Tuesday, August 4, 2015

Unexpected Hiatus

And when I say "hiatus" I mean "hospitalization." Guess who no longer has her appendix!! (Me. Its me.) Basically, it went like this: I woke up last Thursday feeling vaguely nauseous, which progressed to feeling outright sick by about ten in the morning. I then proceed to spend the rest of the daylight hours being pretty violently ill. About twelve hours after that I started to realise that it probably wasn't a garden-variety stomach bug, especially because I was getting kind of stabbing pains in my right side that were getting worse.

Now, stabbing pains in your right side do not bode well, because that is the residence of one of the human body's least useful organs: the appendix. For those who don't know, its this tiny little tube that's main purpose in the human body seems to be getting infected. Dominant theories are that it holds helpful bacteria or that its a vestigial trait from humanity's distant evolutionary past.

I kind of thought I might be overreacting because I was a) in pain, b) nauseated and c) dehydrated from vomiting for twelve hours, but I still wanted to get that checked. And- lo!- it kept getting worse as I got to the waiting room to get into the hospital waiting room (the hospital was under construction).

Upshot is, three hours later they had a tentative diagnosis: acute appendicitis. Since it was 1 a.m. and the surgeon had said he wouldn't come until morning, they stuck me on pain meds and wheeled me off to a quiet corner until someone was available. Which turned out to be evening of the next day. (Lucky it wasn't urgent, I suppose. Whatever do they do in emergencies?) So they wheeled me to another room to wait with a bunch of people over they age of 80. One was really intensely opinionated about where her table should be, and, let me tell you, laughing when your appendix is infected is not recommended. Leave your sense of humour at the door.

It was my first time being put under anesthesia. Nobody warned me that you start shaking like crazy when you regain consciousness, that was so strange. Its apparently a reaction to the anesthetic. Also nobody warned me that the last thing I would hear before they put me under was the surgeon and nurses arguing about what music to listen to whilst cutting me open.

So the moral of the story is see a doctor if you're in a lot of pain, and, if at all possible, try to fall ill when there's a surgeon on duty.

I do have some things in the works now, but I'm at the "waking up in the morning makes me tired and all I want to do is sleep" phase of my recovery, so I'm not sure what the timeline for posting things will be. I have a bunch of things to review, but the tiredness thing is not good for my focus, and I have some school work to catch up on, so bear with me.

Thanks,
Kelly

No comments :

Post a Comment