Well, I just had an emergency appendectomy. No, I’m not joking.
I’m between pain pills at the moment and people have asked what exactly happened, so here goes:
I think it all started Wednesday night or Thursday morning. My lower back was sore and I was cramping a bit in my tummy, but with so many changes in how/when PMS affects me over the past year of fertility treatment, I assumed that had to be it. Just PMS.
I took Advil all day Thursday, and when I got home from work, I took more Advil, laid down with my heating pad, and tried to sleep.
I woke up around 1230 Friday morning. Quincy was still awake and reading in bed, but I was hurting a lot more than when I laid down. I figured the heating pad got me too hot and gave me a tummy ache (really naive, I guess) so I got rid of it and just laid there.
I was still wide awake and hurting at 2am. By that time, Quincy had turned off the lamp and had gone to sleep. Alone in the dark, I realized something must really be wrong with me… the pain wasn’t general, all-over tummy and back pain any longer – I felt like someone had jabbed a hot poker in my sternum and dragged it down to my lower right side.
At 3am, I got up and took Pepto, thinking there must have been something wrong with the salad I had for dinner. I’ve never had food poisoning that I can recall, so I figured I’d start spewing out of both ends soon, and the pain would lessen. I told myself if I wasn’t better by 4am, I would wake Quincy and go to the ER.
I couldn’t stand it any more by 330. Without exaggeration, every time I breathed out, the pain intensified. I was shaking all over. I had tried to throw up but it hurt too much to try and gag. I tried to go to the bathroom, but even that hurt too much. There was no way this was food poisoning if by body was flat-out refusing to expel anything from either end.
We got to the ER by 350am. Luckily (?), I must have looked as bad as I felt because I hadn’t even finished signing in and they were starting to draw my blood and giving me a cup to go pee in.
I started throwing up then, too. Well, dry-heaving, which was even worse. Nothing would come out to rid myself of this pain. They got me a wheelchair to sit in and wait for my name to be called, but it hurt to sit, so I laid in a crumbled heap on the floor of the ER for about 45 minutes, clutching a barf bag and dry heaving. Finally, they wheeled me back for a CT scan around 5am, which is where things really took a nose dive.
You’re supposed to be still during the scan, but I was shaking uncontrollably. You’re supposed to breathe in and hold it…but I couldn’t. Then I started actually vomiting, not just dry heaving any longer. We had to wait until I finished throwing up before we could go back to the waiting room. I have never in my life been in that much pain. I thought the HSG was bad. This was worse.
Once back on the floor of the ER, I asked Quincy how long until I got a room (and pain meds). He checked… there were 4 people in front of me.
Apparently not. No sooner had he asked, a nurse came out and got me. After I had changed into the gown, my main nurse came in and told us it was my appendix and they’d called the surgeon. Two other nurses took a chest x-ray and EKG to prep for surgery, and finally around 6…I got morphine. Sweet Jesus, it was amazing – even though it only lasted about 15 minutes.
In that time, my nurse said the surgeon was coming, and I would have the appendectomy by noon. She gave me more drugs (Dilaudid? I dunno) and we started playing the waiting game.
However, the surgeon arrived around 730 and must have seen something that sped things along…because a whole bunch of nurses came in and told me the surgeon wanted it out NOW. So I signed some papers and was whisked away to the OR.
I asked the OR nurse when everything was over and I was getting ready to leave how bad it was. She told me a healthy appendix is about half the size of the tip of your pinky (from that first joint to the tip). Mine was the size of a golf ball.
So, that’s my OMFG ER story of hopefully my lifetime. I guess you can never plan for emergency surgery, but in any case, this one really surprised me. My advice is… if something doesn’t feel right, don’t wait nearly 4 hours to go to the hospital.
My Stork Got Lost 