So at about 6:00pm Friday night I started feeling little bits of stomach pain while at work. Nothing major though. I got off of work at about 9:30, and went to hang out with my friends. The pains got worse as the night went on, and by about 1:00 I figured I was going to be rather sick the next day, so I went home early and got to sleep at about 2:00am.
What followed were some of strangest dreams that I have ever had. I was half awake the entire time, so I was still feeling my stomach pain fully. My dream self was trying to make sense of this with strange math equations that got written out in the sky with lots of integrals and other fun things. And the entire time I was at work too. I fully woke up at about 5:00am in excrutiatiing pain. I dragged myself to my parents room, woke them up, and we were off to the emergency room.
So first came some initial questions from the hospitol staff - what was wrong with me, did I have any allergies, was I taking any medication, on a level of 1-10, how bad was the pain I was experiencing, and so on. These questions would become a pattern, as I was asked the full set of them six or seven times throughout the day. After these questions I was taken to the ER proper and given a wonderful hospitol gown along with a bed to lie on. Fortunately I was able to keep on my boxers while wearing the gown, which was nice.
I was attended to by some nurses for a while, and then came Docter #1. He asked me the standard set of questions, and then decided to find out what part of my stomach hurt the most. He did this by pressing down on different parts of it and then asking me if I felt significantly more pain when he did so. Turns out the only real spot that happened was above my appendix. However, I was showing no other symptoms of appendicitis (usually one develops a fever, sore throat, head aches, or other flu like symptoms), so the doctor wanted to perform a few more tests. The first was a blood test, which they took as they stuck the IV in me. A high white blood cell count (which I had) would be a pretty good indicator of appendicitis, but they wanted to be really sure, so they decided to give me a CAT scan.
Now having a CAT scan isn't just a simple thing. To get ready for it, you have to drink a liter and a half of a fluid mixed with something called contrast in a 15 minute time period. I balked upon first hearing this, as I thought that the fluid would be nasty nasty stuff, but it was actually just Kool-Aid mixed with a bit of the (completely tasteless) contrast. Still, it was a liter and a half of fluid, which can mean only one thing: countless bathroom trips afterwards. Luckily, I was more than capable of getting to the bathroom myself, and having my shorts on underneath my gown kept it from being an embarressing affair.
Five bathroom breaks later it was time for the CAT scan. Now you probably are familiar with the general process of a CAT scan, where someone goes in and out of the big tube thing. What you probably don't know is that you are injected with more contrast stuff through your IV while that happens. Unlike normal IV fluid, which one can barely feel, this contrast stuff had some amazingly strange effects on the body. As more of it gets into your bloodstream, your body starts to feel increasingly warm and tingly from head to foot. This is not a pleasent thing, and at one point I was even having trouble breathing (likely the only part of all day yesterday where I was actually afraid of anything). At another point I almost pissed myself, thanks to the wonderful warmth mixed with the liter and a half of contrast I had drunk earlier. Then that was over, and I went back to my ER room.
Oh yeah. On the way to and from the CAT scan I was transported via wheelchair. Now some of you may have screwed around with a wheelchair with friends and such, but having a professional hospitol guy push you around in one is completely different. First off, the wheelchairs are high quality, providing for a very smooth ride. Secondly, the guy pushing you is completely and utterly outside your field of vission. The end result is the feeling that you are just kind of flying through the halls of the hospitol. It's kind of cool, but also rather weird.
So I get back to the ER room and rest some more. I'm having to go to the bathroom less now (once every half an hour instead of once every ten minutes) which was nice. Eventually Doctor #1 comes in and tells me that they are going to remove my appendix, and that he is going to send the surgeon in to talk with me. The surgeon arrived a while later (yeah, I had to wait a while for most people to come see me, but since I wasn't exactly dying, and I am sure others were, I didn't mind), and he smelled quite bad, but then again, I imagine that surgery is rather taxing, sweat inducing work. We talked over my options, of which I had two. Basically, I could have the traditional appendectomy, where they use one slit over your appendix and just take it out, or they could do it lapariscoptically, where they make three smaller incisions and stick a camera in there and look around a bit while doing it. I chose the latter, the surgeon told me that they would be ready to operate on me in about 20 minutes(!). With any luck I would be going home sans an organ on the same day that I came in.
I gave my mom a call to let her know of the surgery, and she immediately dropped everything to run to the hospitol to be with me, which I kept telling her was completely unnecessary. I asked the surgeons if they could postpone the surgery until she arrived, and they were happy too. My mom arrives in a bit, and I am soon wheeled to the preopperating room, where the anesthesiologist talks to me about whats going to happen. Soon I am forced to finally remove my shorts, and I am wheeled to the operating room. The surgeons are all chatting about mindless things, which I guess is the norm when they aren't doing a very intensive surgery. I am transferred to the operating bed, and soon comes the oxygen mask, which knocked me out quite fast. I'm not quite sure how it happened, either. One moment I had it on and didnt feel sleepy at all, the next I was being wheeled to the recovery room.
