“I never thought that I would be so excited to have a body part removed”. Weird thought to have, even weirder to type out, but true. In November of my junior year of high school, after finishing a three-day long lacrosse tournament in Orlando, Florida, I was headed to the preppy and prime island of Palm Beach, Florida to visit my grandma. During the last game of the tournament, I started to get a cramp in my side. The kind of cramp that aches while you run, makes you feel short of breath and has you grabbing your waist in a way that makes you look like you just said something sassy. This cramp felt different than the ones you get when you run without controlling your breathing; this cramp felt like a small dagger being pressed into my back, through my intestines, and out my side. I finished the game and hopped right into the car to go to visit my grandma. When I arrived I endured the typical family small talk and enjoyed my grandma’s homemade dinner, then got into bed early.
The heat and exercise I endured over the weekend certainly had me worn out, and I was optimistic that when I woke up the cramp would be gone. I laid on my left side which was the side with the cramp, gripping hopelessly at the area where the pain was, as if I could tear it from under my skin and throw it away. I thrashed from side to side for hours, praying that this pain would go away. In between my desperate rocking fits, I would bring my knees to my chest and squeeze them into my body hoping that once I let go again the cramp would get a little more bearable. No luck. Hours and hours went by when finally, I could no longer stand it. I needed the pain to go away, and I needed it to go away now. I sat up in bed, grabbing my side with tears running down my face, shrieking for my mom to come to my side. My mom ran into the room and asked what was wrong. I didn’t have an answer; I felt like I was burning from the inside out. She rushed me to the Palm Beach Hospital.
Once I got there, around 2am, they took my blood and began to run tests. The morphine instantly made the pain bearable to the point where I felt I could catch my breath again. I dried the tears from my face, blew my nose and began to sip on a mixed-berry tasting liquid that they gave me. They said I needed to drink it so that when they ran tests, my intestines would glow like a Christmas tree. Once my organs were glowing, any problems within them would be clearly visible. The “drink” was a thick blue slime, and its aftertaste was like the artificially flavored medicine my mom would give me when I had a cough, mixed with metal and rubbing alcohol. Not enjoyable, but necessary for the tests to work and the only thing on my mind at that time was getting the tests done, getting the results, and getting rid of the pain. I finished the cup of unsavory ooze and was pushed on a gurney down the halls of the hospital with the morphine drip still attached to the vein in my arm. I entered the room where they would be taking many X-rays and running other tests, and I laid there in a light blue paper dress that they supplied me with after they started the morphine drip. It was cold in the room, making the metal machine I had to lay down on even colder. As the goose bumps on my arms and legs rose, I lowered my body onto the table. A large cream colored machine was put over my body, making me feel as if I was in a little cave.
Since the average human female stores her appendix on the lower right side of her body, the doctors found it unlikely that the pain I felt was related to my appendix. The pain I endured was on the lower left side of my back. I was a one in a million case, whose appendix was flipped to the opposite side of my body from birth. Instead of being in front of my organs on my right side, my appendix laid, irritated and ready to burst, behind my organs on the lower left side of my body. They rolled me from waiting room to waiting room and I finally ended up in the room where the procedure would take place. They put a mask on my face which distributed the anesthetic and told me to count from 10 down to 1. I began to count, 10…9…8…7…the next thing I remember was waking up tightly bound to a hospital bed with a blanket. I had stitches in two places on my stomach and one lower on my waist. One of the incisions, the one that was located on the side of my stomach was for the knife which would be used to cut the appendix out, the incision lower on my waist was for the camera which would allow the doctors to see inside of me with the least invasive incisions as possible, and finally an incision in my belly button. This incision was the one where they pulled my appendix out of me. The recovery wasn’t too bad, although the newly found allergy to the pain meds they tried to give me, the occasional nausea, the poking of needles into my arms for a few days and all the other discomforts were not what I would call enjoyable. All of this eventually passed, I got released from the hospital, I flew back home and soon enough the incisions were healed. The stitches dissolved and eventually I felt back to myself, never having to worry about appendicitis ever again.
