Everyone wants to start their morning waking up to what feels like one million angry kangaroos with flaming feet kicking their insides. It's an added perk when you feel nauseous at the same time and can't go longer than two minutes without clutching the toilet bowl.
I thought I was dying.
One lovely summer day I woke up to this pain and misery. Not one to jump to conclusions, I originally thought that I was having cramps for some reason. They were the worst cramps of my life, but I thought they'd pass. Once I started puking with every other exhale, I thought it could be the stomach flu. I had never had it before, so I didn't know how bad it was supposed to be.
This positive rational thinking quickly disappeared after an hour of absolute torture. My mother tried to buy me some anti-nausea and stomach pain medication, but I couldn't keep them down for the life of me.
Finally we decided to go to urgent care.
During my travels on this awful day, I was not found without a silver bowl from our kitchen clutched between my hands. There when I needed it for my disgusting dilemma.
It was incredibly embarrassing throwing up in front of everyone at the doctor's office. He too, tried giving me nausea medication, assuring me it was like magic and helped many people. I laughed internally, but gave it a try.
It didn't last more than a minute in my digestive system.
Next, he pushed around on different areas of my stomach to try and asses the location of the pain. It hurt everywhere. I was in tears.
From the visit, all we got was advice to go to the emergency room because it was probably appendicitis. I was upset with my mother that we didn't go in the first place. Now we had to drive to a hospital whilst I continued to moan and gag.
When we got to the ER,it was only my mom and I and one other woman in the waiting room. Despite this, it took what felt like hours to be seen by triage. When I finally got seen, I was drained emotionally and physically and just wanted it all to go away.
They set me up in a room and gave me an IV that ran magic through my veins. Morphine and some type of nausea medication. I felt better in a matter of minutes. I no longer cared how long it took for me to be seen because for the first time in hours I wasn't in terrible pain. And I was floating from the morphine.
A doctor came and saw me and said that I would get an x-ray to see what was going on in there. I had to drink this big cup full of some liquid for the x-ray, and was afraid it'd be too much for my stomach to handle. I was fine though, and went for the x-ray.
After waiting another annoyingly long amount of time, I finally received the news that something in my digestive tract had gone awry and ran into my appendix. It would need to be removed.
Surgery. Yay.
I had never had surgery before, so I was pretty scared. They told me it would be laparoscopic, which means that instead of one big incision, they make three little ones. A camera goes in one, and they use the other two to remove the appendix. This made me feel a little better, because it would mean a quicker recovery and less scarring, but going under and being cut open was still a frightening idea.
Thankfully, I didn't have much time to stress over everything because I went into surgery shortly after. The last thing I remember before succumbing to the anesthesia was someone saying "we are going to have to take your shorts off, so don't be worried when you wake up without them".
The next thing I knew, I was waking up confused and very out of it. And my pants and underwear were indeed gone.
I quickly remembered my situation and took a peek at my stomach. I saw three angry looking red slits that were covered with dermal glue. They were bigger than I thought they'd be, but not too bad.
I was taken back to my room where I was reunited with my mother and seen by my surgeon. He said everything went well and told me I'd make a full recovery in the next week or two.
Now comes the part I didn't expect.
After getting something taken out of me, I thought that my stomach would hurt. There were stiches inside of me, so I couldn't move around very much, but my insides and the cuts only hurt in the slightest.
The worst part was the gas. No, not the kind you're thinking of. When performing my laparoscopic surgery, they pumped my stomach with gas to make everything easier to get to. This gas traveled up into my chest somehow, and I had terrible chest pain. Unfortunately, the morphine didn't affect any of that, so I was stuck in discomfort. I was told I just had to wait for it to pass and that walking around might help.
It didn't.
I also couldn't eat how I wanted to for the next few days. Liquid food is not very satisfying. In addition to al of this, since my digestive system was tampered with, going to the bathroom was a different experience. I won't go into details, but it took a little while for everything to go back to normal.
With no improvement on the chest pain, but no other problems, I was sent home. There, I spent a few sleepless nights wincing in pain and holding my bloated stomach. Life was not fun. But it was better than the last day I still had my appendix.
Eventually everything went back to normal. I had a follow up with my surgeon and we determined that everything was fine, but I couldn't do any heavy lifting for the next couple of weeks so I didn't tear my internal stitches as everything healed.
Today, a few years later, I usually forget that I had my appendix removed. True to the doctor's words, I only have three tiny white scars on my stomach. You only see them if you're looking for them. Everything healed up nicely, and I have had no complications. While the experience itself was awful, I'm grateful it wasn't worse and that I had a problem with an easy solution.
I guess it's sort of like chicken pox. At least I know it can never happen again.
