This may come as a surprise considering I do fly. A lot. But the fact of the matter is that since I’ve had kids, I’ve developed a chronic case of aerophobia. I deal with it because I wouldn’t ever want to live a life without travel, one of my true passions. But I’ll always wish that I could just blink my eyes and be wherever I want to be.I used to love to fly. I actually used to get dressed up for flights. On my first transatlantic flight alone, I wore a dress. I delighted in chatting with my fellow passengers, gazing out the window, take-off and landings positively thrilled me. I must have been a charming and rare sight even then – a happy flyer!
The seed was planted about twelve years ago, when I was on a flight with my entire family – Mom, Dad, (pregnant) Sister and Brother-in-Law, from Miami to Chicago. Upon take off, the plane’s engine caught fire. It was (loudly) released into the ocean. Thankfully, planes have two engines. The captain casually announced this on the loudspeaker, noting that we’d be flying low over the ocean to dump out fuel and then return to Miami.
My Mom smiled and sighed, “Well, we’ve had a great life. And that was a wonderful vacation” (Key West). My Dad grimaced, focused irrationally on the fact that our entire family fortune would go to my Aunt, my mom’s younger sister. My sister, awash in pregnancy hormones, was unusually unphased. But me – “I’ve still got things in life to do!” I panicked.
By the grace of God, we landed safely in Miami. Emergency vehicles were parked in a star like formation around our landing path. We even made it on the evening news!
Soon after I had my son, my fear of flying blossomed. No longer do I simply have “things” to do in life – I have two beautiful little kids to be a Mommy to.
And then, since I’m usually flying with said kids, I can’t even distract myself with Star or US Weekly.
There were also the terrorist attacks of September 11th. There was a terribly turbulent flight that I took with my son from Rome to Warsaw during which he excitedly exclaimed, “Mom, if we crash into the river we can blow up and go for a float in the big yellow raft!” And every other day, I’m hearing about air traffic controllers falling asleep on the job or pilots flying drunk. No, these are just not good times for flight passengers.
I never have had an outright panic attack - usually I just spend flight time running irrational, imaginary scenarios through my mind. It’s gotten so bad, though, that this past vacation, last weekend (we visited the Crystal Coast!), I finally did something about it. My doctor gave me a prescription for Xanax – one for each flight. I had never taken it before (I don’t suffer from anxiety in real life whatsoever). I did feel a bit relieved, but when we hit a bumpy route and a thunderstorm on our return flight, I was back to running panicked scenarios through my mind.
I love travel too much to ever let a little flight phobia interfere with my life, but am I the only one who has slowly developed a fear of flying???? What have you done to confront your aerophobia head on? Any advice/suggestions?
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Hi Amy, this is Jenny from the Hipfamilies list :-) .... I can soooo relate to what you're talking about! The exact same thing happened to me- I developed a fear of flying over time- to the point where I actually have been quite panicky on planes (not a full blown attack, but pretty close). And ironically, I LOVE to travel (you and I are kindred spirits in that regard!), and I didn't want my son to pick up on my fear of flying either. At the moment he loves flying and is quite the traveler- I don't want that to change- at least, I don't want my fear to affect him.
ReplyDeleteI started taking Xanax whenever I fly about 4 years ago, and since then have never had a problem. The difference is so wonderful. I no longer dread flying, which makes traveling that much more pleasant. You might want to up your dose- one Xanax doesn't sound like nearly enough. My doctor usually gives me a bottle of 10 pills every time I take a trip, and I use anywhere from 2-4 pills per flight, depending on the length of the flight(s), number of the connections, and the strength of the pill (25 mg or 50 mg). At this point I pretty much have it down pat, I know exactly how much Xanax I need in terms of dosage. You just need to play around with it. When I'm planning a trip, I shoot my doctor an email and she just calls the prescription in for me to pick up- very easy. Keep in mind that Xanax is fairly short-acting (it only lasts a few hours) so for longer flights, or flights with connections or long delays, you have to take a new pill every few hours. And of course, you can't drink alcohol while you're on it.
I wish there were an easy, non-medicinal solution but I don't know of any, unfortunately! This works for me at any rate. I don't fly a lot (maybe 2-4 times a year)- Xanax is very addictive so if you do fly a lot your doctor would probably be reluctant to prescribe it for you every time.
Hope this helps! It's kinda nice to bond with someone over Xanax, haha!
Thanks, Jenny!!!!
ReplyDeleteMy problem is that I worry I'll be too xanaxed out - I still have to wrangle Baby Chiara during the long flight! Ugh! All I can think is that I wouldn't want to live a life without travel! So I just have to live with flying, whether I like it or not!