Live! From Inside Hurley

I wish I had better narrative skills, and a better attention span...and wasn't so lazy....because, other than those issues, I have been witness to amazing insight into ordinary people who, of course, are so strange, they are surly insane, and I could simply sit here, while recovering, and transform these experiences into the next Great American Novel.  As it is, you'll just have to take my word for it: human beings really are the limit.

That five hour waiting room experience was so horrific that you'd have to live through it to believe it, but even I hardly believe it.  What I learned is that I can now survive something that terrible but, it isn't worth it: it would have been better to put up greater resistance and have avoided the whole ordeal.  I spent the time walking between a plastic couch (I now know why all the furniture in the ER is plastic!) and the toilet, sitting on the toilet while heaving spittle into a garbage can, and then walking back.  They called my name three times--each time my heart raced with joy, thinking "Yes!  Finally, they picked ME!" but it was always to simply process insurance payment.  They want to make sure someone is going to pick up the tab before I get one toe full in the door and they have armed security guards at the doorway to leverage their authority.  As Simon mentioned, one surly gent did threaten to soil himself (using more common language) if he didn't get to see someone right away and, when he didn't, he did.  Everyone knew him there by name so I got the feeling he was a "regular."  The place was filled with families, all loaded up with pizzas and buckets of fried chicken, there to make a day of it while they waited for their family member to get called back.  Although certainly in need of medical attention, I suspect most people had fairly simply issues--ear infections, a torn ligament, whiplash, as these people got checked in, processed and left all while I was still waiting.  I informed the woman at the front desk each time I vomited, but she didn't seem impressed.  There were also at least 6 women about to give birth.  All of them got taken up to Ob-gyn pretty quickly.

I did eventually get in, only to be plopped into a small room and left alone for another hour or so.  People did drift in an out, asked the same damn questions over, and over.  Each one prodded me, squeezing my abdomen and asking, "Does it hurt here?"  "What about here?"  Yes, it hurt.  Everywhere.  I had lab work done, an EKG and an ultrasound.  The doctor came back with a very grave look on her face and said, "Your lab work is..." Oh, shit, I thought.  Stomach cancer.  I knew that would get me in the end.  "GREAT!" she added.  "Simply amazing, in fact!"  Like the grade grubber I have always been, I took that as a well deserved compliment.  And although that should have been heartening, in fact, that was my downfall.  Because rather than take all other stats seriously (my increasing body temperature, my screams of pain, my nausea turning to projectile vomiting...) they held onto those labs and said, "But it can't be X, because the lab work wouldn't be so GREAT!"  The EKG was also awesome ("Well, you didn't have a heart attack!") and the ultra sound showed small gall pebbles, apparently just to serve as a peek into a future abdominal drama waiting down the road for me...so, they came to the obvious conclusion that since the pain lessened if given morphine, I should be sent home.  What they didn't tell me was that they wouldn't continue the morphine once I left...so it took until about the time I got home to realize that I was much, much worse, not only in how I felt but looked.  I dared a brief peek and lets just say "deathly pale with a greenish hue" doesn't quite capture how grotesque I was---and don't forget the anxiety sweat and vomit I was coated with.   Simon suggested I go back to the hospital and I just thought of that ER waiting room and absolutely refused.  But within about 30 minutes I knew he was right so, as he wrote, we bet on the middle of the night to be optimal and chanced it then.  It was a smart move to getting checked in quickly, but by then my appendix had long ago given up the ghost and was seeping Death Juice throughout my abdomen.  It took many more hours before I got correctly diagnosed (this required a cat scan, which required me swallowing--and keeping down--cat scan dye for a full hour.  That, I couldn't manage and vomited up every bit every time.  One nurse got very peevish about it, and explained in very plain language that we CAN'T DO THE TEST IF YOU DON'T KEEP DOWN THE FLUID FOR AN HOUR.  OH!  Now, I get it.  So, then they decided I did NOT need to keep down 2 liters of dye, they could do a dye IV during the cat scan, which worked a treat.  The cat scan took only a few minutes, 2 minutes tops, and was simple and painless.  The results came back--an appendix rotten to the core--and I had a date with destiny.  I was then moved to pre-op, and a 2 hour long struggle with IVs began.

I met my surgeon, a Dr. Farhan, a very no-nonsense Middle Easterner who talked with me and heard a brief version of my epic adventure.  He was very indignant.  He put his hands on his hips and said, "Pain that starts here [points to my middle region] and moves to HERE [points to my right side] is Appendicitis 101.  You do NOT send a patient home who has these symptoms!  Yes, [he sneered,] "The blood work!".  I saw the blood work!  I do not want to hear about the blood work!!"  What a performance!  Imagine Ben Hur turned into a medical drama!  That guy should be a Hollywood star!

It has always been my lifelong dream to be a junkie, but my wimpy veins have prevented me from realizing that.  They collapse if you look at them, let alone try to get a needle in them.  Since Tuesday, I had had five different IV sites started up, and each one worked for a while and then quit spectacularly, causing swelling and pain.  So, right before surgery, my IV upped and quit, my arm exploded and the anesthesia refused to go in.  So, one nurse and one anesthesiologist set to work on me, one one each arm, each looking for a site.  Each attempted at least three times before the decided it would be easier to "struggle along" with what they had, get me to sleep, and then "deal with it [read: do something really, really painful] to me after I was asleep.  So, next thing I know, I am waking up in my hospital room and I have no idea where I am, or what happened to me.

Since then I have learned that my abdomen was inflated with carbon dioxide so that every organ was fully separated (I imagine each floating freely, in darkness, like Major Tom floating loose in outer space), then two small holes cut into my side: one to let in a flashlight (like the opening scene of Alien) and the other to let in a scope.  The scope, carrying a small fishing net, found the naughty appendix, cut it lose, caught it in the bag, and then pulled it out of the body.  Then the whole cavity was flushed with antibiotic slosh (here, I imagine one of those touch free car washes) and then suctioned clean.  Then, the air pumped out, two holes band-aided shut and a small tube connected to a small suction bottle dangles loose from me, to collect any remaining fluid.  Apparently the worry is that appendix, as a last venal act, squirted a drop--and only one small drop is needed!--of toxic waste into my abdomen before leaving me, and that drop is festering and creating a small Evil Empire, only to start this whole franchise all over again.  So, I am on an antibiotic IV drip going in with clear, non-topic liquid going out, so things are looking good.  The surgeon just stopped by a few minutes ago, gave my abdomen a healthy squeeze (when I flinched he said, "Yes, that is to be expected.") and said that, if all continues to go well, they will remove the drain and IV tomorrow and then discharge me late tomorrow or early the next day.

So, there you go.  Now I can get back to listening to the woman next door gripe to all her friends about how useless her son is, and how awful her pain is.