I arrived at the recovery room and was transferred to a bed (actually, I was somehow able to roll over to it by myself, even after the surgery and the still very present anesthetics). Soon my parents rushed in, and they mindlessly chat with my half awake self for a while. Before the surgery I thought that there presence would be completely unnecessary, but I cannot even begin to explain how happy I was that they were there afterwards. I was in a lot of pain, and their presence was incredibly reassuring. If any of you ever go in for surgery, try to keep one of your parents around. You will be very thankful you did.
So the rules of the game now were that I would rest until I felt good enough to go home. At first the pain was intense, so much so that the vicaden wasn't doing much, but they got a bit of morphine in me and I was soon relatively fine. But this is when I discovered a big problem - I could no longer urinate. I was sure that I had to. But after dragging myself to the bathroom, I simply could not. Which meant one thing - CATHETER TIME. To those unfamiliar with this, here is what it entails: a nurse inserts a lubricated tube into your urethra, which is then pushed through until it enters your bladder, at which point any urine inside drains out through it. As you can imagine, this was not a pleasent experience. Just about the only thing was than putting the tube in was pulling it out. But holy shit it was nice to have the pressure off my bladder.
After this I just rest for several hours, dozing in and out of sleep. I am brought dinner, which I am able to eat most of. Soon I have to go to the bathroom again. I try, and again fail. But I wasn't going for a catheter again, so I decide to wait a while. A few hours later I try again, and after excerting A LOT of effort, the urine finally rushes free! No more catheter for me! At this point there was no real reason to remain at the hospitol, as I could rest just as easily in my own bed, so I went home, where I proceding to hop on my computer and catch up on what I missed that day. Soon I had thrown up everything I had eaten for dinner, which kind of sucked, but was an experienced that paled in comparison to everything else I had been through that day.
10 hours of sleep later, here I am with a bottle of vicaden at my side, feeling perfectly fine except for my rather tender abdomen which makes moving around rather difficult. Doctor #1 advised me to take a week or so off of work and school, which at this point it is highly likely that I will do. I'm not quite sure yet how I will deal with school, but I will figure out a way.
All in all, an unusual experience. It's a good thing that I went into th ER when I did, as if my appendix had burst it would have been MUCH MUCH worse.
Questions? I'm willing to go more in depth on anything that I went through yesterday, so feel free to ask away.
What followed were some of strangest dreams that I have ever had. I was half awake the entire time, so I was still feeling my stomach pain fully. My dream self was trying to make sense of this with strange math equations that got written out in the sky with lots of integrals and other fun things. And the entire time I was at work too. I fully woke up at about 5:00am in excrutiatiing pain. I dragged myself to my parents room, woke them up, and we were off to the emergency room.
So first came some initial questions from the hospitol staff - what was wrong with me, did I have any allergies, was I taking any medication, on a level of 1-10, how bad was the pain I was experiencing, and so on. These questions would become a pattern, as I was asked the full set of them six or seven times throughout the day. After these questions I was taken to the ER proper and given a wonderful hospitol gown along with a bed to lie on. Fortunately I was able to keep on my boxers while wearing the gown, which was nice.
I was attended to by some nurses for a while, and then came Docter #1. He asked me the standard set of questions, and then decided to find out what part of my stomach hurt the most. He did this by pressing down on different parts of it and then asking me if I felt significantly more pain when he did so. Turns out the only real spot that happened was above my appendix. However, I was showing no other symptoms of appendicitis (usually one develops a fever, sore throat, head aches, or other flu like symptoms), so the doctor wanted to perform a few more tests. The first was a blood test, which they took as they stuck the IV in me. A high white blood cell count (which I had) would be a pretty good indicator of appendicitis, but they wanted to be really sure, so they decided to give me a CAT scan.
Now having a CAT scan isn't just a simple thing. To get ready for it, you have to drink a liter and a half of a fluid mixed with something called contrast in a 15 minute time period. I balked upon first hearing this, as I thought that the fluid would be nasty nasty stuff, but it was actually just Kool-Aid mixed with a bit of the (completely tasteless) contrast. Still, it was a liter and a half of fluid, which can mean only one thing: countless bathroom trips afterwards. Luckily, I was more than capable of getting to the bathroom myself, and having my shorts on underneath my gown kept it from being an embarressing affair.
