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Originally Posted by mrnoodle
The doctor said it probably came from a dog or cat, or perhaps eating too-raw meat.
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Yeesh. Well, the summer after my senior year in high school, IBM gave my school a grant to develop some educational software, and they hired students to do it. I lived 3 hours away from the school, so they lent me a PC (Turbo Pascal 3.0 and True Basic! Oh, yeah!!!
) I would write software and visit campus a couple times a month for updates etc. It was a great summer job. Though my mother sometimes had trouble with the concept that I had to work and just because I was at home did not mean I was free to do whatever I (or she) wanted.
So one day it's getting toward the end of the summer and Dad was planning to set our gutter to drain out past the edge of our property into a ditch by the simple expedient of putting a pipe in under the grass. I really didn't feel too hot so I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep. Mom came in and informed me that "You
WILL wake up, and you
WILL get out there and help your father."
So I did. We're talking a ditch, 6 inches wide, 8 inches deep, 25? feet long? I forget, but it was enough to take the pipe all the way out to the edge of the yard, and digging it (plus laying the pipe & covering it up) took us all day in the August heat of North Carolina. When we were done at about 5 PM I came inside, took a shower and flopped down on my bed. Around 9:30 PM I woke up, stumbled to the kitchen, got a drink, mumbled something to the effect that, "No thanks Mom, I'm really not hungry," and went back to bed.
Now at this point Mom's alarm bells must have been exploding. The fact that I was a) sleeping at this time of day--regardless of how much work I had put in--and b) refusing food when I hadn't eaten since lunch, and when as a 17-year-old boy I normally inhaled the contents of a refrigerator two or three times a day, must have been truly scary. I'd like to think that at this point she had some regrets over forcing me to get out of bed and work all day. But being a parent of a couple scam artists myself, I can't judge her too harshly.
The next morning (I was still asleep) she dragged me out of bed again, this time to go to the doctor. She was convinced that I had mono. The doctor poked me a bit and said, no, doesn't look like mono. Appendicitis is a distinct possibility. Now mom had a mild freak-out at this, but I was quite happy. You see, it was less than two weeks before the start of classes at the university. A case of mono put me in grave danger of missing enough of the semester that I might just as well not start. Whereas appendicitis ought to be a pretty quick fix, and get me off to classes on time. I dismissed any potential risks from having surgery, at least for something as routine as an appendectomy.
So that's what was going through our respective heads while we were waiting for the blood tests to come back. But no, that wasn't it at all. "You have worms," proclaimed the doctor. "Probably ate at a restaurant where the waiter hadn't washed his hands." He prescribed some medicine that he said would kill everything off, and sure enough I felt better within the day.
Fast Forward another week and I'm back off to the school for my final project meeting.. the project director and I hit a Chinese restaurant that we'd eaten at several times before. As we wait for a table, I notice behind the counter.... a certificate on the wall... "Sanitation Grade B"... "Ron," I said, "Let's go. We're eating somewhere else." "Why, what's up?" "We just are. I'll tell you later."