Appendicitis: What happened on Sunday

Well, I want to clarify how this blog is working. Any of the blog posts titled "Appendix (and then a number)" were written from my phone with a picture from my camera phone. It's awesome that I set up mobile blogs a few weeks ago so that I could do this while in the hospital or in bed last night. Writing about this stuff really helps me feel better as I process things and name them.

The other posts (usually titled "Appendicitis") were written from the computer.

So in my last "Appendicitis" blog, I talked about church on Sunday and how the songs were really good for me.

After church, I talked to Brandon Cave, who is a 14 year old on the youth band. His brother, sister and parents are also really great friends of mine. Brandon had his appendix removed 2 years ago and asked me a few questions:

"Did the pain start behind your belly button or on the right side?"
It started behind the belly button and then moved.

"Does it feel good to hunch your back?"
Yes

"Are you not very hungry?"
Yes.

"Can you not go to the bathroom?"
Yes.

He told me it was appendicitis, so I went on WebMD in my office and looked up some more symptoms. I wasn't that sore at the time.

I attribute that to 2 things:

1. I didn't move that much during church.
2. Before church during worship team practice I was feeling sick and my Dad and Julie had a head cold so I asked the worship team to pray. Mike (Brandon's dad) prayed that I would make it through the service. I kind of thought, "Oh no, don't pray for that," because whenever I pray for that, I make it through the service and then have a terrible afternoon health-wise.

But, I believe God answered Mike's prayer. I think this is the kind of healing I experience most often. What one of my dad's friends calls healing "receiving the strength needed to complete the task in front of you."

I felt really good during church, and then after church I was sitting in my office talking to Brandon and Angie (his mom). They also have Kaiser and told me to call the advice line. I decided to wait and see how I felt in a few hours. I also had a job interview scheduled on Monday morning at a printshop in town where another friend works. It sounds like a great job for me to have--graphic design, part time, they'll train me to do what needs to be done. So I wanted to wait until after the interview to go to the hospital.

But once Angie and Brandon left my office, I walked back to the stage to turn off my guitar amp and was overcome by intense pain. So I drove home, called Kaiser's advice line, and they asked me for my symptoms. They told me "It sounds like you have a textbook case of appendicitis." So I went to the ER.

When the doctor finally saw me after a couple hours' wait, he told me he was unconvinced by my exam that I had appendicitis. He said my history was very convincing, and that the physical strain I'd had on Saturday from shoveling could have played a role in either appendicitis or an abdominal wall strain. So, he ordered a CT Scan, since he couldn't be sure which it was without more tests.

I have been terrified of I.V.s for my whole life. And for some reason since 5th or 6th grade, I've known that sometime in my 20s I would get appendicitis and need an IV. So, when they told me that the next steps were to draw blood, get an IV, and then have an enema for the CT scan, I was not very concerned about the enema.

I mean, hey, I am lactose intolerant. Nothing scares me (at least in that area). But I hate getting bloodwork drawn. They can never get enough blood out of my veins. I thought I would need to get poked for that, and then re-poked for the IV.

The nurse (his name was Miguel) told me, to my relief, that the IV would work fine for drawing the blood sample too. But, when he put it in, he had to pull it back out (which hurts with a huge metal needle with a plastic tube in it), and then put it back in. He was apologetic and said how he hates it when he has to poke around so much. I let him know it's always that way with me and bloodwork. I asked him why that might be the case. He told me I either have small veins or they collapse easily, so when the needle goes in, they bleed out a little, and then the pressure doesn't hold them open.

By the way, I have really low blood pressure. It got all the way down to 91/54 at one point.

I had to wait another hour before the CT Scan, so by that time, the enema seemed a little scarier, since I was over the IV by that point. It was not very fun, and I'll leave it at that again.

I got done, they told me I had appendicitis, and then I had to wait for a couple hours for the surgeon to finish more pressing surgeries. Thankfully I had gotten in so early that my appendix wasn't very inflamed yet. So around 8:00 pm--12 hours since I last ate (and I had only eaten a banana for breakfast) and 6 1/2 hours after getting to the ER--they took me into surgery. I'll write about that in the next blog. This one is too long.