by Deborah Nies

Created on: June 23, 2009

Surgery at 35,000 feet in the Friendly Skies

Last week we took our annual summer vacation. Our destination spot this trip was San Diego. Our flight at o'dark thirty from Madison to Chicago was uneventful, which is just how I prefer flights in the metal death tube to be.

We boarded the plane in Chicago for our four-hour flight to San Diego. One hour into the flight, my 10-year old daughter, Hannah, when I grabbed her hand to hold it, and she recoiled in pain and said, "OUCH! Mommy, that hurt!" Now, I do not have the loving grip of David Banner turned Lou Ferrigno. (For you youngsters, that means Incredible Hulk.) Not understanding the source of this pain, I studied her finger. The tip of her left index finger was cherry red, swollen, inflamed, and filled with creamy pus. (Note: You weren't eating, right? Another Note: Is it just me, or does the word "pus," sound just like how gross it really IS?) With this sympathetic maternal empathy outpouring, she began to cry.

Of course, I was still confused. This was obviously not a new injury and had been festering quite some time, completely unbeknownst to me. "Honey, what happened to your finger?"

She explained to me that three weeks prior, she had squashed this finger accidentally with a skeeball, while bowling at Chuck e Cheese's. (She swore that she mentioned it to me at the time. Huh?) The pressure from the plane's cabin had made it swell up and start to thump like Edgar Allen Poe's Telltale Heart.

She began to cry harder. Action was required...surgery action by Dr. Mom! I searched frantically through the scary depths of my purse for something to prick the festering infected region. Safety pin? Needle? Nail clippers? Ice pick? Nothing...not one dang sharp item in my purse.

I flagged down the flight attendant and told her the problem. "Listen I understand the irony of the request that I am about to make, so bear with me. Yes, we are on an airplane. But here's the thing, I am in desperate need of a sharp, piercing object. I do not care WHAT it is. I just need to poke a little hole into my daughter's finger."

She looked at me dubiously, "Uh huh." She looked around as if to flag down some help in case I needed to be restrained and then hauled down the plane's aisle. I showed her the offending finger and explained the situation further. She noted the crazed look in my eyes and scurried away to rummage through her supplies. (I'm sure the flight attendant's training manual indicates, "Do not ever attempt to stand

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