Air travel

I realized something today that I have missed for at least a year and a half. I get anxious about flying, to the point that I am highly sensitive to my emotions. Those that know me would say that I'm normally in control about my emotions. I will have to pay much closer attention to this in the future to see which emotions are most common. This trip I felt extremely lonely and missed my family before I even left the house for the airport.

TSA had their say again. No surprise this time, because I had forgotten about the new pocket knife that I had added to my right pocket with my companies logo on it. Not a big loss, and understandable this time, still, it seems that they are really picky. Maybe that is a sign that they are doing a good job?

Got to my destination, and my rental car company was short on cars, so I got the silver Ford Mustang 5.0 they had left. I've been dreaming about this for a while, because they often give me cars that are upgrades from what I've reserved, but it wasn't the experience I was expecting.

Day 2 was better, actually enjoyed the mustang, and had a productive day at work. Still missed the family, and tried hard not to stress about the flight home. Think it worked, even though the closer I got to flight time, I did notice some unusual behavior.

During the flight I had an episode that concerned me a bit. It had happened only once before, but not quite this bad. Once the plane reached altidute, the right side of my face went completely numb, to the point that I couldn't even close my right eye. I put my head back and tried to relax, but couldn't get any feeling back. I was starting to get a little anxious and concerned, when my stomach started to heave. I grabbed the air sickness bag and punched the attendant call button. It stopped shortly after I regained feeling in my face. After the plane landed, I called the wife and she was able to do a little research online. The most likely explanation is that my sinuses were blocked, causing the pressure to build up at altitude and compress a nerve, making my face numb. My ear had probably also not equalized either, causing the nausea. Throwing up may have caused both to equalize with the altitude and stop the problems, because it immediately got better and I gave no residual effects a day later. Bottom line is I should not ignore allergy medication during trips and be extremely cautious about flying with a stopped up nose.