Originally Posted by Burning Down

Hey guys,

I don't feel like posting this all over the public boards for everyone to know (because they don't need to know this), so I'm just telling you guys for now. I had sudden-onset acute appendicitis (according to the doctor).

Last night I woke up in the middle of the night with nausea and abdominal pain. I'll spare you some details here, but I just ignored it and went back to bed. I attributed the pain to the fact that I was at the gym yesterday morning. When I woke up again in the morning I rolled out of bed in extreme pain so I called 911. Ambulance took me to the hospital and they did a quick ultrasound in the ER, told me my appendix had ruptured (this is bad) and I went into surgery right away. It hurt so much - they kept pressing on it and doing all kinds of other ****, and they made me measure my pain on one of those stupid, inaccurate pain charts. One that looks like this:



As you can see, there is no description for "IT HURTS SO ****ING BADLY THAT I WANT TO ****ING DIE RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!!!"

I know they took out everything including some surrounding tissue that was infected because I have a big-ass incision that's about 3 inches long on my lower right abdomen. Just another scar that will be added to my permanent record lol. I'm in a regular post-surgery patient room now, and it's a private room which makes me happy, because my dad's work insurance pays for most of it. Dad is just paying $20 a day rather than $220 a day. Yeah, we get free health care here, but you have to pay for all the luxuries, like the private room, cable TV, WiFi (which I'm obviously getting as well). Stuff like that.

I'm on a liquid diet right now and will be for the next 24 hours. 12 hours if everything is going well. So it's just water, broth, black tea and coffee (which is disgusting by the way, but I'm allowed to put a bit of sugar in it), juice, jello. I can't eat solid food just yet because they have to let my insides heal before I can digest anything properly, if you know what I mean LOL.

I'm on a morphine drip right now which is like my best friend. I can administer the meds myself whenever I feel the onset of pain. It is impossible to overdose because the machine locks you out after you press it so many times. I think I'm allowed to press it 6 times per hour.

Like I said, I'm getting Internet in here. My boyfriend brought my computer for me and got the password from them. So I'll probably be online when I'm bored (at night) and when they're not having me up and walking around. That starts tomorrow and I can barely move in the bed so it's going to be an adventure and a half to get out of it and walk two steps.

My projected hospital stay is 5 days because the appendix actually ruptured. If that hadn't happened, they say it's only 1 or 2 days in hospital. Luckily I have this week off of school, so I'm not missing any class right now, and I can get my assignments done here. On the other hand, that sucks because I'm spending my week off in the hospital. I guess it's better that way though, because then I'm not worried about school which would cause me unnecessary stress.

So that's what's up. Don't worry about me, I'll be fine. The nurses are really nice (many of them are not that much older than me). And my surgeon is really hot and he's not that much older than me either (I'll say that here and not in front of my boyfriend). I'm betting he's only been out of med school for a couple of years.

TL;DR: I'm sick. In the hospital. Lots of pain. Appendicitis. 3 inch scar. High on morphine. I have laptop with Internet.

Peace.