On the way out of my last economics lecture, I overheard a girl saying to someone else, "Well, then, you should blog about it!"
So I guess I will then.
I owe my general readership a more detailed explanation for the appendix and emergency surgery references sprinkled around my internet doings. I guess I'll just jump right into it...
It all started on Wednesday night, not long after my post "And We'll Say Hello" (because I'm sure everyone reading this can picture which post that is based on the title...). UW systemers would remember this as the snow day, which I was fairly lukewarm about considering that I only missed one class as a result and still had to work my 7-to-midnight shift at the ol' Targs. Regardless, I was still pretty cheery at the thought of a snow day and the night got better when I and most of my coworkers were sent home from work at 9:30 because pretty much no one braved the roads to shop.
In usual circumstances, my roommate Jordan and I go get dinner around 11 PM or later, because we both work late shifts pretty consistently. However, that night, due to the roads, all the university food places were closed early. We were both pretty hungry so we started entertaining the idea of calling for a pizza. The standard digestive anticipation (I don't really know what phrase to use for it, but I think everyone more or less knows that feeling right?) I felt in my stomach was increasing as we weighed our options of all the local delivery places.
Within a couple minutes of researching, that feeling had grown to actually be pretty uncomfortable. Eventually it didn't feel as much like hunger, but more like nausea or indigestion. At about 10:15 or so I decided I wasn't interested in ordering anything anymore, and I ate an apple and went to bed with the intention of sleeping off the increasing stomach pain.
10:30, of course, is a ridiculously early bedtime for most college students, especially for one that regularly works past midnight. I just felt that miserable. It didn't get any better, as the pain continued to increase as I tossed and turned until about 2:15 AM.
My first inkling in discomfort or sickness is to assume the very worst. However, since I know this is kind of a weakness, my actual course of action is to pretend that nothing is wrong whatsoever and try to tough it out. Since I've got that mental override pretty firmly planted in my distress gameplan, it can take quite a bit for me to overcome that and actually try to fix something that is wrong with me.
The abdominal pain, while at that point being the worst I could ever recall (I couldn't even stand up straight at its worst), would not have been enough to seek help on its own. But the chills...
I was absolutely frigid cold. It must have been a sight to see. I was laying in bed, bundled up in a comforter, sweatpants, two pairs of socks, 3 layers ending with my warmest sweatshirt, and a hat and gloves, and I was still shivering my teeth off. My roommate was in the same room writing a paper at this point in an undershirt and gym shorts...
I got out of bed and took my temperature to see if I might have a fever to go with the chills, assuming at this point that I might just have a new stomach flu virus. My suspicions were laughed at when the thermometer read "95.9".
95.9?!
Assuming that the thermometer was broken (but not really ruling anything out at this point), I took my temperature again. 96.1. Wow.
Doing what anyone who grew up on the internet would do next, I hopped on my laptop and WebMD'd the possible causes of an abnormally low temperature. After ruling out hypothermia (Why is that even on webMD? Do people really need an online diagnosis after getting pulled out of freezing lakes?), I determined that the body's reaction to an infection was roughly the only sane explanation for the ice cold temps.
At this, I vetoed my fear of being a hypochondriac (would that be hyperchondria?) and called my dad. Thankfully, he's usually up at 2:30 AM - I wasn't going to hedge my bet on university health services, given that most other university services were undermanned due to the snow.
After debating all of our options over the phone, he finally offered to come into town and bring me home, in hopes that I could get a doctor's appointment the next morning. Jordan stayed up until my dad got there in case anything happened (what a good roommate...seriously, I'm so grateful for that), and he got there at about 4. I made it home by 5 AM and passed out under quilts as the exhaustion finally overruled the pain.
In hindsight, I probably should have taken some painkillers. Huh.
