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United States5162 Posts
I just returned home from a near weeklong stay in the hospital after having unexpected major surgery. Besides the major surgery, the stay subjected me to a number of things I thought, and really hoped, I would never experience. I went in to the surgery expecting a little a-typical but still pretty mundane appendectomy, and came out without my appendix plus parts of my bladder and colon.
The direct symptoms that convinced me to go to a doctor started 2 weekends ago, but symptoms I didn’t recognize like regular diarrhea and other bowel problems go back at least three to four months. The weekend before Thanksgiving I started having a little stomach pain before going away for a couple weeks until the Saturday before last. It came back as near debilitating pain from my stomach down the right side of my pelvis into my right testical. Rather than go to Urgent Care or the Emergency Room I waited it out a bit, and by late Saturday the pain had started going away so I decided to setup a doctor exam for that week first thing on Monday. By dumb luck the first place I was recommended had an opening that Wednesday morning. The doctor examined me and felt it was either Appendicitis or Kidney stones combined with an out of whack digestive system, then set me up for a CT Scan that afternoon and use some antibiotics before starting a probiotic.
By far the worst part of a CT Scan is the terrible shake you have to drink first so they can get contrast between all the stuff inside your body. It made me gag trying to drink it and didn’t settle well either so I only get down 2/3s. They also have another type of contrast fluid that they inject directly into you, and since the first scan using the drinkable kind didn’t get the results needed I ended up having to do that, too. The scan revealed an appendix with severely thickened walls. Also noted was some thickening of a small portion of the bladder and colon walls, but nothing too out of order. Because of how severe the appendix appeared the doctor there decided I need to go to the hospital for an immediate appendectomy.
Before the surgery the surgeon prepped me for what was going to happen. He hoped he could do the least invasive laparoscopic surgery, but he might have to do the slightly more traditional and invasive surgery with a larger incision to open up my abdomen. He figured at worse I’d be in the hospital a couple days. He of course mentioned that something can always go unexpected, but as I my vision went blurry and I passed out from anesthetic I was looking forward to being home by Friday. As already said, the unexpected happened and my ‘routine’ half hour surgery turned into a two and a half hour major surgery that removed an appendix as hard as a hot dog, 6 inches of my colon which had fused with the appendix and been infected with growths, and a portion of my bladder wall which also had fused with the appendix. Turns out I have a fairly rare inflammatory bowl disease called Crohn’s disease which can cause a lot of different problems, but doctors don’t really know shit about why it starts or how to cure it. Some think it may even be multiple diseases that cause overlapping symptoms.
Since this is already getting pretty long I don’t see the need to go over all the details of the next 6 days in the hospital, but walking was recommended to get the bowels started again since they had been through such a shock. So about twelve hours after surgery I managed to hobble about 30 feet with a walker then turning around and hobbling back to bed. I must have still had some anesthetic in me or the drugs were stronger than the next day because 24 hours later it was dreadful to stand and I barely made it past the door. After that it became a lot easier and the next day I was even able to get rid of the walker. It was also the first four days that were filled with much more than painful walking, though, as I experienced a catheter, a tube down into my stomach which I pulled out at the end of day three because it was digging a hole through my throat, three days of no digestion except for a small amount of water and crushed pills, a suppository on the start of day four to get some bowel movement going, and two more days of terrible bloating and gas as my insides restarted from a near standstill. Once that happened I moved, surprisingly quickly now that I think about it, from broths and other pure liquids to solid foods.
All in all, I went in Wednesday night thinking things would be simple and came out this afternoon never happier to be home. While I’m extremely thankful to the great hospital staff for their care and professionalism, even during times I was not as cooperative as I could’ve been( mainly during the many nightly interruptions which I forced them to mostly stop by day 3), being in a hospital for that long sucks. It’s really frustrating to have to keep waiting for your body to function right, especially once you start feeling a little better and are able to walk around freely. But I’m incredibly happy, and hopefully can get this disease in check so I don’t need any more colectomies or other major surgeries. I was supposed to see some of my family in New Orleans on Christmas but won’t be flying now, so I’ll take the Christmas gift of a healthy recovery.
Merry Christmas Everyone!
If you want to see the stapled incision a day after surgery open the spoiler
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My wife had a similar situation just before Thanksgiving. Ended up in the hospital for a week with what should have been a simple outpatient procedure. At least she really got major perspective on what the patients feel (she's an RN).
Glad you made it home for the holidays, may they be happy!
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United States5162 Posts
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Past two years I spent Christmas in the hospital... keeping my fingers crossed it'll be different this year!
Take it easy and merry Christmas!
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HI! 5 stars, I'm not a big commenter on blogs (but I read a ton of them...)
Firstly, man that sucks and good to see you're better now! Some would say its Christmas ruined but hey, at least your here for many more (hopefully!)
