Vestigial Organs

Even though it does not have anything to do with production, I would like to share an experience that I had last week. It's amazing to me how a part of the human body that serves no benefit at all can all of a sudden, for no apparent reason, turn into a horrible torture device.

Tuesday afternoon after getting home from class I noticed a slight pain in my stomach. I figured it was because I hadn’t eaten anything all day so I got something to eat. Still, four hours later, the pain was much worse. After looking on the Internet at all the horrible things associated with prolonged stomach pain, I had my mom take me to the hospital at about 8pm.

I waited at the hospital until 12am to get a CAT SCAN, then waited in pain for about 45 more minutes for the results. The doctor came back to my bed and told me I was diagnosed with acute appendicitis and I had to go into surgery the next day. At that moment I turned cold and pale, realizing that I was about to endure something terrible.

I was then hooked up to an IV and taken to my room where I would spend the night and the next few days. I was given a painkiller through the IV called Demerol that hit me hard but only lasted about an hour. At about 2am the pain came on full force and there was nothing the nurse or I could do about it. I was vomiting profusely and clenching my stomach for hours, rolling around trying to find a position that would make the pain let up. It felt like a flaming knife was being twisted into my stomach, or something from John Carpenter's The Thing was about to burst out.

The next morning, after the surgery which I remembered nothing of, I found myself back in my room with three bloody bandages on my swollen stomach. The surgeon came in and told me that I had an infection because my appendix had ruptured. He described the way my insides looked by saying that "It looked like someone had poured a can of cream of chicken soup into my abdominal cavity"... delicious.

I spent the next four days in my bed watching TV with a remote that could only cycle up through the channels, not down. Getting up to go to the bathroom or try to walk around while connected to an IV was an agonizing ordeal. So was being woken up at 5am every morning to someone sticking a needle in my arm to draw blood, or when the nurse had to start a new IV in a different vein because the old one wasn’t working right.

I finally got to go home on Valentines Day, only to lie around and do nothing. My girlfriend and family were there to comfort me at least. Sunday was my 21st Birthday, I was able to go out to dinner and a movie thanks to my Darvocet, but couldn’t drink. Oh well, at least I sort of felt like I had thanks to the painkillers.

Well, that was my ordeal and at least I know that it will never happen again. I'm a pretty healthy guy. I’ve never had surgery before or any real problems like that. This just hit me out of nowhere without any real cause. Anyone out there that still has their appendix, beware, and be sure to eat plenty of fiber or this little insignificant tube could put you through a living hell.