FINALLY, I’ve recovered my health and met all my outstanding deadlines & finally have time to update Kerri’s Kitchen.
Hindsight is always 20/20, but looking back on what happened to me, I should have known better. But I didn’t–I, a devoted health nut, ended up in the hospital emergency room with a RUPTURED APPENDIX.
Appendicitis can happen to ANYONE at ANY TIME (think celebrity Bret Michaels), so I thought I’d share my story in the hopes it helps someone else get help earlier than I did. As I learned after my attack, about 1 in 15 people will have a bout of appendicitis. If appendicitis is treated quickly, recovery from surgery only takes a few days. If you don’t get help before it ruptures, you can DIE.
And, contrary to what I thought before it happened to me, you might not have the “classic” symptom of a stabbing pain in your lower right abdomen. You might, like me, have a more generalized stomach/abdominal pain that is actually appendicitis.
Knowledge is Power. So, here’s my cautionary tale:
I started feeling a little bad just before Christmas 2009–kind of tired, no desire to run, and with a dull lower abdomen soreness I WRONGLY attributed to a muscle pull from the previous week’s run on the treadmill. THIS WAS MISSED CLUE #1.
Then, the day after Christmas, I started having a stomach/abdominal ache that just wouldn’t quit. At first, I thought I’d taken the wrong mix of supplements and given myself a “bellyache.” I also had a painful, burning sensation from my throat downward. I made a mistake: I just tried to “soldier through” and get over the pain. The only way I could get relief from the pain was to lay on the couch with my legs curled up to my chest. I slept the same way. MISSED CLUE #2. I did this for 2 more days, sipping Odwalla Superfood Juice & slowly losing my appetite (MISSED CLUE #3) and being unable to go the the bathroom (MISSED CLUE #4), finally becoming convinced that if I could just use the bathroom, I would feel fine (MISSED CLUE #5).
So, finally, at about 8:30 PM on Dec 29, I decided a brief walk on the treadmill might make this possible. I summoned all my energy & tried to walk at a 2.0 mph speed. Well, I lasted less than a minute and a half and then was overcome by an overwhelming abdominal pain that made me bend completely over (CLUE #6 FINALLY HIT A HOME RUN)–so my husband & I decided we’d better get to the emergency room. By this time, I was in incredible pain, bent over & moaning constantly.
My husband took me to Baylor Southwest Medical Center’s Emergency Room on Oakmont in Fort Worth. I actually sat in the Baylor emergency room, still moaning and bent over, for more than 40 minutes without ever being seen by anyone. My husband was furious by this time, repeatedly asking the receptionist for a trauma nurse, and we both decided that if this was the level of treatment at this facility, it was not the place for us.
So he loaded me back into the car and we drove another mile or so to Harris Methodist Southwest Hospital (Texas Health Resources Southwest) in Fort Worth. As soon as we arrived, a security guard put me in a wheelchair and wheeled me into the receiving area. A nurse was checking me in within 2 minutes and I was quickly in a private room in the ER, where I was given pain medicine. By midnight, a CAT scan confirmed appendicitis and I was tentatively scheduled for a 7 AM appendectomy.
Luckily for me, Dr. Gerald Stephenson, a FANTASTIC surgeon, had just left the hospital about 20 minutes before & the ER was able to reach him on his cell phone. He kindly returned to the hospital, greeted me and my husband & performed the surgery from about 2 AM to 3:30 AM. Had this been a “normal” appendectomy, the surgery would have taken less than 20 minutes. Learn from my mistake!
The rest is history. I have no doubt that Dr. Stephenson absolutely saved my life. I don’t know what would have happened to me (probably advanced peritonitis) if I’d had to wait until 7 AM for my surgery.
Dr. Gerald Stephenson’s surgical skill is without question and I recommend him most highly to anyone in the Southwest US (or anywhere else, for that matter), who needs a skilled, compassionate surgeon. I understand he is particularly skilled in cancer surgery and I’ve spent enough time in his waiting room to tell you that his patients are very grateful to him for his great skill as a surgeon and his kindness as a human being.
Now, as anyone who’s had a ruptured appendix knows all too well, the surgery was just the beginning of my “adventure.” I’ll post more about the cascade of events this triggered, then share my own “treatment plan” that finally helped me heal my digestive tract. Coming next…