Flying economy

At Bangkok airport, with nearly two hours on my hands, I once again did not manage to read any of the scientific publications about cancer that I’ve downloaded to my computer.  My excuse?  I just wasn’t in the mood.

The flight back to Zurich will be the last one in a while where I enjoy Gold status.  Last year I certainly flew enough to keep this status but made some booking mistakes that landed me in the wrong fare classes.  On these flights, I earned only fractions of the miles and flight segments I thought I was entitled to.  At the end of the year, with Singapore Airlines refusing to give me any miles, I remained below the requirements to retain Gold status.

Why do I even care?  Gold status sounds glorious but doesn’t mean much.  It doesn’t open the doors into business class, and it didn’t help me get any upgrades.  The main problem is that I collect miles with one airline while mostly flying another.  This sounds stupid but might still be the best way for me to fly.

My flying will thus not be much different this year and yet, there are little things that I will miss.  Most lounges are nice places to wait for a flight.  They’re oases of calm in the chaos of airports and often equipped with showers.  After taking a long walk down dusty streets in 35°C heat this afternoon, a shower was exactly what I needed before packing into into my cattle-class seat like a Tetris brick.

Gold status also lets you check more luggage and board first, which is nice when you have lots of luggage that you didn’t check.  It made traveling in economy just a little bit more bearable.  I feel like having Gold status during chemotherapy as well, with similar perks.  I was never upgraded to the head oncologist but chemo was just a little bit more bearable than it might have been.

Ok, this doesn’t properly represent reality.  Chemo has so far been infinitely more bearable than it might have been.  I’m still not looking forward to the sessions as much as I should be, given that they’re supposed to save or at least extend my life, but there’s nothing concrete to complain about.  Problem is there’s not much to enjoy in them either.  I was excited about the cycling metaphor when I started this blog but maybe flying economy is a better analogy.  You try to make sense of it.

Tomorrow morning, I will take another shower in the arrivals lounge in Zurich, my first and for now last visit to it, have a little breakfast and take the train and bus to the hospital for my seventh chemo session.  If the flight is not late, I’ll have the time to drop my luggage at home, though it would be cooler (or crazier) to arrive at the hospital straight at the airport, like an ailing dictator trying to escape his subjects' wrath in his old age.

The first questions will concern my blood values.  How are my platelets holding up?  What are my immune cells doing?  If they’re all good, therapy can start, with the main concern afterwards that I find moments of comfort among mild suffering.  It's just as if I were flying economy.