Lessons learned while flying

I just returned from a trip to Finland, and each way I took three flights, including one leg that was longer than I'd flown since my LE diagnosis about two years ago. For work, I fly about 26 round trips each year, usually requiring four flights total, and generally not longer than about 4 hours on any segment. But getting as far as Finland meant 7 hours outbound and 8.5 hours home on the long flights.

My usual approach is to stay well hydrated before, during and after the flights, which of course obligates me to get up and walk to the plane's bathroom a few times. Avoid salty snacks, put the arm up and pump my fist twenty times every hour or so, and do as much walking as I can squeeze in when in the airport before and between flights. Also, I wear a compression cami instead of a bra, and it has nice wide straps and good coverage, because I have some truncal LE and wearing the cami helps keep things flowing on the torso. I was hopeful that my standard LE operating procedure would work on a longer flight, with one change of routine. On my outbound trip, I switched from my compression sleeve and gauntlet to my night garment for the middle, overnight flight. I have a Solaris Tribute. In the morning, I returned to my regular sleeve for the last leg of my journey. No problems!! Not even an ache, which is my usual symptom of LE not under control.

On my return flight, I was not planning to try to snuggle in for some quasi sleep, so I kept the compression sleeve and gauntlet on for the entire duration. Did my usual water-and-walking routine in the airports, but I was seated by the window for the long flight and the passengers next to me were on an exhausting 24-hour travel agenda and slept through most of the flight. I did not have the heart to wake them up so I could exit the row and head to the bathroom. So, I drank less water than I normally would have and only got up twice during the 8.5 hours.

And....when the flight was descending during the long, slow initial approach for landing, yikes!!! Pain in the arm!!! My normal dull ache became a very deep and sharp ache and this kept up until we landed, when it let up a little. There I was, arm up in the air, madly fist pumping; doing my deep abdominal breathing; stimulating neck nodes; stimulating axillary nodes--nothing helped. Once in the airport for my connection to the final flight home I felt better and then did some walking and downed a huge bottle of water, but even now, about 18 hours after returning home and a night sleeping in my Tribute, my arm is still bugging me more than normal.

So, lesson learned: Make sure to get an aisle seat so there's no restriction on getting up to walk and use the bathroom, so no temptation to restrict fluids. Next time I'm on such a long flight, I think I'll use the Tribute instead of my sleeve, so I can find out if perhaps that was also one of the differences between my two long-flight experiences and their quite different LE outcomes.

I'd love for others to describe their own flight experiences, especially strategies they've tried that either worked or did not work to minimize their LE issues. There's no credible research 'out there' on the effects of flying with or when at risk of LE, so perhaps we can capture our collective experiences here in ways that can be of practical help for others who need to plan for air travel.

So, what have you tried while flying? What worked? What didn't?