The leadup: I thought I had just eaten something dodgy for the first couple of days. I had a pain in the guts that I noticed a bit after I ate but otherwise was fine. On Friday morning, the pain had shifted down to my right side and stabbed me when I sneezed (but still not too bad). I almost didn’t go to the GP but decided I should at least check it out even if he laughed at me and told me to drink some prune juice.
The GP didn’t laugh but instead pushed my tummy a few times asking if it hurt but it was pretty obvious when he pressed the spot and he told me straight away that I had appendicitis. He advised me to go straight to the emergency ward and wrote me a referral.
Things to take when you think you might be staying overnight at hospital: credit card, medibank card, medicare card, a good book. And things I forgot: spare underpants, toothbrush and toothpaste. If I had mobile broadband, I would have taken my laptop but you can’t use it in most hospitals anyway (although I noticed everyone used their mobile phones despite the signs). Probably not a good idea to have anything too valuable as they don’t always have lockable drawers.
The procedure: A doctor sees you to confirm the diagnosis, then you lie around for a couple of hours while they sort out a surgeon. During this time, they put in a drip and take some blood. When offered a blanket I took it as it gets mighty cold. They might roll you up to the ward to get prepped. Once you’ve had a shower in the antiseptic goo and put on the stylish back-less gown and anti-DVT socks they roll you up to the surgery waiting room where you lie about for another half hour or so twiddling your thumbs and trying not to think about how you suddenly need to pee. (Advice: have a pee before they attach you to your bed with all the tubes (unless you enjoy peeing in a bottle (hope that’s not TMI (too bad if it is)))).
While waiting in surgery prep, you get another visit from your surgeon (assuming he came down and said hello earlier) where he talks you through the procedure which is something like: You go to sleep, I stick some things into three tiny holes in your tummy, the biggest in your belly button, you wake up without an appendix, I go home with a wad of cash from your health insurer. We had a bit of a talk about the gap where he estimated I’d be up for $700 out of pocket including the anaesthetist and hospital but not including the $160 slugged by the emergency ward – I was told later I could have skipped the emergency ward if I’d asked my GP to find me a surgeon instead.
The anaesthetist also paid me a visit and asked me a bunch of questions – get used to the list of questions, they all want to know your full name and date of birth followed by a brief medical history then smoker, alcoholic, diabetes, heart disease, allergies etc… which gets weird because as you’ve been lying around with your brain switched off you start to forget the answers and have to think about it “hmm have I ever smoked? Heart disease – was that me or someone else who had that?”. Then he explains his evil method of putting you to sleep which involves putting some dream juice in through your drip thing and monitoring your brain waves using electrodes. (Last time I had a general he just made me count backwards from ten but obviously the electrodes are for the serious guys who like to hack your brain while you’re out).
The operating theatre was the best I’ve been in (out of a total of three surgeries I’ve had). They had not one, not two but three U.F.O. lights and a heap of nice big LCD displays plus the room just kind of had a sleek techo feel to it. No old eighties bleeping machines here, it was all brand new stuff by the looks which was nice as the hospital wards were pretty shabby and had me a little worried. That’s really all I can tell you about the theatre because as you know if you’ve ever been in one for surgery, you get about half a minute to stare at the ceiling before Mr DrugHugs puts out your lights.
Next thing I knew it was all stabbing death knife pain in the recovery room while some nurses adjusted the flow on the pain killers until I stopped moaning. Then they had keep waking me up because allegedly I was forgetting to breath. I told them I was totally not forgetting to breath but they assured me I was not in a position to make that judgement and given that an hour passed in about three seconds I suppose they were right. Also when they read me the list of drugs they’d given me, they had to turn the page half way. Once I could string a sentence together and started making sarcastic comments about the other patients, they let me go to the ward where I spent the night being woken every hour for the blood pressure test and a drink of water (but I was so sleepy I went straight back to sleep each time)
Then it was a long boring wait for the surgeon to show up and tell me I could go home so I read my book and tried to ignore the other guys in the room who were in various stages of grief and groaning.
Things to ask your surgeon when they come around post-op: Do I need to take time of work, if so can I get a certificate. Can I drive? Those little things apparently don’t occur to surgeons and I didn’t think of them until after he left so I had to get a nurse to chase him down and find out after he left. All he said at the time was: good op, come and see me in two weeks and then he took off obviously to get through his other patients and get the hell to his golf game or private yacht or whatever he was doing on the weekend. (Don’t get me wrong, I respect surgeons and what they do and wouldn’t have it any other way)
So that’s about it, I’m writing this about 24 hours after the surgery and the pain is barely rating as long as I don’t move. When I move, it’s pretty achy but nothing to groan about. I haven’t needed any painkillers today and I’ll be back at work on Monday as far as I know.
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