I woke up after about 4 hours of sleep feeling quite a bit better. It didn't hurt too much at all and I was beginning to think that the whole thing might have just been some nightmare false alarm. I had a doctor's appointment anyway though, so I figured I'd go just for the sake of going. I drove myself to the doctor's office and after a short consult, my doctor basically said "The low temperature's a bit concerning, so we'll send you to the hospital for some lab work and a CT scan just to make sure it's not appendicitis. It probably isn't though."
The doctors in Lake Mills are notorious for ordering completely unnecessary tests for the sake of caution, so I was pretty skeptical. For instance, they've made it a habit of diagnosing everyone in my family with "heart murmurs" and ordering echocardigrams - which always end with the tech at the hospital wondering why an echo was ordered in the first place.
I figured I'd drive to the hospital (in my beloved Watertown), humor myself with the tests to justify all the class I missed, and head home after a false alarm.
I had the blood taken, I had an IV put in, and I had my CT scan. The tech running the scan started to take the IV out after the scan was over, and a nurse said "shouldn't we leave that in just in case he needs surgery?"
The tech replied, "Nah, I don't think we'll have to worry about that."
(Spoiler alert: Thanks a heap, pal)
At that point I was pretty certain I was fine. Obviously I didn't look like someone dealing with appendicitis and I didn't really feel like one either. I sat in the lobby, opened a Time magazine, and awaited my clearance to go home.
I might add now that my doctor told me that he wanted them to call him with the results so that he could tell me himself. The waiting area receptionist summoned me to an office near the reception desk and told me to pick up the handset.
I expected, "Hey Blake, this is Dr. Basarich. You're good to go."
I got, "Hey Blake, this is Dr. Basarich. You do have appendicitis, and we've already scheduled your surgery. They'll tell you what to do when you hang up."
Hooooooooooly frick.
I got a chance to call both of my parents (both of which were at least an hour away at work) and tell them about it, and then I was led into my surgery waiting room. I was for the most part still pretty calm at this point, although I was really just trying not to think about it. The anesthesiologist started some preliminary stuff as I sat in the operating bed, and then she just sat in there and talked with me for a while. For that I am forever grateful. It was about an hour before my mom got there, and I was rolled to the operating room about 5 minutes after she arrived...therefore, if not for the friendly anesthesiologist, it would have more or less been me and my thoughts (with a break for a new iv drip installation on my hand. Hey, thanks again, CT scan tech) for an hour leading up to emergency surgery.
I should send her a Christmas card, or something. She was incredibly reassuring in an otherwise fairly scary and lonesome situation.
I really wasn't all that scared for the most part. I did a lot of praying, and I kept reminding myself that this is an incredibly routine surgery that they probably do all the time. I never considered myself to be all that much in danger, but still, there were the nagging doubts.
"I'm going under, there's always a little danger with that."
"What if this is the time the routine surgery goes wrong?"
"They are cutting into my abdomen. Whoa. Hold on a second. I've had mouth surgery, but this..."
"This is emergency surgery...EMERGENCY. surgery."
Soon enough, though, I was in the O.R.
Soon enough, I was out of it.
I don't know how long the surgery took, but it's not like I would have noticed either way. I woke up completely drugged out, groggy, and in a fair amount of pain, but also thankful to be awake. The recovery from there was slow...I wasn't able to get out of bed for several hours after that, and I just about collapsed walking the 5 feet to the bathroom. All while hooked up to the IV. Blegh. No one said it would be pleasant.
My mom was with me the whole time, and Evan and my Dad came to visit for a few hours that night. I got a few calls from relatives (i.e. the Monkle) but for the most part I wasn't out spreading the news.
I watched some college hoops, #6 Syracuse vs. #11 Florida in Tampa (...sigh), and got as much sleep as is possible with abdominal wounds and nurses coming in constantly to check your vitals. The next morning I had a little bit of breakfast (I made it 23 hours without eating anything. Which isn't quite a day, but is still longer than I've ever gone without sleep) and chilled in the hospital until my 5 PM discharge. Wheelchair on the way out and everything...rollin' like a big shot.
