I had just about the most miserable flight I have ever had. 

We had 3 hours at DFW and every minute I was feeling worse.  I decided that I didn’t want to spew my Texas pulled pork sandwich I had for lunch all over the airplane, so I took matters into my own hands.  I emptied my stomach in one of the bathrooms and felt a tiny bit better.  However, 45 minutes later, I was back in the bathroom continuing to empty my stomach.  That was minutes before we had to board.  I had the boarding passes and when I came out, I saw Toby waiting at the gate.  We were almost the last ones on the plane.

We had been separated into 2 sets of 2 seats, so Max and I climbed into our window and middle seats.  Looking into the seat pocket, I wanted to gather the airsick bags.  No such luck.  American Airlines had no airsick bags at our seats.  I was so miserable I couldn’t even talk to the stewardess.  I just tried to sleep. 

When my time arrived, I used a ziplock bag that I had found in one of our backpacks.  My time arrived 4 times on that flight.  I tried to be discreet, but really, how discreet can you be as your guts are turning inside out.  I am confident that I made a good decision to purge before the flight.  My little Ziplock would never had held all that I had previously expelled.

We got home to a very cold house at about 11p.  It was very much a shocker after the week at Casa de Perez which was kept at a constant toasty 68 degrees or so.

Toby hasn’t yet gotten sick, but I figure to be on high alert for the next 3 days.

This morning (Tuesday) I woke up at 7:45a, expecting that the first group would have already left.  I found out that Camille and Jesse had both gotten sick in the night and that Camille, at least, was not up to flying.   Known Casualties : 4 kids, 4 adults.

We got to the Lexington airport without incident.  When we got to the ticketing counter (I still couldn’t check-in online) we saw that our flight was delayed due to mechanical issues (deja vu).  So, we were re-assigned to Delta, who turned out to be oversold by 7 seats.  Then we were routed back on Northwest via Detroit.  Finally, we boarded an American Airlines flight for Dallas- Ft. Worth.  I hope our luggage makes it, because it had already been tagged and loaded by Northwest.

When Lucy went through the metal detectors she immediately raised her arms to allow the TSA agent to frisk her.  He got a chuckle out of that.

I am sitting in Dallas- Ft. Worth feeling sick.

Monday Sam went to school and Lucy felt fine.  She at a bunch of food and drank as much grape Pedialyte as I would give her.  She never had a fever and the duration of the sickness was much shorter than it was with Max.  She was acting so fine, in fact, that we Theule’s decided to go to the mall.

Diane and Calvin had originally intended to join us, but at about 6a, Calvin had puked in his bed.  So we were driving around noon in Rob’s newly cleaned car (no vomit smell) when I looked back at Lucy and she had lost the sparkle in her eyes.  I told Toby to turn around, I was not going to the mall with a sick child.  In my mind’s eye, I could see myself having to clean Rob’s car again and scrape barf off of another car seat.  No way!  It turned out that Lucy was just tired.  She fell asleep within about 2 minutes of being in the car and slept for about 3 hours. 

Jesse, Laura, Francie returned to the Perez house to spend the day / night before their flight on Tuesday afternoon.  A few hours into the evening Francie barfed.  This brought the total up to 4 kids, 1 adult.

We all (except Francie and Calvin) enjoyed a great dinner of P.F. Chang’s takeout.  I tried to check in on-line with Northwest but I saw that both of our flights had been canceled.  Toby called on the phone and we were put on a flight via Memphis, TN (instead of Detroit, MI).

We were all to evacuate the Perez house on Tuesday : Camile, Don, Buddy and Cena at 7:30a, us at 10:30a and the Wasson’s at 2:30p.

Sunday morning came and we went to church with Diane and Rob.  They attend a local mega-church of 6000 members.  The service is broadcast over the local cable channel and the 2nd grade room had foos-ball tables (Max appreciated the “soccer in a box”).  The message was very good.

Aaron had developed a stomach issue but he was a trooper and went to church and to the Perez house for the family pictures.  It is theorized that he brought his own sickness with him, separate from what Max had, because he had almost no contact with Max.

After a rousing game of touch football we all piled into many cars for a Christmas (not holiday) lights display at a horse race track followed by a petting zoo and a miniature train display.  We had wanted to leave at 4:45p, but didn’t get out of the house until 5:05p.  We were a caravan of four and about 500 yards out of the driveway, one of the cars pulls into the clubhouse parking lot and Max and Toby race out of the car.  After Max had pee’d, we started again.  About a mile after this, one of the other drivers says that she needs to stop for gas.  At this time it is raining steadily.  We pull into a gas station and Lucy says ‘I gotta poop, dad’.  By the time we left the gas station, it was 5:40p and raining hard.  As the caravan pulls onto the freeway, I hear some barking from the back seat.  I turn around and Lucy is pulled as far forward as her 5 point harness will hold her and is barfing into her lap.  Rob is accelerating to freeway speed.  Lucy looks at me and says ‘I got barfs, dad’.  We pull over to the shoulder of the freeway.  The rain is beating down as we work to sort-of clean up Lucy and work to get Calvin and his car seat out from next to Lucy and into a non-sick car.

Rob and I head back to the Perez house with Lucy.  I ask her if her tummy hurts, and she says.  ‘Not anymore, I got out all my barfs.’  3 minutes later she is retching again.  Now Rob is driving home as quick as he can because the rain is sheeting down and we can’t roll down the windows.  Lucy’s barf stinks.  She is trying to convince us that she can still go see the Christmas lights as she barfs yet again into her lap.

You will have to ask Toby how her trip to the Christmas lights went.  I was home cleaning up barf.

I had originally thought that the Pizza was to blame for Max’s upheaval.  But he quickly developed a fever of 100.5 degrees and kept it for many hours.  Luckily, so we thought, the Perez home has a finished basement and we could keep Max segregated from the rest of the kids.  He stayed down there sleeping all day and had just bits of bread and water (he couldn’t stand the grape Pedialyte).

Friday was the main day that the other members of the clan arrived.  In all, there were 28 Carswell relations * at the Perez house.  This included 9 kids (5 under 4).  We didn’t see many of them until Saturday.  Friday was spent recovering for both Max and me.

On Saturday, Max was feeling good enough that he and I went with Sam and Rob to Sam’s horseback riding lesson.  It is Kentucky, after all, it is almost a requirement that one know how to ride a horse.  The instructor had arranged to have a horse available for Max to ride.  Unfortunately, because of his illness, we had not told him about the horse ride until the last minute.  We did not have a chance to prepare him and build it up.  He ended up just watching.  Sam looked soooo tiny up on the gigantic horse that she was riding.

Saturday night, we had reserved a back room at a local ‘Kentucky style’ dining establishment.  They had a hot brown on the menu.  I enjoy by bi-annual hot brown sandwich.  It is a turkey and ham sandwich covered in melted cheese with tomatoes (not for me, though).  It has some sort of cheese sauce in the middle that is just decadent.  Rob calls it a ‘heart-attack on a plate’. 

* – including one boyfriend – the asterisk.