, an international flight from Lagos to Addis Ababa this was quite exciting because I met other Africans, the process of screening was quite rigorous. We had to screen from one table to the other table and boarded the plane.
It was quite exciting because the airline crewmembers were awesome the way beautiful and professional however, we met this sick little boy who was in a wheelchair and suddenly started gasping for breath, the crewmembers had to get the oxygen cylinder and mask, and then requested for doctors and nurses that were on board it was quite scary as the boy gradually gained back consciousness.
We touched down office stop, and then they requested the presence of fist aid and other medical personnels else to attend to him. We moved from there and touched down our second stop.
The second stop was Dublin in the United Kingdom, we had to touchdown to refill the plane, this took about 45 minutes and then several checks will.
The sick boy had quite a few passengers sitting with him and checking on him including air hostesses.
THE SCARY TUBULENCES AND ISLAMIC FAITHFULS ON MY LONGEST FLIGHT
We had several people on board including a reasonable number of Muslims, they wouldn’t eat the refreshments that was served until evening, it was quite a beautiful experience seeing them pray at intervals with their (bead) and began to take their dinner meal at the time of breaking the fast.
Then the pilot suddenly requested that all passengers have their seat belts on, we initially thought it was the usual turbulences we had encountered before, but this was absolutely different, really mind blowing and scary. It was as though we were nose diving, the plane was not stable, it was wrangling, this report below suddenly popped up my mind. Fast forward an hour into the flight, the captain announced to the cabin that we’re about to hit a severe turbulence zone and that the crew should go back to their place and stop serving.
What followed was probably the most scared I’ve ever been. It was a rollercoaster ride. Overhead luggage fell down, lights went out, a flight attendant got sick, and I heard people pray.
It’s pretty rare, though. A 2013 report in the New England Journal of Medicine on “Outcomes of Medical Emergencies on Commercial Airline Flights” identified thousands of medical emergencies (out of millions of passenger journeys over a little less than three years), of which 0.3 per cent ended in death. Of 36 deaths identified, 30 occurred during flight, ranging in age from a one-month-old newborn baby to a 92-year-old.
The Muslims began to pray out loud, some Christians help hands and said out loud prayers, the sick boy suddenly began to convulse, the mother started crying, because nobody could at that point give him attention, she grabbed and held him to her chest in tears amidst this chaos the pilot tried all his professionalism to calm the panicking passengers, the boy after while was as though he was dead, because he was not breathing , his mother cried uncontrollably, he suddenly gasped back to life, and after 30 mins of this confusion, the turbulence suddenly stopped,
We had an emergency landing at Toronto, which was the closest airport, I would, at this point, like to say that it was quite an experience, staying airborne for about 24 hours, and then with the sick boy on flights the Muslims that were fasting including the scary turbulence.
I learnt to hold on to my believe beacuse it would come handy any time without notification.
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