Hospital stays aren't great, but they are what they are...the tough part is the restrictive period afterwards. It's been five and a half days since my surgery and only tonight have I eaten my first full unrestricted meal. Walking to class is tough. Shoot, walking up stairs has been tough. I'm not allowed to pick up anything of any weight for some time now, and since my job involves lifting, I have a surgeon's note saying I can't go back to Targs until January 2nd. One one hand, that sounds like a bit much to me; but on the other hand, stocking stuff all day in my current 'old man' physical state would probably be pretty disastrous.
So now I'm back at school just in time for finals (I don't have one til Thursday, so yes, I can afford to blog tonight) which have barely been of worry to me compared to my physical state.
Finals are kinda strange this semester. This semester on aggregate has been so ridiculously terrible compared to any other I've ever had that I'm probably just going to call mulligan on it and start going for that other major I wrote about on the night of the appendix attack.
I'm not sure how strongly I'm going to be able to finish this semester, but part of me feels like I have a few pretty reasonable excuses if I don't. Well, there's never a reasonable excuse to not try your best, but if ever there was a semester to just close out and forget about, it would be this one. Calculus, 20 hour work weeks, 7 school days in the last month lost to bouts of swine and appendicitis...yeah, I'm ready for a change. Maybe next semester I can actually have time for a social life, enjoy what I'm learning, and feel like I'm working toward something I actually want to do after college. A boy can dream...
So there's my appendectomy. I definitely went more in depth than I thought I would, but I've gone a whole semester with only quantitative assignments - I'm kind of yearning to write now and then. For that reason, I keep wanting to write more and more blogs (3 in one week's time is already a ridiculous pace. That probably hasn't happened here in years), but I'll hold myself back for a little while until after finals. After that, I'm going to be blogging at least twice more regardless of motivation - I've got resolution recap '09 and 2010 resolution making to take care of.
Until then, I've got some tests to take. After that, it's sweatervests, Tampa, and bowl games for a whole month. I cannot wait.
So I guess I will then.
I owe my general readership a more detailed explanation for the appendix and emergency surgery references sprinkled around my internet doings. I guess I'll just jump right into it...
It all started on Wednesday night, not long after my post "And We'll Say Hello" (because I'm sure everyone reading this can picture which post that is based on the title...). UW systemers would remember this as the snow day, which I was fairly lukewarm about considering that I only missed one class as a result and still had to work my 7-to-midnight shift at the ol' Targs. Regardless, I was still pretty cheery at the thought of a snow day and the night got better when I and most of my coworkers were sent home from work at 9:30 because pretty much no one braved the roads to shop.
In usual circumstances, my roommate Jordan and I go get dinner around 11 PM or later, because we both work late shifts pretty consistently. However, that night, due to the roads, all the university food places were closed early. We were both pretty hungry so we started entertaining the idea of calling for a pizza. The standard digestive anticipation (I don't really know what phrase to use for it, but I think everyone more or less knows that feeling right?) I felt in my stomach was increasing as we weighed our options of all the local delivery places.
Within a couple minutes of researching, that feeling had grown to actually be pretty uncomfortable. Eventually it didn't feel as much like hunger, but more like nausea or indigestion. At about 10:15 or so I decided I wasn't interested in ordering anything anymore, and I ate an apple and went to bed with the intention of sleeping off the increasing stomach pain.
10:30, of course, is a ridiculously early bedtime for most college students, especially for one that regularly works past midnight. I just felt that miserable. It didn't get any better, as the pain continued to increase as I tossed and turned until about 2:15 AM.
My first inkling in discomfort or sickness is to assume the very worst. However, since I know this is kind of a weakness, my actual course of action is to pretend that nothing is wrong whatsoever and try to tough it out. Since I've got that mental override pretty firmly planted in my distress gameplan, it can take quite a bit for me to overcome that and actually try to fix something that is wrong with me.
