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July 23, 2003
Hospitals are no fun.
The surgeon summoned by my physician's office turned out to be fantastic and reassuring. He had a look at my CT scan films and said there didn't appear to be any sign of my appendix in them. He surmised that it may have ruptured and then, instead of attempting to kill me, it had somehow sealed itself off into an abscess. Since I was otherwise healthy, not rolling about in pain, and mostly just hungry and tired, he felt that just giving me tons of antibiotics would help treat the abscess.
I was finally taken to a room and allowed to sleep by about 8 or 9pm. There were no private rooms available, so I had 2 elderly ladies as roommates. One had just had a hip replacement, and one had lung problems. I think there was a third roommate, but she spent most of the day in the hall in an easy chair, and never said boo.
Friday I got to have another scan of my insides, this time a lovely procedure called a barium enema. I don't recommend it even if you're feeling well. The pain meds were leaving me somewhat nauseated, the ab pains were still going on, and I had a tampon in during the procedure, and so it was absolute agony for me. At one point I announced that I thought I was going to be sick. They brought me one of those cute little kidney-bean shaped dishes that you use when you rinse and spit. That was optimistic of them. Fortunately, the procedure was finished quickly enough that I didn't actually bring anything up. Not that I'd had anything to eat since Wednesday lunch-ish.
The way the barium enema works is that they squirt barium the wrong way up your digestive track and give you an Xray. The Xray machine is hooked up to a TV so they can actually roll you and the machine around to get a better view. Their view told them that my appendix was alive and, believe it or not, well. The inflammation (which is what they began calling the abscess) seemed to be in my bowels. Probably, claimed the doctor who came to visit after the indignity was over and I was back in my shared room, a diverticulum, or pocket in the intestinal wall, that had become infected. This was a Friday, they would fill me full of antibiotics and if I was feeling better, I could go home maybe Monday.
My two roommates got sprung sooner than I did, and were replaced, although I bet the nurses wished it was me who was replaced. I kept having to hit the call button any time I needed to use the bathroom, since I was, yet again, tethered to the bed by the IV feeding me antibiotics. Why they didn't just put it on a wheeled stand and make life easier for all concerned, I'm not sure. I was pretty damn desperate to get home to my own private bedroom and all that by the time Monday rolled around, and since my pain had eased, I was sent off, with the instructions to finish my antibiotics that week and to get a followup CT scan and visit in about a month.
Posted by Nicole at July 23, 2003 04:25 PM