As usual, on Sunday evening I was feeling a bit panicky about all the air travel the next day. It has been well documented that I hate air travel. I paced around that evening trying to keep my mind occupied with last minute packing duties. At bedtime the butterflies started fluttering in my belly, gracefully throwing around m-80s and playing demolition derby with my pancreas, as is their wont. "Man, I don't know why I'm so nervous," I thought to myself, "it's not that long of a flight and we're going to have a good time." Nothing like a positive attitude to push back against the looming darkness of a panic attack.
I laid down in bed and tried to ignore the jitters and increasing discomfort in my stomach. I tossed and turned for a solid hour before I turned to the wife and said, "Honey, I think something's wrong."
The wife and I have been together for about 1,000 years, including the time before we were married. She has seen my pre-travel jitters a million times and rightly thought that this was just another one of those instances. She asked me to describe my symptoms and oddly enough "eviscerating-like pain" is not usually on my list of complaints when I'm freaking out about sitting on a plane for several hours. She went to the internet and navigated past the ungrammatical felines and naked ladies to double check my symptoms. As we all know, interweb diagnosis can be a tricky endeavor, because every symptom you tap in to the navigation bar ultimately leads to a long, painful and expensive death. According to the internet, abdominal pain is either very minor (bad sushi, anything from Taco Bell, 11 beers) or deadly (appendicitis, cancer, host for chest-bursting alien species). Based on the range of things it could be, the wife decided that perhaps we should go to the hospital and get things checked out just in case. They'll probably just send us on our way and we can still make our flight in the morning. I agreed and we hopped in the car.
Since we just moved to a delightful farming town a few weeks back, we have about a 17 mile drive to the hospital. En route I started feeling really terrible: shaking, rocking back and forth and dry heaving, all the while pleading with the wife to step on it. When we arrived at the hospital, I could barely get out of the car. I was doubled over, holding a Target bag to my face and retching while the wife checked me in. The front desk lady gave me one of those plastic barf tubs they have at hospitals and said "sometimes those bags have little holes in them." Man, that lady knows her business, I tell you what.
They finally get me in the emergency room and by then I was groaning and thrashing around like I'm gut shot. The nurse tried to pry important medical info out of me but I was useless at that point. They hooked me up to an IV and gave me some pain meds. "You're going to feel a warm sensation Mr. Wilkins," said the nurse. And indeed the pain melted away as soon as the syringe plunged downward. The hospital staff began taking blood in earnest and hooking up various tubes, stopping only to push hither and thither on my abdomen. "Ouch," I said dreamily. They took me for a quick x-ray but afterward said I was going to need a CAT scan.
For a CAT scan to work, you have to drink a contrast solution to make your innards light up so the doctors can differentiate the bag of spaghetti that is the human digestive tract . Although I'm glad that science has given us magical ways to look at the ooky parts inside our bodies, I believe they have failed in certain respects to realize that people with abdominal pain may have a hard time choking down a tall glass of bitter-ass contrast solution. "Try not to throw it up," the nurse said flatly.
I managed to keep down the half gallon of contrast solution and then the CAT scan tech came and wheeled me into the scan room. I had been breaking out into a sweat every 10 minutes so the trip down the cool hallway felt nice. I fumbled clumsily to keep that pathetic gown they make you wear from blowing up and giving everyone a show. The tech gave me some instructions before helping me switch to the gurney that rolls you into the CAT scan. I had never had a CAT scan before. The calming robot voice telling you when to breathe, the persistent whirring of the machine and the pain meds I was on made it a not unpleasant experience. The last part where I had to hold my breath for 25 seconds sucked though. Even on the meds any pressure on my abdomen was tortuous.
After the scan, the tech wheeled me back to the emergency room. I laid there for about an hour while the nurses alternatively pumped me full of pain and anti-nausea medication. The doctors expressed some concern about what they saw on the scan-my spleen looked a bit dodgy and my appendix was definitely enlarged. Plus, my white cell count had jumped since they last took a blood sample. It was now 4 in the morning and it looked like we weren't going to Hawaii after all.
A few hours later, a surgeon came down to speak with us. They confirmed what we had already feared: my appendix was swollen and pushing up against other squiggly bits. Also, some sort of mysterious fluid was leaking into my belly. They were going to operate at noon.
It may have been the pain meds, but I wasn't that scared of the operation, which is significant given my general phobia of all things medical related. I even put on my serious tone and asked my wife before the surgery if we needed to do a will or anything. She just laughed and gently reminded me that my assets, such as they are, were not significant enough to warrant a fancy legal document at this stage. Indeed, my grandest possessions amount to beer brewing equipment, some Chinese dictionaries, fly fishing gear and an assortment of Lord of the Rings memorabilia. The Wilkins fortune would be safe, for now.
At high noon they wheeled me into the operating room. They gave me some more meds and I was out like a light. I woke up in what seemed like just a few moments later in the recovery room, sans appendix. The wife stood by the bed and explained that everything went well. They even took pictures of the surgery, which looked like this:
Ha ha, gross.
Recovery has been slow. It's been about a week and I'm still having a hard time getting up and around. I've been sleeping on the couch most nights because it's only a short hobble to the bathroom from there. I also can't stretch out properly on a bed on account of my bloated and bruised tummy. The kind of surgery is known as laproscopic, where they fill you up with carbon dioxide like a horrible anthropomorphic balloon before carving out your offending organs with robot hands. You only need three small puncture holes instead of a giant scar like normal surgery. Awesome.
So in short, my body chose one hell of a time to try and explode a small useless organ and fill me up with toxic gloop and kill me. Jesus I wish I was in Maui right now. God damn it so much.
Also, I have to go in for another CAT scan in 6 months so they can take a gander at my spleen. Seems there's some spots that they need to check out. Awesome.
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