(no subject)
The short story: I came down with a case of acute appendicitis, had my appendix removed, and am recovering pretty well.
The long story:
Well, this past Saturday Landon and I moved into our new house at 209 W. 3rd Ave in Columbus. Sunday night, while unpacking and getting furniture arranged, I started to have a bit of a stomachache. It got worse and worse until I finally told Landon that I thought maybe I should go to an urgent care. It being around midnight, one of our good friends here in Columbus drove us to the emergency room at the OSU Medical Center where they were kind of overwhelmed by drunk injured people from a large, ill-managed rock concert at the Columbus soccer stadium.
It took about three hours for them to get me into a bed, and somewhere in there I started to have a pretty sharp pain in my lower right abdomen in addition to the stomachache. Evidently (according to the doctor I was talking to), it's really common for the pain associated with appendicitis to begin around the navel and then move down to the appendix area. So they gave me a bunch of "berry" flavored sludge to drink and sent me to have a CT scan of my abdomen to see if that was the case. This whole process took about four hours, during which they gave me a painkiller and I was able to doze a little bit.
So around 7 or 8 in the morning they moved me out of the ER and into another section where I was going to wait for them to be able to fit me into the operation schedule for the day. A friend came and sat with me for a while so that Landon (who had sat with me all night, sleep-deprived and hungry, without a single complaint!) could go get some food. I slept for maybe an hour or so, and at about 11:30 they came to take me to pre-op.
I spent a little longer in pre-op than is usual - I guess the OR I was scheduled for was running a little late. The OSU med center has 26 ORs and they were all in use, so the pre-op room was just one long row of beds. Everyone had a heart monitor that beeped with their pulse, but there were about four different pitches of beeps plus one lower tone that would sound if you became detached from your monitor. It was sort of like a long, live performance of a completely digital kind of phase music. Eventually it was just me and one other patient, and when my OR was finally ready, they started my anesthesia and off we went. I got to see the OR for about 30 seconds as they got me on the table and started getting everything ready, and then I was out like a log.
Evidently I was in the OR for about 45 minutes from start to finish, and most of that was prep and clean-up - it sounded like they only had me opened up for about 10 minutes! The surgery was laproscopic, so instead of one 10-cm incision, I have three smaller cuts - two tiny spots on the left and right sides of my abdomen, and one larger one in my belly button. That one hurts! I woke up in the Recovery Room in a hilarious round of being in a pretty good mood with absolutely no short-term memory - I had to ask people their names about four or five times, and I know that I asked a handful of other questions more than once. I actually ended up staying in the RR for about five hours - the hospital couldn't get a bed for me to move to. My nurse in the RR was fantastic, though - she fed me ice chips (the first thing I had been able to eat or drink since the smoothies for the CT scan, and really the first thing I had had to drink since about 10pm the night before) and gave me some kind of fantastic painkiller that knocked me out flat, so if I wasn't sucking on ice, I was sleeping. They let Landon come in and see me there (he still hadn't slept!), even though they don't usually let family in the recovery rooms, just because it was taking so darn long for them to get me a room. Then he went to find dinner - it was around 6pm at this point.
Finally they got me up to a room, and Landon met me there. The floor nurse ordered me a dinner - solid food and all - which I ate very slowly and enjoyed immensely, since I hadn't actually eaten anything in over 24 hours at this point and I was STARVING. (This morning a doctor asked me if I had eaten anything and seemed surprised that they had sent me solid food, so I think I was supposed to be on liquids yesterday, but I felt and continue to feel fine so he wasn't too worried.) Some of my friends came to visit and brought me an adorable stuffed wooly mammoth, which has actually been quite useful in addition to being snuggly. At the recommendation of the nurses, I've been using it to support my abdomen while I move, which gives it a "splint" of sorts and keeps it from hurting as much. Landon went home with them so that he could get some sleep and take care of our cats (a little abandoned when we left Sunday night).
I went to sleep at about 9pm and slept more or less solidly through until 6am (they did poke me at midnight and 3am, and at some point they brought in my roommate who seems to have been in a car accident). When they came to check in with me at 6, I pretty much woke up and stayed that way. They have me on a pretty low dosage of percocet, which is keeping the pain under control. I mostly have a dull ache (uncomfortably similar so the stomachache I had at the beginning of all this), and a sore throat from the breathing tube they used during surgery.
I'll be able to go home as soon as my latest enormous dose of percocet wears off enough that I can stand up. I'll be sure to update everyone if anything too exciting happens, but it looks like things will go pretty smoothly from here on out.
