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Getting sick while traveling is always a bummer. Unfortunately, it’s fairly common.
One study published earlier in the year found that 65% of polled American travelers said that they’ve gotten sick while traveling abroad.
To make matters worse, there’s really no good time to be sick on vacation. Allowing your body to rest means wasting a day or two of your trip—or, in the worst cases, canceling entire legs of your trip if you feel you can’t complete the travel. The same aforementioned study noted that, of those who had stomach trouble while traveling, over half said that the illness ruined between two and three days of their vacation.
All that said, there are certainly some better places to come down with an illness than others, as TikTok user Meghan Reinertsen (@meghanreinertsen) recently explained in a storytime TikTok with over 8.8 million views.
How Did One Woman Cancel A United Flight?
To start, Reinertsen admits that she “single-handedly got a United Airlines flight out of Indianapolis canceled.” The story leading up to that moment, she says, was one filled with “pain and suffering.”
According to Reinertsen, she was traveling from Lisbon, Portugal, to Indianapolis, Indiana, by way of Newark, New Jersey. She hoped to arrive, she says, in time to see the premiere of a film that she had worked on.
The first leg of the trip went off without a hitch. Reinertsen was able to board the plane in Lisbon and made it almost all the way to Newark before she realized something was amiss.
“I wake up to a disturbance deep, deep within my bowels,” she says. “And by ‘disturbance,’ I don’t mean, ‘Oh my God, this is an emergency! Land the plane in the water!’ I just mean like, ‘Hmm. Something is brewing. Something is happening that I am not prepared to deal with.”
Still, she managed to disembark from the plane, make her way through customs, recheck her bag, and then make it to her next gate. The whole time, however, the situation in her stomach was becoming worse.
“I’m sweating the whole time, stomach’s cramping,” she recalls. “I’m down bad.”
Immediately upon entering the plane, she realized that whatever was happening in her stomach was getting substantially worse. After trying to ignore her stomach issues for around a half hour, she decided to stand up, looking past the “fasten seatbelt” sign and making her way to the bathroom.
Spending The Entire Flight In The Bathroom
It was in this bathroom where she would spend the entire flight.
“For the next 20 minutes, I have more diarrhea than any human should ever have in their life,” Reinertsen explains.
Things escalated when she felt the need to vomit. She flushed, turned around, and began throwing up, at the same time continuing to have diarrhea.
Eventually, things got so bad that she felt the need to call out to the flight attendants, who provided her with a bag for vomiting.
“They go, ‘Megan, we got about 10 more minutes if you feel like you can make it back to your seat. But, if you can’t, we did get clearance from the pilot that you can stay in the bathroom while we land,’” Reinertsen says of her conversation with the flight attendant. “Everybody now knows.”
A short time later, the plane lands, with Reinertsen still in the bathroom. A flight attendant then informed her that the following flight had been canceled.
“In the moment, I’m not thinking that’s because of me,” she shares. “I’m like… ‘What a gorgeous coincidence! Me being in the bathroom for two hours couldn’t possibly cause this plane to get this next flight to get canceled!’”
But upon exiting the plane, the reality of what was going on dawned on her.
“‘The hazmat team is gonna come through,’” she recalls a flight attendant saying as she disembarked. “And I go, ‘Got it, got it. You canceled that flight because of me.”
Things Go From Bad To Worse
Over time, Reinertsen was eventually able to make it out of the plane, through the airport, and to her rental car. While things were a bit rocky at first, she was able to drive to her hotel and fall asleep, with her slumber intermittently interrupted by trips to the bathroom.
The next day, she woke up feeling surprisingly OK.
“I wake up the next day. I’m like, ‘OK,’” she says. “‘Could be a lot worse, but we didn’t go through all of that just to not go to the premiere, right?’”
Reinertsen ended up going to the premiere of her film, and as best she could tell, everything went all right. Following the premiere, she returned to her hotel and fell asleep—only to be greeted by an unpleasant surprise at around 5am.
“I just s— the hotel bed,” she confesses.
Unsure what to do, she showered herself off, balled up the sheets, threw them in the corner of the room, and then continued to sleep. Upon checking out, she informed the front desk about what happened. She says the front desk told her that it “happens more than you think.”
In a follow-up video, the TikToker states that the illness was the result of food poisoning.
Is It Normal To Cancel A Following Flight Because Of A Sick Passenger?
Airlines have several procedures in place to take care of a passenger when they become sick, as well as to deal with the situation that may follow such an event.
First, the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations requires that all events surrounding ill passengers be reported to the CDC. This allows receiving airports to make proper preparations, including being able to welcome the sick passenger with the care they require and clean the plane of any biohazards that may have resulted from the passenger’s illness.
Every airline has PPE and a universal precaution kit (UPK) for workers. But depending on the severity of the situation, an airline may call in additional assistance to clean an area of the plane. They may also delay or cancel a flight to ensure that the plane has been properly cleaned.
If you find yourself getting sick on a flight, it’s best to inform a flight attendant, as they can assist you and prepare for any accommodations you might need upon your arrival at your destination.
Commenters Weigh In
In the comments section, users both laughed at Reinertsen’s story and expressed shock about everything that happened.
“This is why we pack 15pairs for 3days,” wrote a user.
“Ma’am!!!!! Imodium exists…. Keep it in a purse at all times,” offered another.
“I had the norovirus in college…in a communal college bathroom. There were 3 of us that were sick and we each claimed a stall and rode it all out together for a day,” recalled a third. “We are trauma bonded and that was over a decade ago.”
BroBible reached out to United Airlines via email and to Reinertsen via TikTok direct message and comment.
Content shared from brobible.com.