Page 36 - March 20 TNT

Sick of It
From the Flight Deck
by Kevin R. Dingman
Milestones and kidney stones: Flying with a medical condition.
What major milestones mark the month of March? The 70th anniversary of Silly Putty and the 75th anniversary of the rubber band, of course. After all, what would childhood be without Silly Putty, and would we have pursued aviation if our balsa airplane had no rub- ber band? The annual celebration of Women’s Day was on March 8 as was the beginning of Daylight Saving Time. St. Patrick’s Day the 17 and the first day of Spring the 19. And certainly, we’re planning on attending the Sun ‘n Fun fly-in on the 31. These events all reside in the final third of cold- and-flu season and since words like contagion, pandemic, coronavirus and quarantine have been in our vocabulary as of late, let’s talk about flying airplanes while sick. There are a plethora of ailments that disqualify us from acting as a required crewmember, including the kidney stone reference in the subtitle above. We’ll get to that, and other painful tales, in a bit.
34 • TWIN & TURBINE / March 2020