How to Lose 6 Ounces In a Matter of Hours While Eating All the Jello You Want!!

Unpause.

This is how I feel now that I’m back in Lethbridge. At least, this is how I’m trying to feel. Recovering has never been my forte and I don’t know if I will ever come to terms with my mind being ready to do things my body can’t. Thankfully, I have a while (hopefully) before this is a real issue. In the meantime, I just have to get used to being 6 oz lighter. Why?

Well, it all began last Monday when I woke up at 4am with a stupid amount of pain in my stomach. I had been having stomach pains a couple of weeks before, so I figured it was the same thing. I went to the bathtub for solace, because that was what had worked before. Fast-forward three hours and I was still writhing in pain, cursing out every sick person I had ever encountered and swearing off eating any type of food ever again. It wasn’t until 7:30 that I had the guts to text my roommate to drive me to the hospital, which he kindly did immediately. I blame the pain for making me stupid enough to believe that that much pain was just indigestion.

In retrospect, the pain was enough that I don't remember the ride to the hospital. I can say this because upon entering my roommate’s car again a week later I noticed he had a bobblehead Jesus on his dash. When the pain is so distracting you don’t notice a bobblehead Jesus, you know it’s serious. Moving on. 

Thank God I live in Lethbridge because when we got to the hospital there was almost no one in the waiting room—I was in a hospital bed within ten minutes. Of course, just because you’re in a bed doesn’t really mean anything, as the nurses listened to me moan for the next two and half hours. At one point a nurse came in and gave me a Dixie cup full of what tasted like rotten Krispie Kream icing. I am confident that this did not have any medical purpose, she just wanted to gross me out enough to shut me up for a couple minutes. It worked. All I remember from that time was ensuring that my parents knew I was in the hospital (I’ve learnt from past experiences that they don’t like after-the-fact stories) and insisting that I have a chance to vote. The nurses were super considerate and kind enough to call in a special balloter so that I could vote from my hospital bed. I can now tell my children that I performed my civic duty while almost passing out from pain. Huzzah! (Unfortunately, they made me vote in the wrong constituency, which kind of defeated all the research I’d done on my different candidates, but hey, three cheers for democracy.)

Anyway, after a handful of blood tests, x-rays, IVs, urine samples, and ultrasounds (turns out the gel really isn’t as cold as they make it out to be in the movies!), the nurses informed me that it was probably my appendix. They told me a surgeon would be along shortly to inform me whether or not a surgery would be necessary. After another couple of hours a man walked into my curtained-off area. He had a strong limp, was walking with a cane, and looked over 60 at least. Judging by the intense look of pain in his eyes and shaking in his hands, I honestly thought he was just a lost patient. As I was about to ask if I could help him he said, “I’ll cut it out in an hour.  We’ll see you then,” and walked out.

I asked the next nurse who walked in if that was my surgeon. She answered, “Yes” with a smile and informed me that he was a bit quirky. ‘Quirky’ was her word choice. The other nurses opted for ‘old-fashioned’. I’ll let one review online speak for itself:

           

“In addition to having deplorable oral hygiene and smelling like BO, Dr. Hebert has the bedside manner of a prison executioner. Why did he become a doctor when he hates people? Maybe he should retire and give his leg a rest. I don't like seeing my doctor in pain 24/7. I would not let him touch my dog so certainly he was not going to operate on me. There are 4 other surgeons in Lethbridge I was given the option of seeing. If he were the only doctor in town, I would either die or let some **** in the park operate on me. If he is on call, run...fast, because he can't. The worst experience of my life.”

Sooo yeah. A little harsh, but still. Thankfully I didn’t read these reviews until after I was already put under. I woke up to a large pain in my side and a strong morphine trip. I found out that the typical procedure for removing an appendix is placing four holes around the organ and performing a minimally invasive laparoscopy to remove it. Good ol’ Doc H decided to make a 3-inch slice into my stomach. But it’s ok, chicks dig scars. Right?

The next two days were mostly filled with morphine trips and nurse check-ups. The incision was deep—I was able to stick my finger in it up past my first knuckle—and they kept it open for my whole stay at the hospital. I don’t know a lot about medical practice, but I’m pretty sure keeping a massive gap in your stomach open while unsterile nurses poke and prod it is generally considered… unsanitary? Primitive? Uncouth? You pick the adjective. (You can actually see the cut by clicking here. WARNING: I thought I would be sensitive to my queasy readers by posting it as a link, as it is a little gory. Note that a lot of the discolouration is a glue that they put on my stomach... I'm not normally eighteen different shades of yellow.)

But hey, I survived. My friends kept me entertained with texts like:

“Congratulations! Your children will now be part of the process toward the evolution of the appendixless man!” and

“Only you.” and

“Congrats now you have more room for food…that’s how it works, right?” and

“Be surgeried like a champ!”

