With much anticipation, this day had eventually arrived - my first medical mission trip to Peru Amazon.
David Young from CCUC gave Bryan and I a ride to the airport. The weather had warmed up dramatically from 20s to 60s over 24 hours and as a result it caused severe thunderstorm.
We were the first one showed up at O'Hare airport and then Jessica 5 minutes later. The malaria pill (Malarone 250mg) upset my stomach quite a bit. To ease the GI upset, I ate the whole sandwish bag of grapes.
TeHua, who was our key contact person in Chicago when we were in Peru, reverified all our emergency contact information so that he could send out daily updates to them via email. Realizing Mary was in Costa Rica, therefore I quickly replaced her with Chun-yen. But then, immediately I realized neither Chun-yen nor Mary has my family contact in Malaysia. Silently I prayed that nothing would happen to me or my family members for the next 9 days.
We took a group picture before proceeding to checked-in counter. The e-checked-in machine failed to read my Malaysian passport in which it required the assistance of the agent in order to issue my boarding pass.
Due to the gust wind exceeding a certain knot, our flight "sat" in the runaway for nearly two-half hours before take-off at 2:33pm. During this waiting period, my mind uncontrollably wandered off to the analysis mode of what had taken place in my personal life for the past 5 months.
Our connecting flight in Atlanta to Lima, Peru was pushed to 8:30pm. I had a great chat with Tanya and Jessica in regards to the need of having an Adult Bible Fellowships at CCUC for singles ages between 30s-40.
I have criss-crossed the transatlantic and transpacific for the past 16 years, but I had never encountered one in-flight medical emergency. This time, I did. The flight attendance called for medical doctors on-board for assistance, and all three of our medical doctors went up. However, only Steve got to see the deceased, who was a 85 year old Japanese lady. She died of a heart attack, and by the time she was discovered she was already beyond resuscitation. Luckily, her family members were with her on the plane. The pilot did ask Steve if an emergency landing was necessary in which Steve answered, "No".
Most of the teammates seemed to be able to rest a bit, except me.
The in-flight service of Delta airline wasn't as satisfactory at all, and how I missed my 5-year of flying on first-class service when working for Worldspan.
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