oh, that must have been so hard for you, crzymeg. i was in the same exact predicament when i traveled to tucson in 2001. i flew from milwaukee to houston, but missed my flight (due to ice needing to be scraped off the plane in milwaukee) and was delayed 8 hours as a result.
fortunately, the houston airport gave my boyfriend at the time and i food tickets so we wouldn't starve, but trying to communicate with the airport staff was impossible because some of them didn't want to use print on palm (tracing block letters into the palm of the hand). my boyfriend at the time could have communicated with them, but since i wanted to also know what was going on, it was impossible for me to communicate with those who didn't want to use POP.