As I have said more than once in the past, in many ways Parkinson’s can be a hidden disease, especially in the early stages. If we are seen to be “normal” I sometimes wonder if I am being judged for accessing support when boarding or disembarking from a plane.
We returned to the UK today and so another chapter in our holiday is over. Our time in Italy was lovely, apart from the challenges of navigating their systems at the local airport. We fronted up with everyone else who was going on our flight and decided that assistance would be useful for getting on and off the flight. We had booked this for all our flights, but decided on the way over just to handle things ourselves. However, this had some pitfalls. We made ourselves known at the check-in counter and that assistance had been booked. We were told to wait at a designated spot and that someone would turn up with a wheelchair, which they duly did. They sat me in a wheelchair and wheeled me for a while, with my husband in hot pursuit. Then we came to a sort of electric buggy type thing that could hold about five passengers. I was ‘loaded on’ and told to wait as there was another person to come. Little did I know, but there was a total of five of us all needing assistance to the plane and off again when landed. When I arrived, I advised that I needed to go to the toilet. The support person said not to worry, he would stop for me to access this. Next thing he disappeared and another woman advised that there were another three people yet to join us and he had gone to get them one by one. In the meantime, I needed to go and really couldn’t wait, so my husband loaded me into a wheelchair and we found our own way to the plane.
We got to the gate – my husband and I – and were told we could not take the wheelchair through to the plane. We were told to leave it at the gate and then had to walk through. There in front of us, were the passengers who had preceded us and they were all standing waiting with no plane in sight. There were also no chairs provided of any sort and so the very thing I was hoping to avoid, my back started to get really sore. I am usually OK when walking, but standing in one place for too long and it really starts to hurt.
So, I waited with the other passengers and of course my husband, we waited for a bus to take us to our plane. Me standing and getting increasingly sore. No option to sit down and then when the bus arrived there was mostly standing room and hardly any seats. Luckily someone gave me their seat. The bus took us to the plane and when we arrived the only option to get on the plane was up some steps. So, all in all the accessibility of the whole process was pretty farcical. Fortunately, I was able to get up the steps, but it hit home to me that if you could not get up the steps or have any problem with getting to the gate or having any part of a disability acknowledged the response of the airport left a lot to be desired.
So, if anyone reading this wants to go to Italy, don’t count on Verona Airport being accessible as it pays lip service to the term at best!
My journey with Parkinsons 