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This article is part of our Fall 2020 Breaking Barriers. This installment focuses on traveling with a disability. If you'd like to read more stories from this issue, please subscribe to Breaking Barriers

For me, traveling mostly involves managing motion sickness. So whether I ride public transit, take a car, or fly, I have to make sure the solids in my stomach outweigh the liquids. Otherwise, I’ll get sick.

I have to avoid looking at my phone or computer while traveling. Instead, I spend a lot of time looking out the window at well-known sights, whether it’s the regular route I take to get to the mall or the sky over the wing of a plane, because where I sit has a bearing on whether I throw up or not. According to the TV miniseries Mayday, if you want to survive a crash, the safest seat on a plane is at the back, but I usually don’t worry about that. 

For me, getting through a flight without throwing up my lunch is more important than surviving a crash because the worst thing that ever happened to me on a plane is throwing up, and I do that even on solid ground. But it is a nuisance, and I try to avoid it as much as possible. After throwing up all over myself during my first trip by air to Grand Rapids and having to wait until I got to my destination to change, I have also started to take a change of clothes along in my carry-on bag in case that happens again. 

Of course, I take medication along to control this motion sickness, the sort that induces drowsiness because it lasts 12 hours. If you add that to the sedative in my antipsychotic, I get so sleepy that I feel like a zombie. Although all I want is to crash into bed, I still have to get home from the airport before I can do that. Still, I count my blessings, because traveling for many other people living with disabilities is so much more complicated than it is for me.

Comments

This about the motion sickness article.  I, too, have had trouble with motion sickness since a young child.  My father loved to go for Sunday afternoon rides.  I would come back sick.  This is when there were two services that were "required".  He once accused me of getting sick so I couldn't go to church that night.

Well, I discovered something that helps me!  In the medical section of larger grocery chains or your pharmacy, they have packages with two wrist bands.  These strechy bands have a plastic round button inside that you place on your wrist and press!  No kidding! I have no more problem with motion sickness if I wear these.  I have even given them to strangers having trouble and in minutes they are better.  It has no medicine-just pressure points.

Try them - for $ 10 it is worth it!

Esther Korzilius

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