The abdominal pain, while at that point being the worst I could ever recall (I couldn't even stand up straight at its worst), would not have been enough to seek help on its own. But the chills...
I was absolutely frigid cold. It must have been a sight to see. I was laying in bed, bundled up in a comforter, sweatpants, two pairs of socks, 3 layers ending with my warmest sweatshirt, and a hat and gloves, and I was still shivering my teeth off. My roommate was in the same room writing a paper at this point in an undershirt and gym shorts...
I got out of bed and took my temperature to see if I might have a fever to go with the chills, assuming at this point that I might just have a new stomach flu virus. My suspicions were laughed at when the thermometer read "95.9".
95.9?!
Assuming that the thermometer was broken (but not really ruling anything out at this point), I took my temperature again. 96.1. Wow.
Doing what anyone who grew up on the internet would do next, I hopped on my laptop and WebMD'd the possible causes of an abnormally low temperature. After ruling out hypothermia (Why is that even on webMD? Do people really need an online diagnosis after getting pulled out of freezing lakes?), I determined that the body's reaction to an infection was roughly the only sane explanation for the ice cold temps.
At this, I vetoed my fear of being a hypochondriac (would that be hyperchondria?) and called my dad. Thankfully, he's usually up at 2:30 AM - I wasn't going to hedge my bet on university health services, given that most other university services were undermanned due to the snow.
After debating all of our options over the phone, he finally offered to come into town and bring me home, in hopes that I could get a doctor's appointment the next morning. Jordan stayed up until my dad got there in case anything happened (what a good roommate...seriously, I'm so grateful for that), and he got there at about 4. I made it home by 5 AM and passed out under quilts as the exhaustion finally overruled the pain.
In hindsight, I probably should have taken some painkillers. Huh.
I woke up after about 4 hours of sleep feeling quite a bit better. It didn't hurt too much at all and I was beginning to think that the whole thing might have just been some nightmare false alarm. I had a doctor's appointment anyway though, so I figured I'd go just for the sake of going. I drove myself to the doctor's office and after a short consult, my doctor basically said "The low temperature's a bit concerning, so we'll send you to the hospital for some lab work and a CT scan just to make sure it's not appendicitis. It probably isn't though."
The doctors in Lake Mills are notorious for ordering completely unnecessary tests for the sake of caution, so I was pretty skeptical. For instance, they've made it a habit of diagnosing everyone in my family with "heart murmurs" and ordering echocardigrams - which always end with the tech at the hospital wondering why an echo was ordered in the first place.
I figured I'd drive to the hospital (in my beloved Watertown), humor myself with the tests to justify all the class I missed, and head home after a false alarm.
I had the blood taken, I had an IV put in, and I had my CT scan. The tech running the scan started to take the IV out after the scan was over, and a nurse said "shouldn't we leave that in just in case he needs surgery?"
The tech replied, "Nah, I don't think we'll have to worry about that."
(Spoiler alert: Thanks a heap, pal)
At that point I was pretty certain I was fine. Obviously I didn't look like someone dealing with appendicitis and I didn't really feel like one either. I sat in the lobby, opened a Time magazine, and awaited my clearance to go home.
I might add now that my doctor told me that he wanted them to call him with the results so that he could tell me himself. The waiting area receptionist summoned me to an office near the reception desk and told me to pick up the handset.
I expected, "Hey Blake, this is Dr. Basarich. You're good to go."
I got, "Hey Blake, this is Dr. Basarich. You do have appendicitis, and we've already scheduled your surgery. They'll tell you what to do when you hang up."
Hooooooooooly frick.
I got a chance to call both of my parents (both of which were at least an hour away at work) and tell them about it, and then I was led into my surgery waiting room. I was for the most part still pretty calm at this point, although I was really just trying not to think about it. The anesthesiologist started some preliminary stuff as I sat in the operating bed, and then she just sat in there and talked with me for a while. For that I am forever grateful. It was about an hour before my mom got there, and I was rolled to the operating room about 5 minutes after she arrived...therefore, if not for the friendly anesthesiologist, it would have more or less been me and my thoughts (with a break for a new iv drip installation on my hand. Hey, thanks again, CT scan tech) for an hour leading up to emergency surgery.
