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First of all, I love your site! I am submitting photos of the incision from my appendectomy on August 30, 2002. My description is long and detailed, so please feel free to edit it for length or content.

On August 29, my husband and I had spent a very long and stressful day with the birthmother of our adopted sons, meeting with our attorney and a social worker and filling out mountains of adoption paperwork. The attorney's office is over an hour away from our home, so the three of us stopped for dinner at Tony Roma's on the way home. I ate lots of BBQ ribs and shrimp, not even giving a second thought to how it might taste the second time around.

We were all completely exhausted by the time we got back, and as we were dropping birth mom off at a hotel I started to feel very crampy. I told my husband to hurry home, as I was on the verge of having explosive diarrhea. Once home, I headed straight for the bathroom. Not only did I not have diarrhea, I was nearly constipated. And still crampy. Perplexed, I took two Gas-X and went to bed. I was still uncomfortable, but was able to fall asleep.

Around 1:00 AM I woke up doubled over in nearly unbearable abdominal pain, radiating to my lower back. I thought maybe I could get more comfortable in the recliner, but sitting up only made it worse. I started to feel around on my belly, and realizing that the pain was a lot worse on my right side, started to suspect appendicitis. I turned on the computer to look up the symptoms, and at that point decided to wake up my husband to take me to the ER. He went to start the truck and turn on the AC and told me to come outside in a minute. As soon as he left, I started to get overwhelming waves of nausea and was instantly drenched in sweat. My husband decided I was taking too long, came back inside to check on me and found me in the bathroom heaving up BBQ. I'm pretty sure I couldn't have picked anything nastier if I had tried.

They took me in pretty quickly at the ER, did blood tests and urinalysis and finally gave me some wonderful IV anti-nausea medication that also sedated me, but not before recycling more BBQ. They had some really cool new-fangled vomit receptacles, consisting of a blue plastic windsock-shaped bag attached to a plastic ring. You just barf right into the hole, and the bag catches everything. No more ungainly gold kidney basins. My tests didn't show anything definitive - white count was on the high side of normal, and whatever they were looking for in the urine didn't show up. They decided to do a CT scan of my abdomen, but first I had to drink about a half gallon of something very very tart to make the soft tissue show up on the scan. They mixed it with Gatorade to improve the taste, but it was completely awful. If I hadn't been sedated from the anti-nausea drug, I probably would have been filling up the windsock again. I had to drink 8 ounces every 20 minutes, and I finally finished around 5:00 AM. They took me right in for the CT scan, and by that time I had so much of the anti-nausea drug in me that I was in almost no pain at all and starting to feel like a hypochondriac.

Around 6:30 AM the doctor came in and told us that I definitely had appendicitis, and that they couldn't tell from the scan whether it was ruptured. I figured they would do laparoscopic surgery with a couple of tiny incisions, but because of the uncertainty of the condition of my appendix, it turned out to be a full-blown slicing of my abdomen. I had my wits about me enough to ask if I could keep my appendix, but was told that they needed to section it for pathology. The surgery went fine, but confirmed that it had definitely ruptured. I woke up later that morning with 9 staples in my belly and a lovely morphine IV.

I went home the following Monday, Labor Day. The following Thursday, our sons came to stay with us permanently. With a 1 1/2 year old and a 3 year old in the house, it was the fastest recovery from surgery in history. I have no lasting effects, just a really cool scar. The first two photos were taken in the hospital on September 1, 2 days after surgery. The third was taken on September 10, right before the staples were removed (thank goodness for low rider jeans). I'm having trouble taking a good photo of the scar, as my auto-focus camera has trouble focusing when there are no sharp edges. It has healed quite nicely, and as soon as I get a decent photo I will send it along.

P.S. If you like these photos, you are going to LOVE my lung surgery photos from my other brush with death in 1998. 34 staples in my back + two oozing chest tube wounds. The problem is that the photos are not digital, and I have misplaced them. As soon as I find them and scan them, they will be on their way to you!

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Editor's Notes:

That's a long story but I didn't want to cut it. I love getting all those details. That's what makes each story special. In this case we had: Tension, shrimp, vomiting, hospital, IV, surgery, adoption. This story has it all. I can't even think of how to add to this, and I always have something to say.

This story did make me think of was the old game Operation, which was always both life-like and educational. I can still remember trying to figure out what the heck "water on the knee" was. I thought I was going to have surgery every time I fell down in a mud puddle. Which was scary because I was a clumsy child. Of course, worrying about it only gave me "butterflies in the stomach" and I knew that was cause for a trip to the hospital too.

Anyway, you're right, the scar looks good. And more importantly, you have your sons, congrats. BTW everyone, I got the pics from the lung surgery and I do love them. They will be their own future installment.

Sharky

Photos:
Fresh Staples- in the hospital
Up Close- and personal
Healing- staples still holding
Scar- all healed up