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.

Originally Posted by James

Turn off some life support machines.

Originally Posted by skaltezon

You got some good breaks, including a relatively small scar.
Relax and rebuild -- it'll all be there for you when you come out. Peace.

Originally Posted by Unchained Ballad

Drink some tomato juice, spit it out and make them feel like Dr. House.

Originally Posted by Blarobbarg

TV Tropes is a great website for the more geeky of us. Just look up your favorite book, television show, movie, band... whatever, really... and then read. And click links. And read some more. And click more. And get lost in it for over an hour.

If you like webcomics, go on an archive binge. Go to the first page and move on from there. I recommend The Order Of The Stick (DnD humor), pvpcomics.com (general geekiness humor), Multiplex (comic about the employees of a movie theater), Shortpacked! (comic about employees of a toy store), and anything else by the Shortpacked guy. He has links to all his other work on the website. You can also go to their "webcomics" section and find a HUGE list of webcomics in many different categories. Look around for one that fits your tastes.

Cracked.com if you're interested in juvenile humorous articles and lots of Top 10 lists. Not usually "funny" per se, but there are some exceptions. Good way to waste time.

StumbleUpon is excellent. Make a free account, enter in your personal tastes in the category list (which is enormous) and start "stumbling" to websites. Really good way to find... anything, really. I've used it to find humor websites, comics, videos, new music... very useful.

Hope that helps. Get better!

Originally Posted by wolverinewolfweiselpigeon

I don't have any suggestions, but I hope you feel better and recover quickly!

Originally Posted by tore

You could do some retro gaming. How about checking out The Curse of Monkey Island or Monkey Island 2 : LeChuck's Revenge?



You can run them both on a windows computer using the program scummvm. ScummVM also lets you play lots of other classic adventure games. Let me know what you think and I could probably help you find those game files you'd need. We're only talking a few MB per game.

Lemme know what you think!

Originally Posted by Burning Down

My computer is Windows 7 64 bit, so I don't see a problem. I'll check it out! Thanks tore