R Von D Vs. The Norovirus

On Wednesday of this week I, out of the goodness of my heart, decided to take one of my students to go see his brother (a former student of mine) play in a minor league hockey game. During the car ride my current student, we'll call him Kyle, and I were shooting the shit. He was telling me how excited he was to see his brother play and how he had just gotten over a terrible stomach virus that had him throwing up for the past two days. I then, in an almost insanely foreboding tone, told him that if he had an immune system like mine, he would not have to worry about such things. You see the ironic twist that is coming? Let me tell you about the game first:

To be honest, the game itself was not the most interesting part of the evening. But let me tell you this. If I were in charge of the Bridgeport Sound Tigers, I would have shot all of my full-time employees at the end of this contest. Here are some highlights.

-During the first intermission, some tarted up little wannabe on-air whore came out of the tunnel with a bunch of little kids. To the crowd, she announces that these kids are going to be playing musical chairs the grand prize of which will be a t-shirt. Mind you these children are going to be running around and pushing each other on a near frictionless surface with no safety equipment. I'd fee bad, but all of these kids were from either Long Island or Bridgeport, CT, so if any of them cracked their heads open I really wouldn't have cared, but what if there were a well-adjusted kid out there by accident? Cover your bases.

-In an even more inexplicable lack of safety precautions, the second period saw both an old lady AND a developmentally disabled lad who were sitting next to each other in the handicap section BOTH get struck with pucks flying into the stands. Both of these literally happened within five minutes of each other. First the old lady took one off the dome, then the poor kid sitting next to her got vulcanized rubber right off the jaw. The elderly and the mentally handicapped do not ask for much. All they need are shiny things, some Play-dough, maybe the occasional puppet show, and to be sat behind the tall glass at a hockey game. Not too much to ask.

So the game ends and Kyle and I leave the wretched crowd amidst the throng of ugly people, fat people, and ugly fat people from Long Island and make our way home. Before we got back to school though, we made a stop at a local fast food establishment for some comfort food. Kyle told me he hadn't eaten in a couple days so he was psyched to eat something. We exited with our value meals and took the show on the road. Along the way, as we were talking, I made a grab for a soda, took a sip, and a feeling of dread hit me. I had taken a sip out of Kyle's soda. I was more worried that he would notice than whether or not I was going to get sick because come on, I'm the D...and the D never gets sick.

Around 3:30 AM on Thursday though, I woke up with what I thought was a back spasm. The ache in my back was almost unbearable, so I rolled out of bed to stand up and stretch. As I arched my back while standing, it hit me. The wave of nausea was so great that I had no choice but to sprint to my bathroom. I made the fifteen foot journey in about three steps. You might not know it to look at me, but when I need to I have the agility of a fucking puma, for God himself blessed me with the sweet-feet. So there I am puking in my bathroom for a solid forty five minutes. I had not thrown up due to an illness in a ridiculous stretch of time, over ten years at least. Needless to say I did not handle it well at all. You ever watch that show "Celebrity Rehab" when Jeff Conway was puking into his trashcan? If not, I probably sounded and looked a lot like this (the fist part not the second part):


So when I got done doing that, I eventually found some way to fall back asleep for like an hour at a time before having to get up again. This went on for the entirety of the next day. I did manage, however, to get out of the house to pick up a few things at the local apothecary. Here are the list of items I picked up:

-NyQuil
-Orange Juice
-Pepto Bismol
-Baby Wipes
-New York Magazine (Lindsay Lohan cover)
-Sour Apple Altoids
-Tylenol PM

From the looks of my basket, and the way I must have looked for that matter, you would have thought my name was Ricky and I drove a windowless van around the suburbs but I was way too sick to care what anybody thought.

So the rest of that day was spent whacked out on drugs and drinking as much fluids as I could. While I was awake though I did manage to take some hot showers. Interestingly enough, I managed to throw up on myself while in the shower once. I thought I was just gonna make a little burp having just drank some warm ginger ale, but it was not to be. There are very few things worse than cleaning puke off of yourself, and one of those I'll mention later.

So after the first day I was feeling a little better. My stomach was feeling a bit better and I was not as nauseous, but I still didn't feel right. As it turns out, my dear reader, the norovirus, or GI Bug as it is more commonly known, is a fickle bride, and once she is tired of spewing from one orifice, she then favors the other. So, day two of my illness was nothing but photo-finishes and fear. Why fear? You try and spend an entire day of your life scared of your own farts. The mystical things that used to bring me so much joy in life suddenly turned on me. What if you had a dog from when you were very small until now? What if you raised that dog, had wonderful times with it, and raised it to be your best friend? Then one day, as you were both older, that sweet puppy tried to rip your throat out? That was the second day of my illness. I was scared for my life. The one thing I could always count on to make me smile, my own flatulence, had turned on me. And that, my dear reader, is no way to live. Luckily for me, and unluckily for people like Michael Vick and Bad Newz Kennelz, they make medicine for my predicament, and it is called Immodium.

Why am I telling you all of this? What greater good does this serve? Many will say none. Some will say it made them smile. Few will say it reminds them to keep a bottle of purell in their house and to stay away from germ-infested scumbags like teen-aged boys. They are the source of all that is wrong in this world and it is times like this that I revel in the fact that I only have two months left at my post at Fort Scum. Oh, and here is a little something that Gregoire sent to me after I told him of my plight:


See you in hell, my friend
-R Von Diz