Almost Stuck
I’ve been here for two weeks in the US now while my family has been in Israel. After a few rebookings, I was scheduled to leave today, connecting through JFK. Then Thursday morning while I was at work just preparing to start an angiogram I received the following text message:
Unbelievable! I mean, what now? And it wasn’t just my flight – it was all flights. I quickly checked a couple news sites on my phone and discovered that El Al just ceased operations entirely! Unbelievable! Now what?! I’m going to be stuck here for months? And how is that going to work? I’m staying with my parents, who happen to be in an at-risk age group, and I’m coming home to them each night after being exposed all day at work, so each night I strip down in the garage then go straight into the shower. I just have a rental car, I only have a few changes of clothes, etc, etc. And I have a patient on the table and one to follow – I can’t deal with this now!
So I called Val and she said she’d work on it while I continued working. I got myself back in the mental zone to do the angiogram and that went fine. When I finished, Val let me know that there was only one more flight on El Al leaving JFK that same night at 11:45PM. In order to make it, I would have to take the flight leaving PHX at 11:45AM. I looked at my watch – it said 10:00AM. I briefly thought, if I just drop everything now, run home, grab my stuff and race to the airport, I could maybe just make it. But what about the other patient I was scheduled for next? And I still had to do the orders and finish the paperwork on the last patient. What to do? We decided I probably wouldn’t make it anyway, and I felt like I couldn’t just abandon my next patient. So I continued working and Val continued working on a solution. Eventually, she found a flight on United, for another $600. I could either leave Sunday, connecting through both Chicago and Newark, or I could leave Monday, connecting through only Newark. Well, what’s worse? Waiting another day until Monday and taking the chance that during that extra day United will go under? or Israel will decide to not let anyone in? Or leaving a day earlier but exposing myself to virus in two major airports instead of just one? Great. Either way its bad…. Well, we decided to book the Monday flight so I’d only have to transit through one airport. Which means, as it stands now, I’m leaving tomorrow morning. Wish me luck…