Line Jumper to Chicago

A kid fantasy so common it's a cliche – jump to the head of long lines at Disneyland by riding around in a wheelchair you don't really need.

Fast forward to adulthood, Sunday, Dec 1, 2013 and it's way too real.  I've got MS, and the wheelchair is needed. This ain't Disneyland. I must get on a plane to Chicago to start the daunting three-week process of stem cell harvest from my bone marrow. It's phase one of of a stem cell and chemotherapy procedure that I hope will beat this shitty disease and help me live a normal life.

Any number of friends or family members would have gladly driven me to the airport, or all the way to Chicago. I could have hired a cab. But dammit, I bought a condo close to the light rail for a reason. So I roll out of my condo alone at 5:30 am with a backpack on my chair and a suitcase in my lap. It's a brisk eighth-mile roll in the dark to the light rail station. I make it just fine, even if my rig resembles the Clampetts heading off to Beverly Hills. 

A lady on the train is eyeing me incredulously, so I strike up a conversation. She's headed to work for her job as a trainer for TSA. I tell her a little bit about the reason for my journey. A few minutes later, we're getting off at the Lindberg terminal and I find that she's temporarily adopted me, going out of her way to guide me up the chutes and ladders maze of wheelchair-friendly elevators that leads from the bowels of the underground light rail station all the way up to airline ticketing.  

Throngs of tired, frazzled people are headed home from Thanksgiving, so the lines to ticketing and through security are over an hour long. Fortunately, my new friend from TSA knows everyone who works at the airport. And she has mastered the art of command presence, ordering people out of my way, then jumping me to the front of check-in. I get my ticket and am assigned an airport runner who escorts me to the head of the long line at security, then to my gate. 

Anyway, I made it to Chicago alone, but not really alone. It's time for a week of medical testing before my stem cell harvest can begin. Of hundreds of people who applied to this program and were rejected, I was accepted. It's time to rock and roll so I can get rid of the wheelchair. Despite its advantages at the airport, I do not want it.