My Own 24

I wrote this not long after I had my appendix taken out. To set things up, I had felt a pressure on the lower right sector of my abdomen on the previous Saturday. This was not unusual because I had felt something there for many weeks, especially after working out, and since the pressure never got any worse, I could usually rub down the muscle and it would eventually go away. By the next Monday, the pressure was constant and it was time to be thinking about a couple of scenarios: hernia or appendix.

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Thursday, February 25th, 2005:

6:00 AM: Woke up and realized I’d be going to the doctor today or tomorrow. Pressure is still not bad, but it is an “adult moment”: this thing is not going away and it ain’t going to get better by itself.

6:45 AM: Decided in the back of my mind that since I possibly could be on an operating room table very soon, I would break my diet and chow down on the McDonalds Big Breakfast of grease, carbs, and soda. One of the few good decisions I made today.

9:15 AM: Called for an appointment to see Dr. Jones. Nothing is available for a week except for something at 2:50 PM in the afternoon. I take the appointment in a week.

9:20 AM: My lower abdomen twinges. I call back and take the 2:50 appointment.

10:00 AM: Another adult moment. I realize the possibility of surgery is evolving into the probability of surgery. I have one last donut and drink.

1:00 PM: I take the rest of the day off as sick leave. First stop: my other job at the Prison. I need to get a TB test because some correctional officers tested positive for exposure to tuberculosis and all staffers must have a test. Part of my mind realizes that as I’m walking and climbing stairs, my right hand is in my right front pants pocket pushing down and I’m not walking straight up. And I don’t get the TB test because it has to be assessed with 48-72 hours, both of those days landing on the weekend. A wasted trip.

2:00 PM: Stop off at the house to get the checkbook. Two of the daughters are there and I know I should say something…but what? At this point I realize I haven’t told Liz yet, which I know I will pay dearly for later. I call her at work and tell her I’m going to the doctor and there’s a “slight possibility” I may need to go to the hospital. I honestly don’t know who I’m trying to spare: her or me. Danielle senses something amiss but I wave her off with some glib remark and leave early for the doctor.

2:15 PM: My appointment is 2:50, but the nurse has an open room and I spend five whole minutes in the waiting room. She gets the history and vitals. BP is 138/80 (darn good for me, considering) and no high temp. Dr. Jones comes in, lays me down, presses my abdomen, and I make the appropriate noise. Up until now, there’s only been pressure. He pushes the side and it is painful. He’s not fooled by my witty banter and points me to the bathroom for a urine sample.

Oh boy. I haven’t taken anything for four hours and the tank is dry. Running the tap and drinking three cups of water produces…nearly nothing…into a large, clear plastic cup. After fifteen minutes of jumping jacks (okay, I hopped a little) and more water, still nothing. I wrapped my hand around the bottom of the cup to hide my less-than-masculine sample and hand it to the nurse below waist level, trying to subtly hint that this was the best I could do under the circumstances. She holds it up to the light above her head like it’s an Olympic torch and breezes it past her three attractive colleagues at the nursing station, who are strangely mesmerized by my pathetically minimal urine sample. Can it get worse? Oh yeah. I forgot to zip up my fly.

Back to the examining room and Dr. Jones is taking no chances. He is sending me literally across the street to the hospital for a Cat scan. He says while I’m not showing any of the atypical signs of appendicitis (no fever, no nausea), he had a patient yesterday that showed nearly the same symptoms. He doesn’t say, and I find out later, that this patient’s appendix had burst.

2:50 PM: Two minute drive across the street and not a legal parking spot to be found. This strangely occupies my mind more that it should for the next few hours.

3:10 PM: I check in through Outpatient and head for Radiology. There I get the lovely news: in order for the Cat scan to work, I need to drink Barium. Lots of lovely, delicious Barium. Three large drinking glasses of Barium. I start sipping at 3:45 PM. More good news: it takes two and a half hours for the stuff to completely coat my digestive tract. Now I start feeling sorry for myself. The only saving grace is I get to change the TV in the lobby from some chick flick on Lifetime to Patton.

