About 10 days ago I returned home to Burma. I’d spent a month hospitalized in Thailand after being hit by a truck while crossing the street in mid-November.
While I was in the hospital, I wanted nothing more than to come home and “get back to normal.” But the two days I spent in a hotel between my discharge and my return home illustrated how difficult navigating the real world would be as long as I could only bear about 15 kg of weight on my left leg. Most able-bodied people simply never notice the ways in which the world is inaccessible to those who move through it a bit differently.
The day of my return flight to Burma, I managed to squeeze in a hair salon visit—though the morning started far too early, with a Grab driver dropping me at the wrong location, no cell phone coverage, and me limping frantically on crutches around the block, searching for an unmarked entrance as the minutes ticked by. Fortunately, the stylist forgave my tardiness, and I walked out with fabulous hair.
Later that afternoon, the hospital sent a van to transport me from my hotel to the airport. I was a little nervous because it would be my first time traveling with wheelchair service from door to door. I had a suitcase, my wheelchair, a pair of crutches, a walker, a laptop bag, and a purse.
Traveling internationally is difficult and exhausting even without severely limited mobility. With so many things to carry, I couldn’t imagine how I would manage even from the van to the check-in counter, let alone for the rest of it. Still unable to walk, I’d pushed hard during my travel arrangements for either a medical escort to accompany me or sufficient airport assistance to prevent further injury.
From the volume of emails exchanged between the medevac support team and me, I was worried things would not go smoothly. I was right.
I ultimately lost out on the medical escort, I assume for budgetary reasons. A couple of days before my departure, I was assured that the team would request aisle bulkhead seating for me. Skeptical, I checked the airline’s app for the proposed flight and saw that no seats remained except middle seats on an already packed plane. And I wouldn’t be able to check in or pick a seat via the app because wheelchair service had been requested.
With my pelvis broken in three places and two cracked ribs on my left side, this travel plan seemed ill-advised. Five weeks post-accident, I still had a black bruise from my left hip to my left knee. I couldn’t walk through the airport and would require someone to bring me to the plane door in a wheelchair. How was I supposed to manage being jostled by other passengers in a middle seat?
I requested an upgrade to business class. I had traveled to Bangkok in business class with a nurse and my husband to help before the full extent of my injuries was known, but I was denied business class for my return on the grounds that, if I was medically cleared to return to post, I should be able to sit in a middle seat—or any seat on the aircraft.
In the end, I paid to upgrade myself. It was the right decision and cost only $165 USD, but it angered my family and struck me as absurd on principle. I wasn’t returning to post because I was completely healed; I was returning because it had been five weeks, no further hospitalization was indicated, and I was anxious to re-establish my normal routine. At the same time, I was cautioned repeatedly by doctors not to get hurt, bear too much weight, or have any falls. I would have loved to see the individuals who made the decision to deny me business class manage my injuries themselves under the same circumstances.
When the hospital transport arrived at Bangkok airport, a hospital representative stationed there—who appeared to be expecting me—trundled out to the curb. However, he seemed unprepared for a passenger with luggage. As the van driver quickly pulled away to avoid blocking traffic, the attendant had to choose between moving my suitcase and walker or helping me, seated in my wheelchair while juggling my crutches, purse, and computer. He chose the latter, wheeling me into the terminal despite my protests about leaving my suitcase behind in the chaos outside.
Soon, all my belongings and I were inside, parked in front of a check-in agent—only to be told we were at the wrong counter. This led to another two-step relocation, a mild panic when I was asked for a “fit to fly” medical certificate and had to dig through dozens of papers to confirm that the hospital had indeed provided it, and a lengthy discussion among Thai Airways staff about whether I could remain in my own wheelchair to the plane or needed to transfer to an airport wheelchair. Finally, I was checked into my business class seat and a belt carried away my suitcase.
I sat for approximately 15 minutes then waiting for a porter. When he arrived, he did so rolling an airport wheelchair. I resisted, wanting to keep mine with me and gate-check it to use upon arrival in Rangoon. Confusion ensued.
I tried repeatedly to wave down the English-speaking airline representative walking up and down the check-in line with a clipboard. Finally she noticed me and the matter was resolved, but only because I was insistent that I would need to keep my own wheelchair.
The porter and I made a short detour to the oversized checked baggage drop to leave my tagged walker. As he pushed me through the crowded terminal, I felt like I was in a video game. Passengers darted around us, wandered in front of us, and generally didn’t notice me down in my chair. I held onto my crutches for dear life, knowing I would need them to board the plane. (No more tiny, aisle-sized wheelchair at boarding for me.)
I went through passport control without incident. Staring wistfully at the shopping and food options in the distance—a literal paradise compared to what was available in Rangoon—I was silently rolled through a maze of back hallways and elevators that most travelers never see. I tried to keep my laptop bag on my right and my purse atop my right leg, so as not to add more weight to my injury.
To his credit, the porter wheeled me straight to the business class lounge and assured me by pointing to his watch that he would return in 50 minutes to bring me to the gate.
