Appendectomy

So here is the whole story... This is mostly for me and to pass on to baby number two so sorry for all the details. Just skip to the pictures if you want that's the best part! :)

Wednesday morning September 16 I woke up around 3am just feeling a bit sick, I tried to ignore it but couldn't and ended up sitting up most of the night trying to figure out what I had eaten that made me so sick.

As the morning went on I began to feel pain in my lower right abdomen that I attributed to ligament pain from sleeping on the couch all night. After sitting in my room in tears for about 20 mins(i am pregnant I cry alot!) trying to figure out how I was going to make it through the day with Madison and Ryan, I asked Phil for a blessing. I figured both the pain and the nausea would go away with time so I went about my day as best I could waiting for it to get better.

It didn't... I spent most of the day on the couch while the kids played. Thank goodness for my wonderful neighbor Jocelyn who came and took Madison for me for most of the evening while Phil was at school. By the time he got home I was having pain when I walked or really moved much at all. The pain was central to my lower abdomen but I was still nauseous and that was the feeling I wanted gone the most. The pepto-bismol did little to help that.

Sitting awake all night Wednesday night/ Thursday morning September 17th I began to rule out food related illness and began to worry it was pregnancy related and started to worry about the baby. I decide I would call my OB Dr. Scott as soon as it was a decent hour. I made it to about 5am. I told him I had been sick all day and night and that I had some muscle pain in my abdomen. He told me to go into the labor and delivery floor at the hospital to have some tests done to see if they could find out why I was feeling so sick.

We left Madison with that same wonderful neighbor and Phil drove me to the hospital at 6am. They put me on an IV to hydrate me, which apprently was enough to make the nausea go away. However the pain in my abdomen did not and once the nausea was gone I realized the pain was much worse than I had given it credit for. I pointed this out to the nurse and she mentioned it to my Dr. who asked to have some blood work done. Come to find out my numbers were all screwy, one of which was the white blood cell count which was up to 18000 the normal being between 4,000 and 10,000. At this point Dr. Scott came in to see me and after having another blood test and talking with me some more, informed me I was going to be admitted to the hospital and that I would not be eating just in case they needed to do surgery, he guessed it might be my appendix at this point. I would not have lamented the no food thing if he had told me this two hours earlier, but now that the nausea had subsided my lack of food for the last two days was catching up to me and I was hungry!

From here they sent me in for a level two ultra sound of the baby to make sure her growth rate and all was well with her. Which it was, she was active all along kicking me every so often just to remind me I was still in pain. It was not so fun being poked and prodded from the outside and the inside!

It was about 12pm Thursday that they finally took me to a room, Phil left to go take care of Madison and they continued to do more tests! The first of which was another ultra sound to check my appendix. Normally they would just do a CT scan however with the baby that was not an option so they thought they would try the ultra sound. I have to say this was the most painful thing I had experienced so far. They start by asking me where it hurts and then proceed to push on that exact spot as hard as they can with the ultra sound probe to see if they can get deep enough to see the appendix which from that angle is below a lot of other organs. This lasted about 2o min with the tech and then she called the Radiologist in to see if he could get a better look so I endured the same torture for another 10 min while they tried to make out the image on the screen. All the while the baby was kicking back each time she got pushed around with the probe and my appendix happen to be somewhere in between! Not so fun. The worst part was by the end of it the Radiologist tells me it was an inconclusive test... WHAT! After all that, really! Anyway, so back to bed for an hour or so, more blood tests and some baby monitoring.

Next was the renal and ovarian ultra sounds. Why they couldn't do all these at the same time is beyond me. These happened at about 8:00pm about 5 hours later. This was after Phil and Madison had come to visit, a visit that didn't last very long once Madison realized the space she was allowed to play in was the size of a bathroom. My favorite part of all the tests is they wheel you around the hospital on a bed, with you flat on your back, makes you feel really silly, especially when you feel like you could walk.

Which at this point I did feel I could walk, in fact compared to how I had felt prior to coming to the hospital I was doing great. Which between that and the fact that my white blood cell count was going down was keeping the doctors quite stumped, usually if it is your appendix you are supposed to get progressively more sick. Wich is part of the reason I had to have so many tests and talk to about 10 different doctors. I fit the bill for appendices, but not quite, because I was getting better. What I think it really was, was now that I wasn't nauseous I just wanted to go home and eat so in my head I was better! Opps I guess I made their job harder.

My blood count was down but still high for normal so Dr. Scott called the General Surgeon Dr. Kodama in to talk to me and between them they decided I should have an MRI since I couldn't have the CT scan.

That happened at about 12pm on Thursday night. This was a pretty crazy experience. I am just glad I am not claustrophobic because I am sure I could not have done that if I were. They put me on a table, strapped some board to my chest and stomach, gave me ear plugs, told me to put my hands above my head on the table, and not to move. Then the table moves into a huge tube like thing, the machine in is huge not the opening you move into, you only have about 1/2 and inch between the board on your chest and the inside of the machine. This is the fun part. The machine makes these ridiculous loud popping sounds and a little voice comes on and tells you to hold your breath so you have to hold your breath for about 10-20 secs while they take the pictures. This is repeated about 4 times for each different set of popping sounds, the machine is re-set and then you have to go through the whole thing again, it all lasted about 35 minutes. It was nerve wrecking because you don't want to screw up and breath when you aren't supposed to, but its hard to hold your breath that many times that close together, and its a pretty small space. The worst part though was how uncomfortable it was, my hands and feet both fell asleep because I couldn't move. I was glad to be done that's for sure. The one cool thing that came from that was the technician that did the MRI showed me the cross section of the baby, I can't say that made it worth it but it was neat.

I finally was allowed to go to sleep to be woken up about 5 hours later to be told I was going into surgery to have my appendix out and that it was in fact inflamed. So after a short call to Phil and a text or two to mom and dad I was hauled off to surgery. They didn't put me under medication until I was laying on the operating table, so I got to see the room and all the big lights they use. The next thing I remember was waking up and thinking I was going to choke to death because the tube was down my throat that was used to keep me breathing through the operation. I really wanted to rip it out but couldn't because my hands were strapped down at my sides. Once they took it out I feel right back asleep and then remember being out in recovery and them trying to find Phil to bring him back, they finally did and then I still had a hard time keeping my eyes open, but at least this time I remember everything unlike with the DC when Phil said I was saying crazy things as I woke up.

They took me back to my room and hooked my up to the baby monitors to make sure she was still alive and well and that I wasn't going into labor or anything. Once they confirmed that they left and Phil and I both promptly fell asleep right where we were. After about 20 min I sent Phil home to go sleep in a bed and I slept most of the morning. When I did wake up I felt great! Im sure that had a lot to do with the pain meds but the side pain was gone the only pain left was specific to the three holes in my stomach that were used for the laprascopic instruments used for the surgery.

The Surgeon was kind enough to get us a copy of the pictures taken during the surgery and explained to us a little of what we were looking at so that's whats shown here and his description of the location of the appendix is his little drawing at the bottom of the page.

So that was our week and now I am home and should be recovered pretty quickly!