The long story:
Well, this past Saturday Landon and I moved into our new house at 209 W. 3rd Ave in Columbus. Sunday night, while unpacking and getting furniture arranged, I started to have a bit of a stomachache. It got worse and worse until I finally told Landon that I thought maybe I should go to an urgent care. It being around midnight, one of our good friends here in Columbus drove us to the emergency room at the OSU Medical Center where they were kind of overwhelmed by drunk injured people from a large, ill-managed rock concert at the Columbus soccer stadium.
It took about three hours for them to get me into a bed, and somewhere in there I started to have a pretty sharp pain in my lower right abdomen in addition to the stomachache. Evidently (according to the doctor I was talking to), it's really common for the pain associated with appendicitis to begin around the navel and then move down to the appendix area. So they gave me a bunch of "berry" flavored sludge to drink and sent me to have a CT scan of my abdomen to see if that was the case. This whole process took about four hours, during which they gave me a painkiller and I was able to doze a little bit.
So around 7 or 8 in the morning they moved me out of the ER and into another section where I was going to wait for them to be able to fit me into the operation schedule for the day. A friend came and sat with me for a while so that Landon (who had sat with me all night, sleep-deprived and hungry, without a single complaint!) could go get some food. I slept for maybe an hour or so, and at about 11:30 they came to take me to pre-op.
I spent a little longer in pre-op than is usual - I guess the OR I was scheduled for was running a little late. The OSU med center has 26 ORs and they were all in use, so the pre-op room was just one long row of beds. Everyone had a heart monitor that beeped with their pulse, but there were about four different pitches of beeps plus one lower tone that would sound if you became detached from your monitor. It was sort of like a long, live performance of a completely digital kind of phase music. Eventually it was just me and one other patient, and when my OR was finally ready, they started my anesthesia and off we went. I got to see the OR for about 30 seconds as they got me on the table and started getting everything ready, and then I was out like a log.
Evidently I was in the OR for about 45 minutes from start to finish, and most of that was prep and clean-up - it sounded like they only had me opened up for about 10 minutes! The surgery was laproscopic, so instead of one 10-cm incision, I have three smaller cuts - two tiny spots on the left and right sides of my abdomen, and one larger one in my belly button. That one hurts! I woke up in the Recovery Room in a hilarious round of being in a pretty good mood with absolutely no short-term memory - I had to ask people their names about four or five times, and I know that I asked a handful of other questions more than once. I actually ended up staying in the RR for about five hours - the hospital couldn't get a bed for me to move to. My nurse in the RR was fantastic, though - she fed me ice chips (the first thing I had been able to eat or drink since the smoothies for the CT scan, and really the first thing I had had to drink since about 10pm the night before) and gave me some kind of fantastic painkiller that knocked me out flat, so if I wasn't sucking on ice, I was sleeping. They let Landon come in and see me there (he still hadn't slept!), even though they don't usually let family in the recovery rooms, just because it was taking so darn long for them to get me a room. Then he went to find dinner - it was around 6pm at this point.
Finally they got me up to a room, and Landon met me there. The floor nurse ordered me a dinner - solid food and all - which I ate very slowly and enjoyed immensely, since I hadn't actually eaten anything in over 24 hours at this point and I was STARVING. (This morning a doctor asked me if I had eaten anything and seemed surprised that they had sent me solid food, so I think I was supposed to be on liquids yesterday, but I felt and continue to feel fine so he wasn't too worried.) Some of my friends came to visit and brought me an adorable stuffed wooly mammoth, which has actually been quite useful in addition to being snuggly. At the recommendation of the nurses, I've been using it to support my abdomen while I move, which gives it a "splint" of sorts and keeps it from hurting as much. Landon went home with them so that he could get some sleep and take care of our cats (a little abandoned when we left Sunday night).
I went to sleep at about 9pm and slept more or less solidly through until 6am (they did poke me at midnight and 3am, and at some point they brought in my roommate who seems to have been in a car accident). When they came to check in with me at 6, I pretty much woke up and stayed that way. They have me on a pretty low dosage of percocet, which is keeping the pain under control. I mostly have a dull ache (uncomfortably similar so the stomachache I had at the beginning of all this), and a sore throat from the breathing tube they used during surgery.
I'll be able to go home as soon as my latest enormous dose of percocet wears off enough that I can stand up. I'll be sure to update everyone if anything too exciting happens, but it looks like things will go pretty smoothly from here on out.