Guts and Goo

Oh so much fun in our household this week.

So, Tuesday night, as I crawl in to bed, The Man rolls over and says that his stomach hurts really bad. He had been feeling sick earlier, some nausea, so I'm figuring it's just some indigestion, or that he's gotten the flu. He tells me that it's on his lower right side, and is a really sharp pain. The location made a bell go off in my head that it might be appendicitis. But it could also be an impacted fart (those never feel good), so I had him take some Tums, to see if that would help. He fell asleep after that, so I figured that's what it was and went to sleep too. But when he got up for work, he was still in pain, and he could barely walk. (This whole time I'm thinking about the M*A*S*H episode where Colonel Blake gets appendicitis.) So, to the Insta-Care we go, with him calling people at his work the whole way.
Lucky it happened so early in the morning. We were the first to be seen by the doctor. After checking him over, he said that it probably is appendicitis, and sent us to the hospital for a CT scan to be sure. That was a long wait.
First he had to drink 6 cups of contrast (which The Man chose to have mixed with grape juice. He said is tasted like grape juice and barbeque sauce) every ten minutes, then wait half an hour for it to get to his intestines. It was freezing down there, besides the fact that he had a fever and so was even more cold than I was. He finally got in for the scan, and then we had to wait for the doctor to call. Result? We were sent to same day surgery.
There was another wait because the doctor that they wanted to have operate on him was still on his first patient, which he had started at 5 that morning (It was now around noon). Still, the wait there was the shortest wait we had. The found another doctor pretty quickly, and got us all checked in, while simultaneously prepping him for surgery (his tummy was nice and smooth for a few days. It's all stubbly now). The surgeon came in and told us what they were going to do, which, thankfully, was NOT cut him open. The poked 3 holes (basically) in his stomach: One to put carbon dioxide into his stomach cavity so they could inflate it to see what they were doing, one to put the camera and light into, and one to do the work through. The last one was by his belly button, which is where they pulled the appendix out of. He was sent to surgery at 1:30, and I was sent to the waiting room where I valiantly (if I do say so myself) tried not to freak out by imagining it bursting while in surgery and him dieing on the table. Thankfully I was distracted by The Kansas friends' texts, a phone call from The Little Brother, and a phone call from The Mother-in-Law. Then one of The Dog Friends showed up and she sat with me until the surgeon came.
Everything went fine (obviously, since he's still here). The surgeon even fixed his apparently herniated belly button. The Man is a little disappointed about that, since now he has a belly button like everyone elses'. We went up to the hospital room to wait for him to come up. It was only a few minutes before I heard his voice in the hall telling jokes to the nurses who were wheeling him up (none of this he remembers). He was so groggy and out of it (It was kind of cute). The best thing he said was "I don't think I've ever had oxygen before (he had one of those nose things for oxygen). It smells funny." That made me and The Dog Friend crack up. He also doesn't remember saying that.

We were told by the surgeon that he should be out by the next day, but that didn't happen. His white blood cell count was too high, so they had him stay for another day to keep him on an IV of antibiotics. Neither of us got much sleep, because he couldn't roll off his back to sleep, and I had to sleep in a recliner that wouldn't stay reclined. The nurses were all great, and they all gave him compliments for being a good patient and doing what he was supposed to do (breathe into this thing that is supposed to prevent pneumonia, and take walks around the floor). I mostly stayed with him, until the 3rd day he was there. I had to go home then, because our dogs were stressing out so much that Dog 2 was having the mad poops in her kennel. They are still stressed, I think, because neither of them is showing much interest in their food, and Dog 2 still has diarrhea, but she is keeping it in now, and they eventually eat all their food.

He is finally home now, and is still doing good. He walks around the house as ordered by the doctor, and is being a good boy and taking his pills. We are both sleeping better. Who knows how long this will take to pay off, but I will be eternally grateful that my inner Scrooge stayed away Wednesday morning and that we went to the doctor right away, instead of waiting to see if it got better so we could save money. As it was, his appendix was already leaking some puss by the time they got in there, so who knows how long he actually had before it would have burst.

But he's safe, he's alive, and we will find a way to pay for this, even if it takes until the day we die.

Oh yes, we got pictures from the surgeon. Maybe I'll post them in another 6 months, after you've all forgotten about this. You know how on top of posting pictures I am. One of my best qualities.