For the most part the hospital wasn’t that bad, except for the whole not being able to eat solid foods thing. "Here Mr. Willems, would you like some liquid with your liquid while you drink your jello liquid and wash it down with a cool cup of liquid?" Bleh. But the nurses were incredibly kind and I was humbled by their service. Mentally I was all right, it was just the one night that got to me. My cellphone had died so I had no way to contact anyone and I couldn’t move due to, you know, The Chunk missing. They switched me from morphine to T3s and turned off the lights, leaving me in darkness to dwell on the delightful sounds of my fellow roommates’ dripping catheters and death coughs. I thought I was hallucinating when the bed started vibrating, but the nurses informed me that they had a tendency of doing that. So I spent the next 7 hours counting down the minutes till morning with the help of my ticking IV, drooping in and out of a drug trip that resulted in an angsty, paranoid poem scribbled in a colouring book that was reminiscent of my brooding, teenage days. Here’s just a small taste:

I'm entombed in collapsible curtains and faint glowing lights

Warning me that I’ve barely begun the night

I swear death echoes in his phlegm-filled cough

He has to make it through the night for all these guilty thoughts

Raindrops and dripping catheters

His grotesque shadow envelopes hers

Riding the vibrating IV wires on undulating waves

Naked and exposed, I avoid his lifeless gaze

Nothing but chicken broth and mucus on my fingers and teeth

Come on T3s, relieve!

So there’s that. Honestly for being high and half-unconscious, I’m pretty proud of it. Maybe I need to return to my dark, brooding days in order to find true inspiration.

Thankfully, my stay was over the next day and the nurse prepared me to go. She ripped the medical tape off of my stomach and promptly commented that I must be allergic to medical tape due to the splotchy redness that appeared. My response was a polite smile, but in my head I was thinking, I’M NOT ALLERGIC TO TAPE, I’M ALLERGIC TO YOU RIPPING OFF ALL MY STOMACH HAIR!! Funny side story about my stomach hair (yup, I just said that), but after my last surgery, the heart monitors on my chest had done similar damage, leaving my stomach looking like a lawn mowed by a hiccuping rabbit. I had to shave my chest in order to get it back to normal and it was only a couple of weeks ago that it had re-grown to its typical, lustrous length. (I know what you’re picturing here, but I promise you, I have a very normal amount of chest hair. You can stop grimacing.) So thanks to this appendectomy, my chest has returned to its sporadic, interspersed state and I am forced to wear a shirt all summer until I can even things out again. Sigh.

There, now you all know waay too much about my body hair.

After getting released from the hospital, my delightful mother drove me back to Calgary where she took care of me while I sat around doing a whole lot of nothing for a week. Like I said, I’m a fairly sucky recover-er and it was frustrating just sitting around. I sat and watched status after status of people announcing “I’m DONE!”, getting upset that my final exams are still looming over me. Thankfully, my school was really good about getting everything deferred, so I have another couple of weeks before I really have to worry about it. This is both really good, as I am not in the mental state to write an exam, and really bad, as I now have another month to wait for something that I just want to get over with. Oh well. Work has also been very accommodating, which I am super appreciative of. I had almost convinced myself that I was ready to return to it, until I tried going out with friends and found myself sleeping. All day. I fell asleep on my floor four separate times that day. The next day I went to “walk around” the mall for an hour and ended up falling asleep in a chair in Chapters. So, I’m not better yet, but at least I’ve got a keyboard and, thanks to my mom, a month’s supply of tuna casserole. I would give up every futile organ in my body for a month’s supply of tuna casserole.  

This morning my mom dropped me off back in Lethbridge. We hugged goodbye and she said, “Well, it’s been a slice. Hah! Literally.”

Good one, mom.

(A sincere thanks to those who texted me and visited me in the hospital; it meant a lot. And a special thanks to my roommate Kyle who not only drove me to the hospital, but washed my sheets and cleaned my room so that my mom could spend the night there. And thanks to my mom, for being my mom. And God, for letting my appendix burst in Lethbridge, and not in Peru. Though, we’re going to have to have talk about why the heck I have(/had) a useless appendix in the first place, but we’ll work on that.)

Update: Here is a current shot of what it looks like a week after the surgery. This pic is substantially less gross, but I'll still put the gory disclaimer on it.

I just got back from my follow up appointment with my surgeon. After my roommate kindly drove me across town, I waited for a while until the doctor called me in and sat me down.

"You got a fever?"

"Nope."

"Diarrhea?"

"Nope."

"You're good."

And that was it. I asked him if he wanted to see the scar and he obliged for half a second before muttering "fine" and rushing me out the door. You stay classy, Doctor Hebert. Yikes.