Horrible Appendix
As long as I am telling medical stories I might as well add the last one.
I was parked sitting in my truck one night. Something fell onto the floor so I leaned over to pick it up. I could not reach it. My belly must have gotten a bit large over the years. I made a greater effort, this time, In giving more energy to reach over farther, something happened. I did not hear anything but it is as if something ripped or broke inside my abdomen.
It was a weekend coming up so I was at home. Something was wrong. My system was completely stopped up. I had no pain and no fever. I tried every kind of over the counter remedy I could think of. “I am not going to the Emergency Room for constipation!”, I thought.
Something still was not right. I thought I would give the situation until the following Monday. I thought of going to the ER with a paper sack over my head. Monday came and I realized I may need to go the hospital, but how would I explain my complaint?
At the ER they did a scan of my abdomen. A surgeon came to me and said, “You have a ruptured appendix. It has to come out right away”. I could not believe it. They did surgery immediately.
The surgeon came to me in the recovery room. “It was just horrible, just horrible.” He kept saying that over and over. Wasn't he a surgeon? Hadn't he seen insides before? He could not believe that there was a living human being on the operating table in front of him. I was full of gangrene. He told me the area was dead and had been dead for a long time. He did not speculate how long. It sounded like months or years. I thought a person had minutes to maybe hours to get help for such a thing.
Very sadly, this 35 to 40 year old doctor was killed in a plane crash just a few weeks later. I thank God for keeping me alive until this doctor could help me. I also thank God for keeping this Christian doctor alive until he could perform the strangest surgery of his career. I do not understand any of it.
Dec. 3, 2023