I'm a medical student so reading your post was through a different lens than most readers (well I assume so).
It is interesting to read in many ways, your experience, and the fact how it was done.
Whilst I'm not a doctor (and thankfully!) I've still had the chance to explain to patients about to undergo surgery what exactly it entails (obviously supervised by the real doctors who'll fill in any gaps). I've found that most people only have a vague idea about the surgery -- which in my opinion is totally understandable. Not too many people, and I was one of them before starting med school, can visualise (or heck even know the existence of) their appendix so don't really understand much apart from 'we're cutting a hole in your abdomen region and taking it out'. The understanding of the procedure you seem to display is quite extraordinary, so that's pretty cool!
My question to you is, does this understanding of the procedure make it any scarier? I've always assumed that perhaps ignorance of what is going might put people more at ease.
I found your description of what happens after the procedure to also be quite enlightening. I've seen it many times, the slow process of upgrading from liquids all the way through to solids; the enemas (i assume thats what they put up your backside to get the bowels?) and the double contrast (the drink + the injection, im scared of injections so to me you are a brave man/woman/xelnaga/other!). It seemed like something that patients just had to put up with because well, not like there was much choice. Reading your reflection makes me realise that it's actually quite tough (not that I thought it wasn't, just if you've never experienced it it's kinda hard to really know).
Another question, how bad is the pain? I know that the pain is usually quite bad when you arrive to hospital (aka before treatment has been started) but I've never had anyone describe to me their pain feeling after operation. Is it a little better, a lot better, different completely, or some other? It's not meant to be a natural process, ya'know, having a big hole and a cut through your tummy so I imagine it's gotta hurt like heck! No doubt they probably loaded you on painkillers, but still I've heard from second-hand that sometimes they just don't seem to feel like they are doing much.
Also the diagnoses of Crohns is something i didn't see coming as the answer to you (well okay, it wouldn't have been my top 3 choices, probably somewhere in the top 20 causes). Unfortunately the issue with Crohns (from my super unreliable and dont-trust-me-i-know-nothing knowledge) is that it can mimic (aka look like) other disease (think of it like a changeling) so it's possible to think it's appendicitiis.
Good to hear you got out the hospital relatively unscathed. Overall what do you think about hospitals now that you've had this event, any changes or things you thought could be better?
And about those tubes... lol I've put a few in myself, and yeah I don't envy you. Haha sometimes it's so easy (well okay, not EASY easy, but you know what I mean) to just do it because you have to, whilst secretly thinking "i'd never want that on myself". Is having those tubes actually painful or just discomfort? Most people seem to kind of get used to it, but i feel they might just be holding back their discontentment because they know it's for their good.
Best of luck, and let's hope it never happens again! (Although you would be quite special if you somehow got appendicitis without an appendix...)
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United States5162 Posts
Thanks Onekobold!
@Chips
Had I known what was actually going to be done I probably would have been a lot more worried that I was going in. I'm not really a worrier and appendectomies are petty common so I was confident everything would be fine. If I had known what was really needed I think I would have been more worried about the recovery process than the procedure itself, though.
Your description of just having to go through the procedures and deal with them being kind of crappy is spot on. It's for the greater good so you just suck it up and deal with it knowing/hoping it will get better tomorrow.
Besides the 1 Saturday that convinced me to go to the doctor, the pain after the surgery has been far worse than what I was having before. Before it was a general pain in my stomach and going down the right side of my abdomen. Most of the time it was just a background pain and then it would cause shooting pains as well that would be really noticeable. After surgery obviously the area where all the work was done was the most painful. They had me on 20mg an hour of pain medicine(I forget what it was exactly) and then I could do a demand dose for another 15mg every 6 minutes. As long as I didn't move around it wasn't too bad, but just twisting the first couple days was pretty painful. Trying to walk the second day is probably one of the most painful things I've experienced, which before was probably tearing ankle ligaments. I also had to stay up on the demand doses or else the pain would sneak up on me and be pretty bad until I could use a few more. That was particularly a problem when I feel asleep for a few hours. The tube was also pretty uncomfortable, but not very painful the first couple days. It wasn't until the 3rd day it started rubbing in the inside of the my throat really bad, and then when I made it worse messing with it I just decided I had enough.
The one thing that surprised me about the stay is how much they check up on you and what time they think is a good idea to get blood samples. Night time at the hospital seems like when they get everything done and the first few night I got terrible sleep because I was always being woken up to give check my vitals, take some shots, or get blood. By the 3rd night I was telling them if it's not urgent, let me sleep. It was also a little louder than I expected with washers or other machinery always present in the background.
Thanks for the well wishes!
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EPT![[image loading]](http://www.imgur.com/2GXE9HP)
