Stomach Pains

“I do not want you dying on my bathroom floor.”

I believe those were the words my girlfriend spoke to me that actually got me up off of the bathroom floor and into the car for her to take me to the emergency room.  Talk about stubborn.

So how did I get to the bathroom floor, you may ask?  Well, it’s a sordid tale; full of deceit, violence, and mild sexuality…definitely rated a strong PG-13.  So I’ll just give you the highlights!

It was an ordinary Thursday.  I went to work.  I did some work.  And then my stomach started to hurt.  It was right around lunch time, so I assumed, as you might expect, that it was something I ate!  But the pain got worse and worse, so I went home*, and laid down on the bed, curled up in a little ball! 

* holy balls was getting home interesting.  The pain in my stomach was so bad I was having trouble focusing on the highway!  The miracle of this entire story isn’t that I avoided death via exploded appendix…its that I didn’t die on the freeway getting home from work.

Anyways, it got bad…I mean, I felt like this was really awful food poisoning.  So I went into the bathroom to puke!  I couldn’t.  Nothing came out.  Not surprising…I have an EXTREME dislike of vomiting.  My internal revulsion to it is so strong that it takes A LOT to make me finally do it.  So I just curled up, watched a movie, and hoped it would go away.

And it did!  Mostly.  By 5 or so, I was feeling pretty good.  By dinnertime, I was able to drive over to Jessica’s place and eat tacos!  I felt pretty darned ok.  We watched some TV, went to sleep…and off I went into dreamland!

Until about 1:30 in the morning, when I was awoken by an extreme pain in my stomach yet again.  And this time, the pain was not only just in my stomach, but stretched across the upper abdomen.  I thought this still had to be food poisoning.  Everything I had ever read about appendicitis said that it would be a pain in the lower right part of your abdomen.  My pain was nowhere near there!  So I went to the bathroom and tried to vomit again.  Never did. 

About that time, I decided to lay down on the cool, stone bathroom floor.  It felt really good on my abdomen.  So I stayed there.  Every now and then Jessica would come by and ask if I wanted to go to the emergency room.  I declined, as I was convinced this was food poisoning, and didn’t want to ring up an ER visit for something so mundane. 

However, the pain kept getting worse and worse…and Jessica told me she didn’t want me dying on her bathroom floor.  So, eventually, around 4 in the morning, I dragged myself off the floor and let Jessica drive me to the hospital.

Hospital was pretty standard.  I showed up, they took my info, took me to the back, gave me some good pain medication through my IV to calm me down (it totally worked too!)  Then they took some blood…everything fine except for slightly elevated white cell count.  Took a CT scan, and oh look at that!  Appendicitis!  And I was scheduled for surgery!

Parents arrived, Jess took off (after being quite the trooper, dealing with me and the ER all morning).  I went in for surgery…and some joker decided to take a picture!

Lovely.

Anyways, I had to spend Friday night in the hospital…missing my softball team’s semifinal and championship games that night.  I also had to share a room with a special roommate who showed up around 2:30 in the morning.  I’m not sure I can properly tell this story through text…so ask me about it sometime.  But I’ll give you the highlights:

~The constant moaning and wailing while breathing…OOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHH.  OOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHH.  That was fun to sleep through.

~The whispers on the phone “yeah, I’m in the hospital again.  This might be it for me…gather the family around and start praying for my soul.”

~Asking the doctor “my heart’s about to give out, isn’t it?”  To which the doctor replied “no, your EKG was fine.”  The follow up question to that was “will it hurt when my heart gives out?”

~Back to the moaning and wailing…but refusing all pain medication when asked.  He even claimed to not be in any pain at all!

Anyways, we were all damn glad to get me out of there Saturday.

So, I’ve since recovered.  I went to work on Monday.  I walked/ran a 10k at Disneyland, and did 3 days on my feet at the park over Labor Day weekend.  And I’ll start running full time again this week…as well as jumping back into softball.  Just ended up being a small blip on the radar…but an annoying one, for sure.

So, um, yeah…if you’ve yet to have appendicitis, please note that the pain does not necessarily start in the lower right area of your abdomen.  It can start anywhere.  Big thanks to Jessica for forcing me to go to the hospital.  An exploded appendix would not have been fun.  Looks like I live to fight another day!