There is nothing worse than taking a flight out of Dubai at 0150 in the morning. As you heard my previous whine – it means an extremely long day and a night of little sleep.
Or, as was in my case on this particular flight, no sleep.
Lufthansa has their “Doctors on Board” program which has those of us who are in certain specialties listed with them, credentials on file and noted on the manifest. This avoids most of the paging for assistance in case of emergency. In the case of this flight, I had barely had supper and was looking to sleep when one of the cabin attendants came to find me. My fellow passenger was a very nice gentleman in his early 70s not doing really well which meant his wife was also fairly anxious. Got him evaluated and settled with followup planned for arrival in Frankfurt and headed back toward my seat. Didn’t make it as there was a second passenger also feeling extremely unwell.
Seems like there was a German tour agency which seemed to specialize in one week trips for middle class retired German’s featuring a week in the U.A.E. including fair amount of driving around, beach time and not much rest. She took a bit longer. The pilot was delighted to not need to divert for either passenger. I was surprised to discover LH has a number of nurses who are on their second career now as cabin attendants and not my age either but this flight had a charming young man in his mid 30s completely familiar with all the toys, contents, and meds in the chest. Which only left me the paperwork. I managed with my German in spite of being tired and put to shame by one of the other cabin crew (German, English, French, Dutch, Italian, Hebrew….).
I dragged myself off the plane, through customs and to baggage claim. From there I made a brief stop in the arrivals lounge before catching the train. The connection in Mannheim wasn’t fun. George met me in Heidelberg.
Given that we fly to the US on Friday there is a mountain of organizing and sorting to complete before then. So much for my dream of sleeping……
