Friday, March 06, 2009

what happened?

well, here's the scoop (while i'm still lucid, ie. before i get into the T3 for the day):

tuesday morning, i woke up with a pain in my lower right hand abdomen. gerry suggested that i had pulled a muscle working out the day before. later that day, i had a nice little veggie dog vom... which in fact, was less fun than it sounds, partly because they were spicy chili dogs. the whole day was full of sharp pains, so i was a bit out of it, but managed through.

that night, i started having trouble catching my breath. i chock it down to being a bit anxious about the pain (it is Dr. Ursula, in case you've forgotten). anyway, i couldn't sleep because i couldn't breathe, so gerry was like: okay, this is nonsense. we're going to the hospital. now. i couldn't even argue, so i knew i was sick.

we got in fairly quickly. the doctor felt i probably had appendicitis. which is what Julie and i were discussing that afternoon... when i was saying that what i had probably wasn't contagious, but she may want to reconsider her visit... especially since i'd barfed.

anyway, the doctor wanted to keep me overnight, but i started to cry when she that, so she let me go home. with T3 and the promise that if i barfed again, got a fever, or the pain got worse i would come back and that i wouldn't eat or drink anything in the meantime (in case it was appendicitis and they had to operate on me). i quickly promised and went home. i was still tossing around the idea that it could be something else too... indigestion, blocked bowel, kidney stone... anything that would not require an operation.

the CT scan the next morning showed that it was appendicitis and things were quickly arranged for an operation that evening. the surgeon was an ass, but everyone else at the hospital was lovely. the nurses, the other doctors, the anesthesiologist. i was pretty nervous about the whole thing, so in fact, it was probably a good thing that it happened so quickly. i didn't even get a choice of if i wanted to be put to sleep, it was just like: sign here. blah blah blah (apparently when you're on morphine this is how people sound).

so i went to sleep. woke up (thank you, jeebus) a couple hours later, with a dry sore throat (breathing tube) and pain in my belly. the next morning i got to go home. it's better to suffer at home despite having kind nurses at the call of a button.

i'm still very sore. very very sore. and tired. and on liquids for now. but i've had visitors, and gerry's being very good to me. now i will sleep.