Once I was alone at a table, I noticed a fancy buffet nearby. People walked back and forth with plates and cups of coffee as I sat, wide-eyed, watching. It was one of the first times I had to publicly confront my inability to get up and do things for myself. I sat for almost 10 minutes, reluctant to speak or ask for help.
Finally, I flagged down a lounge worker and requested water and coffee. That broke the ice—once she saw my folded-up wheelchair, the other staff suddenly became solicitous. I asked an American couple nearby to watch my things while I visited the restroom, and when I returned, we started chatting. They were on their way to Australia, and seemed genuinely shocked not only to hear about my accident but to see me up and around so soon.
The porter arrived right on time and began pushing me toward the gate. Unsurprisingly, it was located in the farthest reaches of the airport. As we arrived, I was dismayed to see that passengers were already boarding. Then I realized they were all heading downstairs—and then outside—to board a bus. My heart sank. How would I manage that? The porter said nothing, my lack of Thai and his lack of English a barrier between us.
He pushed me to an elevator so tiny that my feet were pressed up against the back wall and he had to squeeze in alongside me. We laughed together in a common understanding about the discomfort. He wheeled me outside, through a door that wasn’t wheelchair-accessible, and past the bus, where some passengers seemed to eye me with a mixture of curiosity and pity.
The porter parked me on a metal lift gate attached to the back of a giant people-mover of sorts. It looked like the rectangular metal platform on the back of an 18-wheeler. A second porter parked another passenger’s wheelchair right next to mine. With a bounce, the four of us began to rise into the air.
When we reached the top, I saw that there were already two wheelchair passengers inside, along with two others using canes. We spent almost 15 minutes inside, sweating, unable to move, with no one explaining what was happening. Finally, I asked. We were waiting for one more person. The other passengers—apparently more accustomed to being treated like cargo than sentient beings, or perhaps just adopting more of a go-with-the-flow attitude towards wheelchair service—sat docilely, staring off into space.
Eventually, a seventh passenger arrived, also in a wheelchair. The back door closed and the contraption began to roll across the tarmac. We approached an aircraft, seemingly pulled up to a different gate. I questioned if it was our plane. Nonplussed, the porter nodded.
As able-bodied passengers entered from the breezeway connected to the left side of the plane, now upstairs again, the seven of us were loaded onto the plane from an access door on the plane’s right side.
One by one, passengers were loaded onto the plane with a degree of tenderness that touched me. When it was my turn, a flight attendant took my laptop bag and purse from me. I got to my feet with my crutches and followed him. My aisle seat in business class was spacious and my seat mate slept the whole time while I ate dinner and listened to podcasts on my headphones. A few times I looked over my shoulder and tried to imagine sitting in a middle seat in economy class without being pressed against the person next to me and in pain. I couldn’t.
The 70-minute flight passed quickly. Upon landing, I waited for most of the other passengers to deplane first before handing off my carry-ons once more to a flight attendant and visiting the restroom at the front of the cabin.
In the breezeway, multiple airport staff were standing by with wheelchairs. Two assisted me to sit down, which I did with some difficulty. The chair was old and narrow and the wheel pushed painfully on my left hip. Up ahead, I spotted my own wheelchair which had appeared out of nowhere. Two men helped me move into it instead and I was pushed uphill.
As we entered the terminal, I saw the same embassy local staff expeditor who had met V and I the hot August night a few months prior, when we’d first arrived in Rangoon. I felt relief at seeing her kind face. On wheels I followed her silently through the quiet, carpeted terminal, through immigration, and to baggage claim where my suitcase appeared. Another man suddenly appeared alongside us holding my walker, although I had no idea where it came from.
Then the travel whirlwind finally ended. I sank into the back of an embassy van, the city’s dark streets rushing past. The traffic was a blur of danger—drivers darting and swerving for no clear reason, weaving around jaywalkers, beggars, and flower sellers who seemed to appear out of nowhere. And then, again and again, I saw it: the same type of truck that had hit me. Each sight made my chest tighten, each one a sharp jolt back to that moment.
I arrived home to two visiting colleagues and my housekeeper, who helped me settle back in. V would still be in Macedonia, caring for his ill mother, for a few more days. But against the odds, I had made it back unscathed.
That night, as I prepared for bed, I braced myself for the first trip upstairs since the accident. My injuries had kept me confined to the lower floor, turning my bedroom—once so familiar—into a distant, inaccessible space during the two days between the accident and my medevac to Thailand.
As I crossed the threshold, a memory hit me: the last time I had been there was that evening, running back upstairs to spray on the perfume I’d forgotten before going back down. The room seemed to hold the echo of that moment, a silent reminder of the chain of events that had put me in the wrong place at the wrong time. I had no way to know as I sprayed the perfume that within a few minutes, I would be unconscious in the street.
As I fell asleep that night for the first time, I savored the feeling of being able to get up whenever I wanted without worrying about pushing a button or setting off a bed alarm. I was lucky to be alive. I was hurt, but finally free.
Collecting Postcards 