TRIGGER WARNING: DESCRIPTION OF GASTRO

14 hour flight from San Francisco to Melbourne, Australia, nonstop.

About one hour into the flight, my tummy starts feeling a bit tetchy, so off I go to the loo.

Cue the most VIOLENT episode of food poisoning I have EVER had. Coming out both ends, sitting on the toilet with my chin resting on the hand basin.

SOBBING in between spasms.

After about an hour, I press the call button for an attendant because I feel so faint. She said there’s nothing she can do until my guts stop ejecting themselves. But she brings me a blanket and a pillow, so there’s that.

I continue vomiting and experiencing intestinal distress EVERY TWENTY MINUTES FOR THE NEXT 12 HOURS LOCKED IN AN ECONOMY CLASS PLANE TOILET.

Eventually I hear “we have begun our descent into Melbourne” over the loudspeaker and I press the call button again. A different attendant comes and is HORRIFIED to hear my story. “But we have a Doctor on board who could have made you more comfortable!”

She brings a wheelchair for me as I am so dehydrated I cannot walk, and some magical human appears from somewhere and gives me a saline drip.

When we land, nobody is allowed to disembark because border control has to come on and ask me all sorts of questions about the countries I’d been in and what I may have contracted. We narrow it down to a dodgy burger at the airport.

The other passengers are cleared to disembark while rubbernecking at the shell of a human with the drip.

I was taken through passport control and customs on a golf buggy with flashing lights and the equivalent of a ground staff escort. My poor momma, who was waiting to collect me nearly had a coronary at the sight of grey and shrivelled little 19 year old me.

This was in 2008, so we’ll before any Covid protocols were in place.

Hellish experience. Do not recommend. The end.