My appendicitis: the cause?

Last week, I didn't get to work much on the field at church. As you may recall from my earlier blogs, we've been turning a field into a nicer lawn for a couple of reasons: a place to play games for the youth and kids, and a place for Julie and I to have our wedding reception.

Instead, I was showing the Lains around Sonoma County a little. On Wednesday, we went Rock Climbing at Goat Rock Beach. They posted a blog and some pictures (1 | 2) that you can check out. On Thursday Julie and I had the great honor of taking them to the airport and sending them on their way to Mongolia as they left to be missionaries. It was so cool.

I spent Friday with my dad working for 9 1/2 hours on the field. Not much had been done on it all week, so we rented a ditch witch (which is a machine that trenches for you) and dug the sprinkler lines. A couple times it snagged on a rock. Once I thought I came close to breaking my arm. I hadn't been holding it very wisely, so it pulled down on my arm and there was no bend in my elbow to serve as a shock absorber.

The next time it pulled down, it whacked me in the abdomen. It didn't hurt much, but now I think it may have tenderized some things.

We spent the rest of the day installing sprinkler line. I did most of the gluing and cutting of pipes. I am not the most handy person in my family, but I've helped with enough sprinkler systems to do it fairly well.

On Saturday, my dad and I went back around noon to attach the sprinklers, test the lines, and bury the pipes. I found out that the fastest way to bury the pipes with the least effort was to hold the shovel normally, place the butt of the handle against my hip, and push forwards parallel to the trench. In doing so, the dirt just fell right in to the trench, and while it didn't completely fill the ditch, it at least buried the pipe so none of it was showing.

I ate a pretty big dinner that night, and I thought my abs were sore from all the digging I'd been doing. But after dinner, I started hurting more and thought it was gas pains. I couldn't use the bathroom, and I went to sleep around 11 pm (which is pretty early for me) in a decent bit of pain.

For a few reasons ever since I was in 5th grade, I've just known that sometime in my 20s I would get appendicitis and have to have an I.V. (which I've been afraid of my whole life). So on Saturday night I made a few jokes to Julie about it being appendicitis, which was because I thought that joking about it would calm my nerves that it actually was appendicitis.

I fell asleep fairly quickly, but woke up the next morning to one of the longest days of my life, which I will talk about in the next blog.