Self Medicated..

The past few weeks have been plagued with utterly terrible, unflyable weather, low temperatures and high pressures causing fog at ground level which just hasn't been clearing. What this has meant that there have been many days going into the airport to sit around in the crew rooms watching flights get cancelled.

Another down side of this is the cold weather; cold weather plus irresponsible attire means illness. Having been travelling all over the country visiting friends and relatives has often meant jumping between car to house, bus to bar, etc in a jacket which probably isn't sufficient. Over a series of days with nowhere near enough sleep in between to let my body recover had left me with an unavoidable sore throat, cold and flu.

This comeuppance began on Monday and slowly got worse, I was scheduled to fly on Monday but weather below minimums caused the flight to be cancelled. Only being scheduled to backseat a few sims on Tuesday meant that I would make the most of my 'time off' and engage the illness head on. Armed with a small pharmacy of pills and potions I was to recover.

Lemsip Max Strength pills, Echinacea pills, Vitamin C Supplement and Anaesthetic throat spray were my weapons of choice; using them throughout the day at the recommended intervals. Still in a state of placid illness I sat through two sim sessions making notes as best as I could. In the debriefing discussion the topic of the following day's bids came up. I still wasn't up for an aerial flight nor a sim session.

The days passed and the cold took a more prominent stance; determined to get back into the cockpit before the end of the week I decided to call in sick on Thursday and stay in bed to recover. I requested to be put back in the sim for Friday, which was readily agreed and a slot arranged.

By Friday I was still popping Lemsip pills along with the rest of the medication; the flu had begun to subside. Though whilst still dripping at the nose I decided that I could still manage the cockpit well enough to make the sortie count.

How wrong I was, I couldn't seem to concentrate on the tasks at hand in the slightest, my RT was shoddy and my approaches sloppy. I left the sim room with one thought, only of how bad the sortie had gone. The debriefing confirmed this; there was nothing that I had not already silently berated myself on.

A lesson learnt at the expense of 1.5hrs in the sim; if you are on any medication, or not feeling fine, consider yourself 'not fit to fly'..!