Adam’s C6 SCI Treatment

Traveling to China

September 14th, 2007

Left Dallas in search of healing at 8:00 am on Tuesday, Sept 11. Flew to Chicago and had to wait an extra 4 hours due to a plane out of service. Left Chicago at 4:30 PM and arrived in Beijing 14 hours, 6 movies, and 2 1/2 meals later. Wasn’t too bad. We dozed off and on. The flight was straight north out of Chicago traveling up and over the Hudson Bay, over the north pole at 68 degrees below zero, then over Siberia, and into Beijing, the Chinese capital in northeastern China. We were blessed with an assistant assigned to us (truly a God send) to get us through airport inspections. Went through Immigration, declarations, and then picked up our 7 large bags. Off to Customs which took only 1 question, what is in the 2 boxes? Next was off to entry for domestic airlines. Got through that OK and next was to Air China (think Delta). Our bags were too large to go through the X-ray so we headed off to the large luggage inspection. Made it through there, but X-ray showed something. They pulled the one bag and asked we open it. They did not like the CO2 cartriges (contains a “gas”) for filling the air on my wheelchair tires. We use 2 cartriges to pump the air up to 90lbs and the other CO2s were confiscated. Next was off to Air China ticket counter where we gave them our paper tickets, got the bags tagged and dropped off, then off to the gate.

Beijing airport is huge and multiple floors. It is as modern as any airport in the world with flat screen TVs, in both English and Chinese, advertising, food service, etc. I used an elevator to go from floor to floor. 90,000 passengers pass through the airport per day. Boarded our 2-hour flight to Hangzhou (pronounded Hong-Jo) using a food service truck. This plane was parked out on the ramp and used a rolling stairway for the other passengers. The airlines assistant stayed with me for a total of 2 hours all the way to loading in my seat on Air China. We ate dinner on the plane (turkey, corn beef, fruit cup, and a hot begal with chicken). Arrived in Hangzhou at 11:30 PM, 27 hours after leaving Dallas. The hospital staff picked us up at the airport, one of which was Sid, the interpreter. We were in bed by 1:30 AM a little tired!

It was a long day, but not too much of a jet lag due to the difference in time, Dallas is 13 hours behind Hangzhou.

Entry Filed under: sci