Coming around

Where I was Mom answered easily, I was in the recovery room. Why?

"Your appendix ruptured about four this morning. The doctor had to come in and do surgury to get all the pieces out of you. They had to cut you open and used ether to keep you asleep so that's why you don't remember it happened."

Wonderful! Due to the wise decision to wait and see the nurses got to see me fly awake about four a.m. with a bursting appendix. I'll bet that was some noise!

I felt terrible. I had to go to the bathroom. My throat was sore, my chest hurt, my stomach still hurt, something stank and I felt pretty quesy. Come to find out, ether has several side effects including potent emetic effects with an unpleasant pungent odour, irritant to the respiratory tract and explosive nausea.

"I need to pee.' I whispered to her. Mom called the nurse and they got me on the bed pan, nasty thing. It hurt to move but I had no choice - it was move or mess the bed like a baby. But the moving made me dizzy and then, before I was done at one end the other end went off. I managed to turn my face to the side but I still got some on the bed.

I started to whimper then, I hadn't made a mess like that since I was just little. I felt terrible and now I was getting sleepy again. That was the LAST thing I wanted - to wake up all strange again, I was going to stay awake and keep an eye on things!

The problem they had now was a very infected apendix had blown loose in my abdominal cavity. I had poison everywhere. They had opened me up bigger than a C-section, clear from my belly button to my pelvic bone. They picked pieces of apendix out for a long time. Then, instead of stitching me up neatly, they put in a drainage tube, it was about half and inch round made of blue rubber with a big safety pin through it and then stapled me together.

This really sucked for many reasons. These were not like the staples you use at the office. First, the staples seemed huge and held me in just spots. Being afraid of having to go back in they wanted to be able to do it easily and these seemed to be the right way to go for them. Second, the little tips caught in the gauze of my bandages and when they changed my dressings they got yanked around. This hurt. Third, there was only a staple about every two inchs. They didn't hold the skin or the muscles under it together right. And everything under the bandaid itched!

They got me cleaned up and Doc came in. He fixed my bandages, I had messed them up pretty good. He thumped me gently on the chest and listened to my heart and lungs, then told Nurse to take me back to a regular room.