On Wednesday a week and a half into
our stay at our second host, my abdomen began to hurt. The sharp pain throbbed
with irregular bursts in the upper left of my abdomen, just below my ribcage.
It began while we were out planting trees on a muddy hillside. Every time I
bent to press a baby tree into the mud, the pain increased. I spent an hour and
a half in bed during lunch and felt better enough to continue work until dark.
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| The Baby Trees Pre-Planting |
Over the next handful of days, the intermittent pain persisted and increased. After googling symptoms and asking friends, I was pretty convinced that I was just suffering from severe gas. I didn’t eat much over the next three days. After throwing up Friday night and waking up Saturday with no improvements, I decided to go to a local clinic to make sure everything was ok.
I waited only fifteen minutes to
see a physician. Upon hearing my symptoms, he asked if I was experiencing
heartburn, I said, “No, I don’t think so”. He shone a light down my throat
proclaiming that he could see some marks on the back of my throat. After lightly
pressing on my abdomen, he diagnosed me with excess gastric acid, wrote me a
prescription for an acid suppressant, and sent me on my way. I probably spent
less than ten minutes with him.
After swallowing an acid
suppressant pill, I went to lie in bed. About
hour later and halfway through watching Caddyshack, the pain moved
to the lower right and spiked to a suddenly unbearable level. I cried out, but
Kyle and our host couldn’t hear me – they were in the main house across the
driveway from our bedroom. I tried to
sit up, struggling to pull on pants and stuff my sockless feet into shoes. I
stumbled down the stairs and across the drive, bent over in pain. Kyle saw me
through the window and came out to meet me.
Within five minutes, we were all in
the car with packed backpacks, speeding towards Galway and the nearest hospital
(a forty minute drive). Every bump in the road hurt excruciatingly. I could
breathe in only short, sharp bursts. Fifteen minutes into the drive, my hands
and feet began to tingle unnaturally. Within a few minutes, my hands had seized
up into unnatural locked positions on my thighs and I couldn’t unlock them. The
tingling migrated to my torso, I panicked. Kyle told me to take deep breaths.
After five minutes of controlled breathing, movement slowly returned to my
hands.
When we arrived at the Galway
Clinic, I could only shuffle as far as through the entrance before the pain
became too great to walk. Luckily, there was a group of wheelchairs by the
door. Kyle helped me into one and wheeled me to the emergency room.
Upon hearing that we were American
tourists, the receptionist was hesitant to admit me. She told us that without
Irish insurance, they could only admit us if we paid €3,000 up front. I promptly vomited onto the floor.
While Kyle ran back to the car to
grab his wallet, they wheeled me back behind the desk to a bed. After a much
more thorough and painful abdomen examination than my first, a doctor diagnosed
me with likely appendicitis and hooked me up to some morphine. Meanwhile, Kyle
was sorting out payment with the receptionist and our travel insurance company.
As my temperature rose, I underwent a series of blood tests and a CT scan to
confirm that my appendix was inflamed
and there was fluid loose in my abdomen.
A half an hour before I was
scheduled to go into surgery, Kyle and the receptionist were still sorting out
payment with the reluctant insurance company. At one point, the receptionist
got on the phone and shouted at them, “They’re not lying to you! She needs to
go into surgery now!”
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| Morphined-Up and Ready for Surgery (Photo Courtesy of Kyle Ackerman) |
At 7:15 PM a nurse wheeled me off to the surgery, telling me that the surgery should only take 30 minutes or so. On the surgery bed, three different people asked me the same questions about my teeth: “Do you have any crowns, bridges or other expensive dental work?” and “Do you have any lose or broken teeth?” The last thing I remember is the nurse pressing a mask over my mouth that blew in air. She held the mask down so firmly, I struggled to exhale.
When I awoke, I saw the clock and
it read: 10:30 PM. I felt disoriented, wasn’t the surgery supposed to take 30
minutes?! I mumbled to the nurse, “Did it go ok?” She said that it was really
yucky inside me but I was fine. My lungs felt heavy and I coughed a little. The
nurse began going on about some medication I should take for my throat. I
didn’t know what she was talking about.
When I was wheeled to my room, I
saw Kyle’s worried face and began to cry.
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| Out of Surgery, Alive but Pale (Photo Courtesy of Kyle Ackerman) |
The next day the surgeon said that given the “gangrenous state” of the fluid in my abdomen, he would estimate that my appendix had burst as much as 24 – 36 hours before the surgery.
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| Kyle Enjoying His Paper in My SUPER FANCY Hospital Room |
I spent five more days in the hospital as they pumped me full of painkillers and antibiotics, monitoring for any signs of systemic infection. Luckily, by Thursday, besides the three small incision sites and the nine staples that held the cuts together, I was basically as good as new.
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| Showing Off My Bandages |
It was a relief when we learned that our travel insurance covered all but $100 of the €7,500 bill. Crazily enough, this bill is actually extraordinarily cheap for an appendectomy with abscess and FIVE nights in a hospital.
Although I’m healed and wwoofing fulltime, I
do, sometimes, miss my appendix. J
An Elegy for my Appendix
Oh appendix!
No one knows why we grow you:
you could cultivate good microbe goo.
Yet I can’t help but feel
you’re much more than a small eel.
I fear I’ve lost an irreplaceable guru.
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| All That's Left Are the Scars :) |
