My Own Personal Appendectomy

War­ning, pic­tu­res of sur­gery below (not graphic, because I nor­mally squirm at these things).

Come night time Wed­nes­day 2nd May, my day had gone well, revi­sion was on sche­dule, I was trying a new mouth wash and all was sweet and well. The hard grind of revi­sion, pro­ject work and cour­se­work was under way and uni life was as any hec­tic third term nor­mally is. I think I’d just relea­sed my latest fb2k con­fig that day also. At 5 am I was awo­ken with awful sto­mach pains; a horri­ble grip­ping fee­ling as though my diges­tive sack was being used as a stress ball by an over wor­ked under­paid office emplo­yee. I couldn’t sleep through it so I grab­bed some crac­kers and made some quick fb2k upda­tes until I felt duly capa­ble of hea­ding back to the land of nod. 

Thurs­day was much the same, only worse. I’d hoped the pain would have left me; maybe it was just me lying awk­wardly or some bad sau­sa­ges from the cham­pions lea­gue BBQ. I set about revi­sion as nor­mal, strug­gling to get anything done, some Ibu­pro­fen hel­ped and I con­ti­nued through until the after­noon thin­king I had past the worst of it. With late after­noon the pain­ki­llers res­cin­ded and I was thrown full-whack back into the tor­ment of having my diges­tive tract deci­ding it wan­ted to leave my body by tur­ning itself into a truncheon and bea­ting its way out from the inside. Gavis­con sto­mach sweets fai­led, as did all the anti-acids and little tricks like drin­king Milk or eating dried foods. With the doc­tors now shut and at a loss for what to do, I tried to simply just rest, sit back and watch a film — I chose one I wouldn’t par­ti­cu­larly care if I enjo­yed or not (My Super Ex-Girlfriend — don’t watch this). By the end of the film my intes­ti­nal baton had grown spi­kes in a step­ped up bid to escape. I was bent dou­ble and in agony with a sto­mach pain that hadn’t cau­sed sick­ness. I called NHS Direct (with my mum’s advice and dili­gence in fin­ding a Skype com­pa­ti­ble num­ber) and they soon advi­sed me to get myself chec­ked out ASAP, just as a pre­cau­tion. With the walk-in cen­tre shut it was off to acci­dent and emergency. 

My very kind accom­mo­da­tion war­den drove my friend and I there where we star­ted to wait. One hour later I saw the triage and enjo­yed blood sugar tests, blood pres­sure tests and the usual check-up mumbo jumbo. With inten­sif­ying pain, gro­wing hun­ger and tired­ness the two hour wait to see a doc­tor was horri­ble. Mid-wait my offi­cial accom’ war­den, Adam, tur­ned up and swap­ped shifts, brin­ging cross­word enter­tain­ment, although we never com­ple­ted a sin­gle one. Both war­dens were espe­cially help­ful and I wish to thank them both very much for their efforts and care. At 1am I was called into see the doc­tor, he prod­ded me and asked where the pain was, whether I’d been ill, etc. He did a blood test and issued an abdo­men X-ray. Half an hour later, lying on my back, I was whee­led into the X-ray room and whee­led back out again moments later. 

Lying on a bed had its bene­fits and coping with the wait was not as bad, though just as pain­ful. It wasn’t until 4:30 am that someone came to see me and tell me I was hea­ding to the cri­ti­cal deci­sion unit where a sur­geon would later see me. At 5 am they deci­ded to keep me in for the night until next morning’s break­fast, see how I was then after some food and take it from there. With this news both my friend (thanks Ste­ven!) and war­den were relie­ved to be able to go home whilst I tried to get wha­te­ver kip I could. Come 8 am I was up and ready for brek­kie! Whilst the patients around me were being ser­ved up Wee­ta­bix and porridge an impor­tant loo­king fellow asso­cia­ted with the uni­ver­sity (with a num­ber of stu­dents around him) infor­med me that I did indeed have Appen­di­cits and that I would be nee­ding sur­gery some­time during the day. 

Whilst in the pro­cess of let­ting whoe­ver I could know what was going on a bubbly anaesthe­tist explai­ned the pro­ce­dure to me and said I would be prep’d for sur­gery within half an hour. And that was that, before I knew it an IV was being put in, pads stuck on and gene­ral anesthe­tic admi­nis­te­red, “You’ll be asleep within 20 seconds”… I remem­ber thin­king, “I don’t feel tired”. 

That’s a tra­di­tio­nal appen­dec­tomy, I didn’t get this done (thank good­ness), I was given a modern keyhole lapa­ros­co­pic sur­gery which is “mini­mally inva­sive”, at least this seems to be the case given the size of my wound. 

Here’s a video of a keyhole appen­dec­tomy, not mine I might add:

I woke up at about 12:30pm in the reco­very ward, dreamy and bliss­fully enjo­ying my deep sleep and dis­tinct lack of pain. About half an hour later I was fully awake and another cheery nurse whee­led me to my ward. As the anaesthe­tic wore off some pain retur­ned (inc­lu­ding a sore throat because of the tubes they had to give me) but I was much more com­for­ta­ble than before, I was soon happy to see my grandpa, sis­ter and girl­friend shortly follo­wed by Ste­ven and my warden. 

My reco­very was (mostly) a smooth one. For the dura­tion of my stay the IV remai­ned attached, through which I was fed and admi­nis­te­red the neces­sary anti­bio­tics. 4-hourly pulse, tem­pe­ra­ture and blood pres­sure tests were given; my tem­pe­ra­ture was high each time ( 37.5) and I was given para­ce­ta­mol to bring it down. The only pro­blem I had was a gro­wingly uncom­for­ta­ble and soon to be pain­ful fee­ling which moun­ted in the hours after sur­gery; in short I was having pro­blems taking a piss. The nurse sug­ges­ted I may need a cathe­ter but before get­ting one did a quick ultra­sound to check if my blad­der was full, her res­ponse upon seeing the result was quite comic and she soon retur­ned tubes in hand. My blad­der was so full it was put­ting enor­mous amounts of pres­sure on my back, wound and abdo­men, which suf­fice to say, hurt a lot. The blad­der can typi­cally hold 000.6 litres, within 15 minu­tes of the cathe­ter being added the bag was up to 1.5 litres, and reached 2 litres before the hour mark. Time for the great Bri­tish pun, “that really takes the piss”. A cathe­ter is quite uncom­for­ta­ble and it dra­ma­ti­cally redu­ces your mobi­lity, even when you’re tied down to an IV, its remo­val was also quite pain­ful. Get­ting it put in wasn’t too bad, but I was pro­bably still seeing the influen­ces of some anaesthetic. 

All this took place at the brand new Uni­ver­sity Hos­pi­tal (UHCW) outside of Coventry. It really is a beau­ti­fully new, clean and impres­sive place. I par­ti­cu­larly enjo­yed their bed-entertainment suite, which, for £3.20, gave me 24 hours of free­view digi­tal let­ting me watch the mor­ning foot­ball round-up, some Jee­ves and Wor­ces­ter and quite pain­fully with sti­fled laugh­ter “Have I Got News for You”. 

It’s been about a week since my discharge and des­pite having a busy week, catching up with work, etc., I am making a good reco­very.
My stitches are all inter­nal and set to “dis­solve” in the next few days, hope­fully I’ll be right as rain in no time. This is my wound as it stands (oooh skin!) — doesn’t look too bad. 

That wound is just on the belt line which has meant this past week I’ve had to wear my trou­sers like all those hip boxer sho­wing kids do these days.