4:00 PM: I offer the nurse at the counter $20 not to let me finish the last half glass.

4:01 PM: $30.

4:20 PM: I finish the Barium, which has to be slowly ingested for maximum effort. One of my fellow patients says the drink used to be a lot worse. How can it get worse than that putrid drink?

5:00 PM: One of the side effects of the liquid: it’s a purgative. Whatever food is left in my system is gone at warp speed. During one of these episodes, Dr. Jones comes in the bathroom and yells over the stall wall that I’m not to leave the hospital until the Chief of Radiology clears me. I hope my responding moan sounds a little like English. Now I’m really down on me.

5:30 PM: The remaining Barium is resting heavily in me and pushing my appendix really hard. Sitting down is no longer an option, and not only am I not standing up straight, I’m bent over to the side (“I’m a little teapot, tip me over and pour me out.”). I let the nurse know it may be getting time for some painkillers. Lots of painkillers. She sends me out to get my IV.

A defining moment in my life. One I will never forget.

The patient ward where I’m getting poked is the same ward where cancer patients get their chemo, and two of them are there today. One patient is with her adult daughter who is knitting at the speed of light (not too hard to figure out why). The other is a young girl half my age. They’re getting their drugs via taps into their upper chests. The girl has no hair on her head and she talking about how the estrogen in her body is transmitting the cancer throughout her system. What follows is the worst needle experience in my life but it isn’t the worst in the room. I take it like a man.

The nurse is experienced in giving IVs but cannot find a cooperative vein in my left forearm, despite a couple of minutes of digging. She gives me a local in my right arm and the vein there agrees to be poked on the first try. I leave the ward thanking God all I have is a bruised arm, a bad appendix, and a more realistic understanding of what is happening to me. I’m done with complaining for the day. The day, though, is far from over.

6:45 PM: The Cat scanner becomes available. I lay down, have some Iodine pumped into me for contrast, and learn I have to hold my breath for six seconds while this $1.2 million thingy spins around me like a whirling dervish (I always wanted to say that). One more time, six more seconds. This is easy. One more time. 23 seconds. Aw crap. I’m so not ready for that. Not only am I turning blue, my lungs are pushing everything down, including my appendix and the remaining Barium.

7:15 PM: Here comes the Chief of Radiology. I have a slightly inflamed appendix. I call Liz to tell her I’m spending the night.

7:30 PM: Off to the ER to get checked in and they are backed up into the hallways, but an appendix is a show-stopper. While they’re freeing up a bed for me, I got outside to clear my head and stop the shakes (I’m getting seriously operated on for the first time in 35 years!). Through the bright lights, there’s a star, probably the left arm of Orion. I ask it to look out for my family. I ask nothing for me.

7:45 PM: Into bed and the hospital gown, and giving the vitals again: By now, I’ve got it down: 6’5”, 260 (ding), no fever, no drinking, no smoking, nothing since 10:00 AM (except Barium (yuck)), and other boring medical history. In all, about twenty people will be hearing that before I leave the hospital.

7:50 PM: Liz arrives. I’ve told her before not to come right away because there was nothing really going on, but I knew there was something. She is worried and more than a little pissed, especially when she hears I’ve been feeling like this for days. I don’t know if it’s the macho thing that kept me from telling her all this time, but we agree we’re going to have a talk later. Long after I give up the advantage of being in a hospital gown and bed. Darn it.

8:05 PM: Dr. Bessette, my surgeon, starts feeling me up and he is perplexed like Dr. Jones. Again, the only symptom I’m showing is the pressure; no nausea, no real pain, no fever. He says he’ll look at the Cat scan, which is nearly foolproof, and the blood work. He’s fairly certain he’s operating on me and says the appendix is coming out, one way or another, and if it looks good, they’ll look around inside for something else. I’ll be completely out under general anesthetic, which everyone in the operating room would agree later, turns out to be a good thing.

The nurse comes to take my blood and, as God as my witness, I don’t feel a thing, not even the needle going in my arm. This is a good sign. I find out later that my blood work is perfectly normal. I’m weirding these people out.

10:45 PM: Time to go to my room upstairs. Because the house is full tonight, I get a private room in the…OB ward. God has a great sense of humor. I start making the dilation and epidural jokes. Nobody is really amused by my show of bravado. Liz is enjoying the rich justice of the moment. As much as she can.

11:40 PM: Things are really moving along now. The OB nurse got me checked in and I got about three minutes to catch my breath, then it was off to pre-op. I talked to Dr. DeReimer, my anesthesiologist, who is a really nice guy. He asks me if I really want an epidural. We have a good laugh. In a few minutes, I’ll be scaring the crap out of him.

11:50 PM: Liz leaves for the waiting room and I have my first panic attack. A few deep breathes and the sedation they gave me helps.

Friday, February 11th, 2005:

12:00 AM: Operating room. My last memory is climbing from the bed to the table. I don’t even remember laying all the way down. The operation officially begins.

Dr. DeReimer told me about what happened later, but he started off by saying, “The first thing we tried didn’t work. That’s okay. Just like an airline pilot, I have back-up procedures.” When you hear that, it’s a clue. It appears I can’t have a normal intubation procedure down my throat because the opening below my voicebox is smaller than anticipated. After a few attempts (and my oxygen level dropping down to 65%), he had to intubate through the nose. The entire process stressed him out a tad, but things worked out okay. I was in the operating room for 90 minutes, an hour longer than they anticipated.

Once I was breathing normally, this is what Dr. Bessette did, courtesy of WebMD:

“Laparoscopic appendectomy: Three or four incisions, 0.25 in.(0.6 cm) to 0.5 in.(1.3 cm) long, are made in the abdomen. A surgeon inserts a viewing device (laparoscope) into one incision. The laparoscope is attached outside the body to a video monitor, allowing the surgeon to see inside the abdomen. Surgical instruments are inserted into the other incisions to remove the appendix.”

What isn’t mentioned they also open another hole and stick a third tube in to blow some air around the organ so they can do the cutting (as I write this the following Sunday, I’m still feeling incredibly bloated with air). Once everything was visualized, Dr. Bessette told me everything went smoothly and he extracted an infected appendix.

While this is all going on, Liz is getting worried in the waiting room. After they take me to post-op (of which I have no memory), they let her come in to see me. I’m a bloody mess from the intubation through the nose and I’m talking. She won’t tell me what I said. After they take me back to my OB room, she finally heads home. It’s about 2:30 AM.

10:00 AM: I wake up. I’m groggy, my mouth is drier than any desert, but there is little to no disorientation. I know where I am, why I am there, and Liz is beside the bed waiting for me (she had gotten two whole hours of sleep compared to my ten somewhat adventurous hours of unconsciousness). My first meal is, appropriately, lots of ice chips. My new nurse, Ronda, hints that my snoring is a tad loud. There’s no justice for men, especially in the OB ward.

11:30 AM: I am getting dressed and getting out of there. Both Drs. Bessette and DeReimer have stopped by with their news and stories. The good news is because of the procedure and the minimal aftereffects, I can resume a normal life with no diet or lifestyle restrictions, and I can go back to work whenever I’m ready. The downside is because of the difficult intubation, I’ll have to wear a MedicAlert for the rest of my life.


As I write this a couple days later, small things start to filter in.

There are little band-aids covering the five small holes they opened in my chest. The hair around those holes do not like me taking off the band-aids.

My jaw line and the muscles under my jaw are sore, probably from when they were holding my head while they were intubating me. When I got out of my hospital bed for the first time after the operation, there was a large Velcro strap in the sheets. They were using that and others to hold me down.

The doctors, nurses, and staff at Carson Tahoe Hospital are the best. I’ll pay those bills gladly. Within reason, of course.

The young girl with cancer was envious of my veins.

Life is feeling pretty damn good right now.