Month: January 2020

When I had my appendix removed, the whole process was quite a bit more drama than most people generally experience while undergoing this procedure. Just getting to the hospital took more time and effort than I thought necessary, but my dad always did have different priorities than I did. Apparently, coffee and cigarettes listed higher on his list of concerns than the dying child in his car. I would have hoped that I ranked at least a little higher among his top three, but ultimately that was just wishful thinking.

We did make it to the hospital, if not quite intact, at least alive. I went into the emergency room and was admitted almost immediately. Things appeared to be looking up.

I was moved into an examination room, changed into a paper gown, and told to lie down on a gurney. A nurse began poking and prodding my stomach causing me to break out in a sweat. “Does that hurt?” she asked.

“Only a lot,” I told her.

“It looks like you’re having trouble with your appendix.”

I agreed with the prognoses and figured the examination was over. But I soon discovered it was only just getting started. After the nurse finished trying to make me jump off the gurney, she wrote some notes on a chart and left. As soon as she was gone, a guy in a white coat walked in. I assume he was a doctor. At least, I hope so, since he pulled up my paper gown without so much as a, “pardon me,” and started jabbing at my lower stomach with his fingers.

“Does that hurt?” he asked.

I screamed once, which I assumed was the agreed upon signal for, “Yes.”

“It looks like it’s your appendix,” he said.

Then a girl stepped into the room. I say, “girl,” not because I’m trying to be dismissive, but rather because she appeared to be about ten years old. She looked liked she might have been there for “bring your kid to work, day.” Although she was also wearing a white coat, she didn’t look old enough to be watching R-rated movies, much less working in a hospital. I can’t remember her name, so I will just refer to her as Dr. Preschool.

The older doctor introduced me to Dr. Preschool and told me she was doing her first-year residency at the hospital. He then told me she was going to do an examination on me.

As she approached my bed, I said, “Let me save you some time. It looks like my appendix.”

Dr. Preschool smiled at me, then spent the next five minutes torturing me mercilessly. There was a great deal more prodding than either the nurse or the older doctor had found necessary. This was followed by a great deal more screaming on my part.

“It looks like your appendix,” she finally said.

“You think?” I asked. “What was your first clue?”

Next, I signed some forms saying that if the hospital killed me during surgery I was totally cool with it, followed by a few more forms that said if they didn’t kill me but messed me up real bad I was okay with that, too.

After the paperwork was completed, the older doctor gave me some unexpected news. He said that Dr. Preschool was going to be the one performing my surgery. I asked if she was old enough to be playing with sharp objects, but he said everything would be fine. He would be observing the operation the entire time.

Well, that was certainly a relief. I was glad to hear that he would be watching while Dr. