Hello from Houston Methodist Hospital, where it’s day 6 (and hopefully last) day for me. After weeks of occasional nausea, fruitless doc visits, and three consecutive days of abdominal pain- I came to the ER here and haven’t left since.
TL:DR- appendicitis with perforation and an abscess somewhere else in there.
For a long time, we were all led to think that maybe the appendix was a useless part of the internal body long covered over by evolution. Research has shown we’re not done learning about it, and it could be where good little germs reside. Heard of probiotics? I’m giving a real dumbed-down cliff’s notes version there.
Surgery happened about 14 hours after coming through the ER doors Wednesday and I’ve spent the rest of the time since then, doing what patients do. Sleep. Eat lemon jello. Walk the halls. Repeat.
Couple all this with an apparent morphine-clouded attempt to access my phone in the middle of the night post-surgery, and set my phone’s lockout function by 11,000,000 minutes. I have no memory of this.
WHO needs a phone when you’re laid up in the hospital bed all day, right?
I reset the phone after three days. While most of the phone has been restored, I’m still locked out of Facebook because the Authenticator app was cleared of data during the reset. I missed out on a couple of days of texts and calls because a backup was two days old when I was finally about to restore.
As for the body, I have a novel tube that’s attached to my belly that I carry everywhere, I feel like I got knived in the gut, and I have to push an IV cart around wherever I go. I’m grateful I can walk, and talk, and feel, and observe though.
No more belly aching. Not in the way it was before. I’ve lost 7 pounds, and I think I’ve watched every episode of Lone Star Law ever made.
Here’s to hoping I get out of here today and do the rest of recuperation at home.
Charlie Haldeman 