Five bathroom breaks later it was time for the CAT scan. Now you probably are familiar with the general process of a CAT scan, where someone goes in and out of the big tube thing. What you probably don't know is that you are injected with more contrast stuff through your IV while that happens. Unlike normal IV fluid, which one can barely feel, this contrast stuff had some amazingly strange effects on the body. As more of it gets into your bloodstream, your body starts to feel increasingly warm and tingly from head to foot. This is not a pleasent thing, and at one point I was even having trouble breathing (likely the only part of all day yesterday where I was actually afraid of anything). At another point I almost pissed myself, thanks to the wonderful warmth mixed with the liter and a half of contrast I had drunk earlier. Then that was over, and I went back to my ER room.
Oh yeah. On the way to and from the CAT scan I was transported via wheelchair. Now some of you may have screwed around with a wheelchair with friends and such, but having a professional hospitol guy push you around in one is completely different. First off, the wheelchairs are high quality, providing for a very smooth ride. Secondly, the guy pushing you is completely and utterly outside your field of vission. The end result is the feeling that you are just kind of flying through the halls of the hospitol. It's kind of cool, but also rather weird.
So I get back to the ER room and rest some more. I'm having to go to the bathroom less now (once every half an hour instead of once every ten minutes) which was nice. Eventually Doctor #1 comes in and tells me that they are going to remove my appendix, and that he is going to send the surgeon in to talk with me. The surgeon arrived a while later (yeah, I had to wait a while for most people to come see me, but since I wasn't exactly dying, and I am sure others were, I didn't mind), and he smelled quite bad, but then again, I imagine that surgery is rather taxing, sweat inducing work. We talked over my options, of which I had two. Basically, I could have the traditional appendectomy, where they use one slit over your appendix and just take it out, or they could do it lapariscoptically, where they make three smaller incisions and stick a camera in there and look around a bit while doing it. I chose the latter, the surgeon told me that they would be ready to operate on me in about 20 minutes(!). With any luck I would be going home sans an organ on the same day that I came in.
I gave my mom a call to let her know of the surgery, and she immediately dropped everything to run to the hospitol to be with me, which I kept telling her was completely unnecessary. I asked the surgeons if they could postpone the surgery until she arrived, and they were happy too. My mom arrives in a bit, and I am soon wheeled to the preopperating room, where the anesthesiologist talks to me about whats going to happen. Soon I am forced to finally remove my shorts, and I am wheeled to the operating room. The surgeons are all chatting about mindless things, which I guess is the norm when they aren't doing a very intensive surgery. I am transferred to the operating bed, and soon comes the oxygen mask, which knocked me out quite fast. I'm not quite sure how it happened, either. One moment I had it on and didnt feel sleepy at all, the next I was being wheeled to the recovery room.
I arrived at the recovery room and was transferred to a bed (actually, I was somehow able to roll over to it by myself, even after the surgery and the still very present anesthetics). Soon my parents rushed in, and they mindlessly chat with my half awake self for a while. Before the surgery I thought that there presence would be completely unnecessary, but I cannot even begin to explain how happy I was that they were there afterwards. I was in a lot of pain, and their presence was incredibly reassuring. If any of you ever go in for surgery, try to keep one of your parents around. You will be very thankful you did.
So the rules of the game now were that I would rest until I felt good enough to go home. At first the pain was intense, so much so that the vicaden wasn't doing much, but they got a bit of morphine in me and I was soon relatively fine. But this is when I discovered a big problem - I could no longer urinate. I was sure that I had to. But after dragging myself to the bathroom, I simply could not. Which meant one thing - CATHETER TIME. To those unfamiliar with this, here is what it entails: a nurse inserts a lubricated tube into your urethra, which is then pushed through until it enters your bladder, at which point any urine inside drains out through it. As you can imagine, this was not a pleasent experience. Just about the only thing was than putting the tube in was pulling it out. But holy shit it was nice to have the pressure off my bladder.
After this I just rest for several hours, dozing in and out of sleep. I am brought dinner, which I am able to eat most of. Soon I have to go to the bathroom again. I try, and again fail. But I wasn't going for a catheter again, so I decide to wait a while. A few hours later I try again, and after excerting A LOT of effort, the urine finally rushes free! No more catheter for me! At this point there was no real reason to remain at the hospitol, as I could rest just as easily in my own bed, so I went home, where I proceding to hop on my computer and catch up on what I missed that day. Soon I had thrown up everything I had eaten for dinner, which kind of sucked, but was an experienced that paled in comparison to everything else I had been through that day.
10 hours of sleep later, here I am with a bottle of vicaden at my side, feeling perfectly fine except for my rather tender abdomen which makes moving around rather difficult. Doctor #1 advised me to take a week or so off of work and school, which at this point it is highly likely that I will do. I'm not quite sure yet how I will deal with school, but I will figure out a way.
All in all, an unusual experience. It's a good thing that I went into th ER when I did, as if my appendix had burst it would have been MUCH MUCH worse.
Questions? I'm willing to go more in depth on anything that I went through yesterday, so feel free to ask away.
Comment