I should send her a Christmas card, or something. She was incredibly reassuring in an otherwise fairly scary and lonesome situation.
I really wasn't all that scared for the most part. I did a lot of praying, and I kept reminding myself that this is an incredibly routine surgery that they probably do all the time. I never considered myself to be all that much in danger, but still, there were the nagging doubts.
"I'm going under, there's always a little danger with that."
"What if this is the time the routine surgery goes wrong?"
"They are cutting into my abdomen. Whoa. Hold on a second. I've had mouth surgery, but this..."
"This is emergency surgery...EMERGENCY. surgery."
Soon enough, though, I was in the O.R.
Soon enough, I was out of it.
I don't know how long the surgery took, but it's not like I would have noticed either way. I woke up completely drugged out, groggy, and in a fair amount of pain, but also thankful to be awake. The recovery from there was slow...I wasn't able to get out of bed for several hours after that, and I just about collapsed walking the 5 feet to the bathroom. All while hooked up to the IV. Blegh. No one said it would be pleasant.
My mom was with me the whole time, and Evan and my Dad came to visit for a few hours that night. I got a few calls from relatives (i.e. the Monkle) but for the most part I wasn't out spreading the news.
I watched some college hoops, #6 Syracuse vs. #11 Florida in Tampa (...sigh), and got as much sleep as is possible with abdominal wounds and nurses coming in constantly to check your vitals. The next morning I had a little bit of breakfast (I made it 23 hours without eating anything. Which isn't quite a day, but is still longer than I've ever gone without sleep) and chilled in the hospital until my 5 PM discharge. Wheelchair on the way out and everything...rollin' like a big shot.
Hospital stays aren't great, but they are what they are...the tough part is the restrictive period afterwards. It's been five and a half days since my surgery and only tonight have I eaten my first full unrestricted meal. Walking to class is tough. Shoot, walking up stairs has been tough. I'm not allowed to pick up anything of any weight for some time now, and since my job involves lifting, I have a surgeon's note saying I can't go back to Targs until January 2nd. One one hand, that sounds like a bit much to me; but on the other hand, stocking stuff all day in my current 'old man' physical state would probably be pretty disastrous.
So now I'm back at school just in time for finals (I don't have one til Thursday, so yes, I can afford to blog tonight) which have barely been of worry to me compared to my physical state.
Finals are kinda strange this semester. This semester on aggregate has been so ridiculously terrible compared to any other I've ever had that I'm probably just going to call mulligan on it and start going for that other major I wrote about on the night of the appendix attack.
I'm not sure how strongly I'm going to be able to finish this semester, but part of me feels like I have a few pretty reasonable excuses if I don't. Well, there's never a reasonable excuse to not try your best, but if ever there was a semester to just close out and forget about, it would be this one. Calculus, 20 hour work weeks, 7 school days in the last month lost to bouts of swine and appendicitis...yeah, I'm ready for a change. Maybe next semester I can actually have time for a social life, enjoy what I'm learning, and feel like I'm working toward something I actually want to do after college. A boy can dream...
So there's my appendectomy. I definitely went more in depth than I thought I would, but I've gone a whole semester with only quantitative assignments - I'm kind of yearning to write now and then. For that reason, I keep wanting to write more and more blogs (3 in one week's time is already a ridiculous pace. That probably hasn't happened here in years), but I'll hold myself back for a little while until after finals. After that, I'm going to be blogging at least twice more regardless of motivation - I've got resolution recap '09 and 2010 resolution making to take care of.
Until then, I've got some tests to take. After that, it's sweatervests, Tampa, and bowl games for a whole month. I cannot wait.
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