the week is killing me...almost literally

So last week was not too exciting. This week I had to fly to California on Monday and that's when things went back to the usual, weird, "does this only happen to me?", shit.

One thing I don't like about Southwest is that you can book a flight that is more than one leg, but it's posted in departures as going to the final city, not the city you are going to from DIA (e.g. a flight going denver to oakland to burbank will be listed in the departures as burbank, NOT oakland). They also tend to have flights going to the same destination at the same time. I know this about SW. I ALWAYS check the flight number as soon as I get to the gate.

But this time I was two hours early and failed to check the flight number. I was standing at a gate that had a noon departure to Oakland, which is what my ticket said. Unfortunately, it was not MY flight because my flight was going to Burbank after Oakland and the flight I was in line for was going to Burbank and then Oakland. I realized this as the plane was boarding, and had to run literally 1/2 mile, with a 25 pound backpack, to the other end of the terminal to get to my flight, which I was afraid I was going to miss (after arriving at the airport 2 hours early, which I never manage to do).

They are doing construction to extend the terminal so it was kind of a shit show mess, but I managed to arrive in time to board my flight. However, as I was standing on the jet way I started coughing and couldn't stop. Then my eyes started watering and I couldn't see. I managed somehow to stagger to the back of the plane, where a flight attendant saw me. He threw my back pack on the last remaining aisle seat and handed me some water (I couldn't talk because I could hardly breathe). He then suggested I wait in the bathroom until boarding finished. Even after 10 minutes I couldn't stop coughing. Another flight attendant said if I couldn't get my breathing / coughing under control they would remove me from the flight.

I finally managed to sort of stop coughing and sat in my seat. My seat mate, a woman, immediately protested and accused me (seriously, not making this up) of having ebola (coughing is not a major symptom of ebola). The flight attendants assured everyone around me it was an asthma attack and they finally stopped arguing about me sitting near them.

The flight was the worst kind of torture because I had to suppress my coughing and my lungs were killing me and it was so hard to breathe that I had to hold a wet paper towel over my mouth to get in a breath of air. But, as soon as I landed in Oakland, though, and got out into the open air I was fine.

Nothing like that has ever happened to me before, and I don't have asthma. I realized on Tuesday, when I flew back to denver, the likely cause...

They were doing a lot of dry wall sanding and painting in the new terminal. In addition it reeked of carpet glue. As soon as I deplaned into the new terminal tuesday night I started coughing again, and I wasn't the only one. I think that as I was running to the terminal I was inhaling a bunch of some shit (dry wall dust? paint fumes? glue fumes?) that I was allergic to. Again, once I got into the open air, I was fine.

Fucking construction.

I will end this on a positive note. Once my cough had sort of settled down I got the names and employee numbers of the flight attendants that helped me (and, more importantly, didn't throw me off the plane). I sent an email to southwest explaining everything that had happened. They said they would pass my thanks on to the flight attendants, and then upgraded me for the trip home and sent me drink tickets.

So, if someone helps you, it's always good to make a big deal of thanking them.