2000-02 – Letters from Donatello

Greetings Cyberfriend!

Phew! Another long break in between messages! I’d like to say that it’s because we were on vacation, but the truth is that we all spent more than our fair share of time sick with whatever bug Master Splinter had caught before the Holidays… or as it ended up for us, the Holi-daze.

After Master Splinter had been sick for a week or so, Venus was the next one to catch the virus. Splinter hadn’t even recovered by the time that Venus got sick. She probably caught it next because she was spending the most time caring for our Sensei, as she knows about so many different healing herbs and teas. Unfortunately nothing seemed to protect Master Splinter or Venus (or any of the rest of us for that matter) from this bug. After Venus came down with it, I decided to run some tests and it turned out to be a mutation of the flu… so we were being attacked by one of our own kind! ;)

Since I was working with the virus, of course I was the next to get sick. I have lots of cool gadgets but my lab is far from sterile, so down I went with the worst case of the flu I’ve ever had. I couldn’t even get out of bed for about a week and a half. It was nasty!

While Venus and I were sick and Splinter was just getting back on his feet, it fell to Michaelangelo to become our nursemaid. Just about the time that Venus was feeling well enough to start some minor work again, Mikey got sick. I really wanted to get into my lab to try to come up with a vaccine before Raph and Leo got it, but I just couldn’t. Even on the days where I could stand up and walk a bit, my head hurt too much to do any work. It was frustrating, to say the least.

Raph was doing double, triple and quadruple time on sentry duty by now, with Venus, Mikey and I all out of commission. Leo began taking care of us as best he could (don’t tell him I said this, but Leo’s a real clutz in the kitchen… he can barely boil water :) Master Splinter helped where he could, but the effects of being ill for so long were hard on him and although he was finally well, he was still too weak to move around much. Naturally, once Venus was back to brewing her healing potions, Leo got sick and collapsed. Unfortunately this happened while he was out on patrol during a snow storm. Raph was taking one of his rare four hour sack times when Leo thought he heard one of our alarms go off. Rather than wake Raph (who was severely sleep deprived by now), he decided to check it himself… even though he was already sick and sweating with a mild fever. Master Splinter and I were sound asleep, so we couldn’t stop him, and Venus was with Mikey, trying some new concoctions. Mikey seemed to get it the worst of us all… he was unconscious much of 2 weeks, and we were getting very worried and frightened. He had a high fever and was never lucid, so Venus was working her best magic to try to help the poor guy out. But anyways, back to Leo! As luck would have it, the alarm went off due to a collapse of snow from a sewer grate, so it wasn’t any threat. However, Leonardo wanted to make sure that the snow had fallen into our domain because of gravity and not because of a prowler, so he went topside. Apparently he was searching the alleys when he blacked out, and right about that time the blizzard hit the City full force.

A few hours later Raph got up to check on us and asked where Leo was, which none of us knew. Raph tried to call our fearless leader via the Turtle Com, but there was only static as an answer. We all got tense and Raph geared up to go looking for him. After about an hour Raph radioed in that he hadn’t seen any sign of Leo, but he’d found where the snow had fallen. By this time it was getting deep and the weather outside was definitely frightful. Raph went to the surface to see what he might find, but the conditions were almost white-out and the wind and temps were getting deadly. Raph knew he had to find Leo fast, as he wouldn’t be able to see or move in a short time due to the weather. Once he got topside there wasn’t any sign of Leo’s whereabouts… the snow had long ago filled in his tracks. Fortunately, the Turtle Coms saved us because Raph activated the tracing device and located Leo buried in the snow beside several trash cans. It’s a good thing we keep the batteries fully charged on them, or Leo would have been toast (or more appropriate, ice). The good news was that the trash cans had provided a bit of shelter for our boy in blue and had saved him from the ravages of the wind… but he was truly blue with cold by the time Raph got him out. So now we had two brothers looking like they were on the brink of death!

Raph and Venus got Leo into bed and started giving him what medicine we had. Master Splinter contacted Mikey via the astral plane to see how his psyche was doing, and he seemed well enough and told the Sensei not to worry, his body just needed rest. When we got that news we felt much better and everyone focused their attention to Leo. I was able to start doing some more lab work by now, and I had some success isolating the virus and finding an antidote… too late for everyone except Rapheal. I gave Raph the vaccine and hoped that it would help him, but he was already looking wore out due to his lack of sleep and night of digging through the snows of the blizzard. I told him to get a good night’s sleep, as no one would be causing any trouble on that wicked weather eve. Raph did get some shut-eye… about 18 hours straight! He looked much better when he woke, and although he had a bit of the sniffles, he seemed to be doing pretty well considering what we’d all been going through. I don’t know if my vaccine helped or if Raph just had a tougher constitution than the rest of us, in hindsight, probably a little bit of both.

Leo also recovered quickly, thanks in large part to Venus’ various medicines. By the time Leo got sick, she had a good idea of what was working and what wasn’t. She also forced Raph to drink 3 glasses of the mixture a day until he stopped sneezing. This took about a week, and although Raph acted like each new dose would kill him, he drank them all and got better. He was a good boy, ;)

Mikey was the last one to get well, but once he was up, he was 100% better. One night he was in his typical feverish sleep, and the next morning he was waxing his snowboard as if nothing had ever been wrong. I guess all of the sleep was exactly what he needed… that and about a dozen pizzas once he was awake. :)

So that’s the news from Turtle Hospital… we’re all feeling much better now and the weather is finally looking better after a month of brutal cold and big snow. As the saying goes, COWABUNGA!

Take care!

Sincerely,
Donatello

Master Splinter

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