Appendectomy

At 4:00am, I woke with fairly significant abdominal pain. I thought I probably needed to go to the bathroom, but after doing that, I still had pain. I went downstairs and spread out long on the couch, thinking maybe if I had a good stretch, the pain would diminish. 

Nope.  

By 7:00am, the pain was localized on the right side of my abdomen, just over from my belly button, about the spot where the appendix is. I called a nurse and talked through my symptoms, and she suggested I go see my doctor. While I had some of the symptoms, I didn't have all the typical ones--no throwing up though a bit of nausea, no fever, no pain that doubled me over. But I made an appointment because you don't want to mess around with something like appendicitis. 

At noon, I went to the doctor. The PA I saw poked and prodded and felt there was enough evidence to warrant a CT scan. She scheduled that for 3:00pm and I went home to lie on the couch a moan a bit more. 

The scan was finished by 4:00, and I was told to wait around, just in case it was appendicitis. No point in sending me home to just have me return half an hour later. About 4:45 I got word that I did, indeed, have acute appendicitis. I needed to make my way over to same-day surgery where Dr. Trotter would remove my appendix. 

This was certainly not the way I intended to spend my Friday evening, but what do you do? Kent stopped by on his way home from work. I laid around the hospital room, waiting. Dr. Trotter came in to speak to me. I liked him. He was very personable, answered all my questions, was encouraging and confident. I asked the nurse about him, too, and she spoke very highly of him. "Dr. Trotter could remove an appendix blindfolded and with one hand tied behind his back. He's an excellent surgeon." I liked that endorsement.

Surgery was about 9:00pm. It was done laparoscopically and only took about half an hour and Kent was in recovery when I was wheeled in. I asked to take my appendix home but they wouldn't let me. They did show it to me though. It looked like a fat, slimy worm. I suppose I'm glad to have it gone. Before I could go home, I had to be able to breathe room air, walk, and pee. I did not want to stay overnight, so by 11:30pm, I had walked and peed. We climbed into bed about 12:30pm.

It was a long day but the doctor assures me the recovery shouldn't be too terrible. Just a couple of days. I told work I wouldn't be there Monday or Tuesday, and we'll see how I feel on Wednesday. In the meantime, I'm just going to do the hang around, read, maybe watch something on Netflix. 

Apart from having my wisdom teeth out when I was in high school, this has been my only surgery. I've escaped the knife up until now. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised; a surgery was bound to happen. I am sort of surprised that this was the one, but one's appendix goes bad without any warning. Here's to a speedy recovery.

Waiting for CT results.

Waiting to be wheeled down for surgery

I went into surgery wearing this purple gown.

I came out of surgery wearing an entirely different one.

That means, at some point, I was naked in front of people.