How to cause an emergency landing on an international flight

As any traveler knows, life on the road is not always rosy like an Instagram feed, but bad events make good stories, so I’m going to tell you one of mine.

You’ll need a bit of background information about me before I start, so stick with me.

I’ve lived my whole life with what I thought was epilepsy. I’ve frequently lost consciousness and blacked out when my body goes into ‘fight of flight’ mode. For me it’s faint or flight. I can be just running, swimming or feeling really scared and I get this strange feeling and just pass out. It is completely beyond my control.

I’ve had this habit of disappearing my whole life. People would be like “hey, where did Sadie go?” and there I would be, laying down, out cold on the floor somewhere, or slowly sinking towards the bottom of a swimming pool (thanks sis, for saving my life a billion times). My sister is a really good swimmer.

This pattern continued throughout my life and I kept on taking epilepsy medication, but I kept on passing out.

I tried to just get on with things (if traveling to 69 countries counts as getting on with things). I learned that there were many things I couldn’t do, because of the risk of losing consciousness. I’ve never been able to sky dive or bungy jump. I have to be super careful while trekking, but I have made it over 5000meters 5 times! I had to give up rock climbing, because that was making me pass out on a weekly basis. I’ve passed out in clubs, on boats, in an airport arrivals hall (that was a good one), but never had I lost consciousness on any of the 45,687 flights I’ve ever taken…until this time.

I was on a flight from Ho Chi Minh City to Hong Kong, I’d been to visit my BFF for the weekend. I booked my flight with a budget airline, which I don’t usually do, because I don’t entirely trust cheap airlines. On the flight home, the engine was making sounds that I wasn’t used to. Why do budget airlines always sound like they are going to drop out of the sky?

Somewhere over the South China Sea I went to the toilet. While I was there the turbulence got really bad. I got nervous, way more nervous than I usually do with turbulence. I started to get the feeling that I always do when I’m about to faint.

I was in the toilet at the back of the plane and my seat was in the middle, this fact made me extra nervous, because I didn’t know how I would make it back to my seat before I passed out. I rushed out the toilet looking for the closest seat, the last thing I remember is not finding a seat and thinking oh shit, not on a flight. Everything went black.

The feeling of being unconscious is probably what being dead is like. There is no thought, feeling or even breath to be aware of. It is nothingness.

I don’t know how long I was in nothingness for, but when I woke up I felt worse than I usually do when I wake up from blacking out. I definitely didn’t know where I was.

As I become aware of the oxygen mask that was on my face, I also became acutely aware that I was traveling alone and I was really struggling to breathe. I felt vulnerable.

A guy (who was an off duty cabin crew member) kept on shouting, I’m worried about her brain. I started to look around and focus on things to diagnose myself with brain damage. I was trying to stay calm, but my lungs felt empty. I seriously thought for a moment that I might die of asphyxiation on the flight. I was inhaling the oxygen as hard as I could, but each inhale left my lungs feeling as empty and tight as the previous breathe.

The guy who was worried about my brain had been down at the front of the plane and rushed back and said that the captain was going to land the plane. I then freaked out because I didn’t want the plane to be diverted. I felt rough and I was 34.5% sure that today might be my last day on Earth, but I was willing to take the risk and I wanted to go home, not land in a strange city.

My brain was so confused, I couldn’t breathe, but I still cried out (through my oxygen mask) “please don’t land, I’m fine, I don’t need them to land”. It turns out we were landing in Hong Kong and we hadn’t been diverted. That was a relief, but I still couldn’t breath. It felt like we had only left Ho Chi Minh City 45 minutes ago, how could we already be so close to Hong Kong?

We were on the ground within minutes. We must have got priority landing permission. Once the doors were opened and cabin pressure released, I was finally able to feel oxygen enter my lungs again.

I had to do a walk of shame to the front of the plane. I was Sadie the traveler, I catch flights wearing hair bows and maxi dresses, this time I left in an ambulance and wrapped in a blanket. My usual travel vibe was on vacation.

I had to clear immigration on the flight and waiting on the tarmac was my very own ambulance. I was hooked up to machines that beeped and flashed and was whisked away to the nearest A&E, where I spent the night being tested like a lab rat.

At about 4am a nurse woke me. I thought he was going to discharge me. Instead, he casually told me my blood tests were showing a high level of some kind of heart enzyme and they suspected I had heart disease. I told him there must be some mistake, I practice yoga and eat kale. Maybe I drink too much red wine? My brain raced, while my fingers searched Google for answers.

The next morning I was transferred to a cardiac ward. There was an age gap between me and the other patients of about 114 years. I didn’t belong there. I’m a traveler, not a cardiac patient.

After a week long stay in hospital with a schedule of nothing but tests and getting to know some sweet elderly Hong Kong people, it turned out that I never did have epilepsy.

I have a rare heart condition called Long QT syndrome. It’s a SAD disease, which stands for sudden arrhythmic death. Adrenaline causes my heart to either beat so crazy that it doesn’t pump any oxygen, or it can just stop altogether. I’m so fortunate that every time I’ve lost consciousness, I’ve woken up and my heart had rebooted itself, because many people sadly don’t.

There is a saying for Long QT syndrome; you either survive or you don’t, there is no inbetween.

Statistically I should be dead.

It’s been 2 years since that happened and it’s taken me that long to come to terms with having a heart condition that could kill me instantly. I still have the same symptoms that I had before the diagnosis, but the prognosis is far more scary.

One thing that has never stopped me from doing anything, is fear. I travel on my own a lot and I do get nervous about the fact that I might drop dead while wandering the streets of La Paz. However, traveling is my passion, and life is only lived once, so i’ll call my mum from the airport, have a little freak out and then board that flight to a place that scares me. When you have a passion, it’s in your blood, and without blood you would be dead.

Never let fear stop you from following your passion.