Stoned

Last week Lindy, Molly, and I, along with my father, step-mother, and sister, were going to San Francisco to spent time with my brother, his wife and their three boys. The day before I was to leave on my vacation to the west coast I was going to write a blog about how I expected the trip to be just as stressful and relaxing. Traveling across the country with a toddler, family bickering, miscommunications, bad planning, and many other things seem to contribute to the stress of the “family vacation”. I didn’t finish the blog because I a family member might have read it and I wanted to seem as positive as possible. Well, here is a recap of the week (as a full description would take too long).

Day 1: We get to the airport at 1:00pm, expected to fly standby on a US Air flight at 3:30. We can fly free on US Air or very cheaply on another airline, always standby. Since it was a weekday afternoon we didn’t expect the planes to be packed. Well, they were. The 3:30 flight was full, the 4:00 was full. US Airways in running out of flight for the day and we decide to go from LaGuardia to JFK and try and get on a direct flight with another airline. Yada, Yada, Yada, it is now around 1:00am (12 hours since we got to the airport) and the very last flight to any San Francisco area airport is two hours delayed (a JetBlue flight). We only need one open seat, as Lindy can sit on a flight attendant jump seat, and Molly can stay on my lap. However, if there are two seats open another family has priority. Eventually, we luck out and we get the only remaining open seat. Five hours later, I haven’t slept a minute, and the plane is less than an hour away. I wake Molly up (so she might sleep later). She clamored for entertainment and the bottle of milk in the seat pocket. 30 minutes later, she throws up all (and I mean all) over me. Nice, happy, neverending puke. However, she feels ok, and is mostly concerned that he hands (and my pants, and shirt) and dirty. Since we are in the final approach we cannot get up to clean off or get paper towels. The milk must have gone bad, or so I had thought. Either way, it wasn’t too bad, I took off all my clothes in the plane and replaced with Lindy’s large scarf thing around my waist. Off to a good start.

Day 2: The nicest day of the trip. We went to the Exploratorium and had a nice dinner. Hooray.

Day 3: The following is the order in which people threw up, starting in the afternoon, ending around 6:00am the following morning. Ethan and Jared first threw up at the same time, although in different places. Followed by Ethan, Jared, Jared, Ethan, Ethan, Ethan, Jared…Mathew (around midnight), Glen, Katie, than me.

Day 4: Status: Ethan’s body feels “confused” and he doesn’t want to eat. Jared thinks he is ok, but then feels awful. Glen and I both feel completely drained and if the blood was removed from our bodies. Katie feels ok, but tired. Lindy takes care of everyone in the morning, than leaves with molly, to meet my dad, step-mother, and sister at a local fair. At night, I decide to meet Lindy at the fair to spend some time with her, but that was a big mistake as I end up to sick to keep up with them.

Day 5: Lindy wakes up with a sore throat. I’m tired by I actually feel better. The boys are feeling better. We are planning a trip somewhere. About 1:00 I feel I ting in my side, right were a cramp would be. Well, I haven’t eaten in two days and haven’t drank enough water, so I was dehydrated. Man, this is a bad cramp…ahhhhhhh! I can’t throw up, can’t go to the bathroom, can’t drank anything, and this pain is intensifying quickly. Children running everywhere, Lindy is sick, and I feel like a cherry bomb went off inside me. Lindy says it is a cramp and it will go away. Eventually, everyone but Lindy and I leave the house. I am sweating, shivering, screaming, yelping, falling downs, yelling at everything that tried to interact with me. Do I go to the hospital? What can they do if it’s just a cramp (and we don’t have a car, we would have to call an ambulance). This is the worst pain I’ve ever felt, it was like body was imploding and it lasted for four hours until my father finally returned and rushed me to the hospital. I’m going to skip the good and the bad of the hospital, but urine tests showed blood, this was a kidney stone! A theory is that when I threw up, I shook loose a 2mm calcium crystal that was stuck to the inside of my kidney. The “stone” tried to pass through my urinary tract, but the combination of my dehydration and the size of the stone, cause the stone to get stuck. We don’t know the cause, but pain lessened around 5:00pm to just unbearable and continued to ease over the next few hours (with the help of two IVs). The stone had probably passed, but then again it may just be in a good place “for now”.

Day 6: I kinda feel ok, although every few minutes I feel a slight twinge in my side, which scares the hell out of me as I feel the stone is back. But the day goes by ok. Lindy and Molly go to visit friends. Glen is at work, and my dad and I spend time with glen’s kids, playing baseball. I don’t think anything horrible happened, but 98% of my attention was on that twinge (the other 2% was the pain killers waiting in my pocket).

Day 7: It’s all over. I am going to try to get on the same plane my dad is so he can drive me home in New York. I would like to leave my car at the airport for Lindy and Molly who are going to LA for a few days to see her family. The flight has so much space that I get a ticket quickly. No delays, no weather, the airport problems, and flight goes as smooth as possible. No traffic on the way home. Besides day 2, this was the best day of the trip. And my vacation end, not a minute too soon.

For next year, I’m going to the Caymans. My family is welcome to join me there.


Addendum: From Lindy who continued on with the vacation after I headed back east...

"The next day Molly and I left for my parent's house where I assumed, wrongly, the curse would end. Luckily I only stayed a couple of days. On day one my suitcases were completely covered in ants to the point that I had to remove every single item, on day two I gashed my head open on a car door. On day three we flew home. It took about 15 hours and three flights. When we arrived our luggage was missing, molly was crying that she wanted to go on another plane and when we finally arrived at the car our battery was dead."