Another week past and my head is still in a state of daze unlike any in recent memory. With what little gray matter that still remains functional, I can conclude that there are three main culprits: the flu, the Red Sox and three stones lodged in my organs.

As I write this, the viral fingers of the flu that had wrapped themselves around my visage are finally starting to lose their grip, but I’m still left with the most meager serving of strength. Hell, just sitting at the desk and typing is taking all the concentration and fortitude I have at this moment. But this is the start of the upswing, so I should finally start getting back to my old self.

Well, my old self with some newly found kidney stones and a shinny new gall stone.

I am actually thankful in that regard to the flu, because it dehydrated me just enough to bring about a slight pain that I had never felt before in my life. A slight throbbing stab in my lower right side, just about where appendicitis is supposed to start. This drove me to visit Palisades Medical Center and have a twelve hour stay in the comfort of their emergency room. But without that visit, I would not have found out about these internal abnormalities.

With no windows and no clocks within my sight lines, the twelve hours felt much, much longer. If my sister didn’t make the trip up to visit for those last few hours I might have very well lost what few marbles I had left. I was subjected to two CAT scans, the first revealing only a kidney stone on the wrong side of my body to explain my pain. A second CAT scan — this time with some contrast material in my system — found the other kidney stone and the main culprit of my pain, the gall stone.

That was two Thursday’s ago, and since then I’ve been bouncing between doctors offices and the hospital being poked, prodded and drained of different bodily fluids to try and figure out both why this all happened and how to go about ridding myself of the stones. The gall stone will more than likely require surgery of the arthroscopic variety, while the kidney stones will probably just past naturally. Of course, these are stones #3 and #4, so I’m a bit puzzled and concerned why my relatively young body is rebelling against me this way.

But by far the worst pain endured was that brought on by the Yankees. I tip my hat the the Red Sox and their fans, because coming back from 3-0 down is something that had never been done in baseball before — something that can never be taken away. Of course I saw this all coming after they plastered the Sox 19-8 at Fenway but couldn’t hold on to a lead the next night.

As dominant as Rivera has been over the years, I think he’s past the point where he can be expected to be unhittable over two innings. Had someone else come in to pitch before him, maybe we would have seen a Yankees sweep. Instead, the seeds of comeback were sown and the weakness of a depleted pitching staff started to show. Honestly, I’m shocked the Yankees got as far as they did with the starters they brought to the table.

The games continuously reached well into the wee hours of the morning, and the momentum continued to swing visibly. By the end it was all I could do just to watch and hope that my eyes were lying. Too bad I’ve got 20-20.

But for Boston and their fans, I give you some words of warning: if you don’t want the talk of curses and ghosts to continue, you had better put down St. Louis. As big as the win against the Yankees was, it wasn’t the World Series. I’ve been through this back in ’94 with the Rangers and their Stanley Cup run, so I speak from experience. Hell, I’m not even gonna root against you this time — yes, I’m still rooting for the redbirds, but their is no venom in my heart for Boston.

The fevers robbed me of all my venom.

Tags: New York City, Personal, Sports

This entry was posted on Friday, October 22nd, 2004 at 4:29 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.