The Virus I Wish I Could Forget

In 2003, I had my worse fever. It was the third year I had lived in Shanghai. One day when I got back home from school, I decided to go and play at the park downstairs. Even though it was only -1 Celsius I went to my closet and just grabbed a T-shirt to wear. When my parents came into my room, my mom said in a worried voice, “Calvin, put this jacket on then go out and play, if you don’t you might get sick!” I replied rapidly “I don’t really want to, it doesn’t look that cold outside Mommy. Why do I always have to wear jackets when going outside to the park?” I ignored her and went to the park without a jacket. It was freezing outside, and the wind was blowing strongly and I felt like I could get pushed sideways and collapse at any moment. At last, I reached the park; I realized that there weren’t many other kids in the park and all the dried brown leaves had fallen off the gigantic ancient trees. I went by myself and played on the swings. After half an hour I couldn’t take the cold any longer, so I sprinted home. When I arrived home I was already sneezing and had a runny nose. My mom glared at me and made me swallow medicine that smelled like rotten banana.

I went to sleep in my comfortable white and blue bed holding securely on my furry teddy bear. The next morning when I woke up, I felt really dizzy, and had to throw up, and my eyes could not focus. I needed water really badly, I thought I was dehydrated and I could feel my dried throat burning up! Suddenly, at the worst moment I had to pee, so I charged into the bathroom almost hitting my head on the TV next to the door and continued charging with an unbelievable pace and started peeing. When I was half way done my eyes went empty and it felt like a 50kg full-size hammer just bashed into my head. My legs became wobbly and I fainted. I fainted for about two seconds, but just long enough for my mom to notice me falling. If my mom hadn’t been there my head would have cracked against the edge of the bathtub.

The next day, I was ill. The cold gave me headaches, stomach cramps, fever, sores, and nausea. I stayed home from school for four days, but I still did not get any better. That was when my mom and dad started to get nervous, so they took me to the hospital. When we reached the aged light emerald colored hospital, they took me to find my doctor. The hospital smelled like new bandages and stinky medicine. In the hospital there were a lot of wounded people and people who also had colds. Observing them made me have daunting thoughts of being stuck in the hospital forever. A lot of them had broken their legs or arms or had blood on them from different kinds of injury. I tried to walk as swiftly as possible into the doctors’ room because I don’t want to see them anymore. I was not a really big fan of shots when I was eight years old (and I can’t say I say I like them right now). I screamed at the top of my lungs when I saw those big sharp shiny needles. Although I didn’t like them I was forced to take many shots, since I had a cold. The doctor stuck two in my butt, one in my arm, and one more to check my blood. Right then I thought that the doctor was wicked and trying to hurt me. After an hour of waiting for the doctor to analyze my blood, we found out that I had caught a virus.

The virus was finally cured after a month and I had to take one shot a month for one year. The virus I caught affected me annually, so I had to take shots to prevent it from getting worse. After I took all my shots for one year, I was finally cured and now I’m not terrified of shots anymore (but I do wear my jacket to go out and play)!