Not Quite Right

The other day, I woke up not feeling quite right.  At first I thought that I must be really hungry, so I tried to eat, but eating made me a bit queasy so I assumed that I most likely had caught a stomach bug.  I spent the day downing Pepto and trying to figure out why on earth I felt so weird.

Even though it FELT like I had a stomach bug, I didn't have any of the obvious symptoms, aside from the pain in my stomach.  I started to wonder if maybe I didn't have a weird case of heart burn or possibly even a stomach ulcer.  It progressively got weirder throughout the day and after Bill finally got home from teaching at the Red Cross (it felt like he was there forever!) I was able to curl up and take a nap while he took care of the kids.  I attempted to eat something for dinner but all it did was make me feel even worse, so I gave up and while the boys spent some time with my parents, Bill and I settled in to watch a movie that we'd been dying to see with my sister. 

Right at the end of the movie I started to get increasingly uncomfortable.  The weird pain had started creeping from the center of my abdomen down my entire right side.  I asked Bill what I thought was most likely a really stupid question- "Where is my appendix??".  He looked at me like I was an idiot, told me where it was located (on my right side) and informed me that if I had ruptured my appendix I would be in agony on the floor, and not watching a movie.

Fair enough.  I've heard about appendicitis before, enough to know that people say it can feel worse than child birth.  I sort of crossed that off of my list of possibilities and assumed it was most likely a ruptured ovarian cyst or something similar.  Finally my mom convinced me that I needed to just call my on-call primary care physician.  By this point it's around 11pm on Saturday evening.  I call.  I tell the nurse my symptoms and she tells me "OK now it's time to decide whether you're going to go to the ER yourself or whether I am going to call 911 for you" at which point I sort of flipped out, because I have MAJOR issues about riding in ambulances.  I would have to be unconscious.  That's pretty much the only way you'd get me into one.  I flat our refused the ambulance and told her I would drive myself.

Bill starts getting ready but I argue that I don't think I'm going to be staying, they will probably only give me an ultrasound, see that I ruptured a cyst, and send me home, so there is no point in him driving me up and then having to pick me up at some ungodly hour of the morning having to drag the kids from their beds.  He insisted on driving me, and I insisted that it was silly because I'd be back in a few hours.  He reminded me that I had said the same thing the LAST time I drove myself to the emergency room.... and I ended up having emergency surgery to liberate my gallbladder.  I didn't feel in nearly as much pain this time as I did then.  I pressed.  He relented, and I drove myself. 

The hospital was super busy when I got there, so I put a one hour time limit on my waiting room stay.  If I was still in the waiting room one hour from the time I got there, I was going to go home.  After about 45 minutes I asked the young woman next to me how long she had been there.  Her reply?? Four hours.  Four.  Hours.  At that point I started putting all of my stuff away in my purse and got up to leave just in time for my name to be called by the triage nurse.

Damn.

Grudgingly, I go back, do all of the weight/blood pressure/insurance stuff and get taken to a room.  Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure Four Hour Waiting Room Chick wanted to murder me.  Pretty quickly I was seen by the ER physician who said I sounded like a textbook case of appendicitis.  I rolled my eyes a bit.

And then it REALLY started to hurt.  It went from being a gnawing, constant 4 or 5 on the pain scale to being an awful, stabbing 7 or 8.  At this point, I wasn't doubting anymore.  My CT scan came back and the doctor let me know that I was being admitted and the surgeon was on his way in.

The good news- The surgeon on call the day was the exact same surgeon who was on call the night I had my last and most epic gallbladder attack.  We're old pals!  He joked with me that I need to stop having children, because it seems as though every time I need emergency surgery, I have a baby just a few months old at home.  I am fast running out of obsolete and/or unnecessary bodily organs that he can harvest. 

All in all, it was a bit of a scary ordeal but I acknowledge just how lucky I ended up being.  It was caught early, before it had actually ruptured and was just on its way to that point.  Had I ruptured, my hospital stay would have been much longer and recovery would be much more difficult.  It's two days later and I'm exhausted still but already feeling a bit better.  Remembering to take it easy when you have three kids is no small thing.  Yesterday after coming home from the hospital I tried doing way too much and really felt it after a while.  Speaking of which, here are some totally random pictures I took documenting my hospital stay.


 The hospital 'dinner' that almost made me cry.  I hadn't eaten for what felt like days, and didn't realize when they brought the food try in that my doctor had ordered me on a liquid diet.  Beef broth, a popsicle, and jello.  Epic meal fail. 

 Facetime chatting with Jakob, who is showing me how messy the living room was.  I look like a total hottie, don't I?? :D

I ended up in a room with a REALLY gorgeous view of the city.  Too bad my roomie wasn't nearly as pleasant.

A picture Kayleah sent me of poor Bill completely exhausted, fell asleep mid sentence.

Nobody looks good in a hospital gown.  Nobody!

IV.  Fun times!

I think I'm going to go take a nap for now, but someone remind me to tell the Roomie From Satan story next time I blog :)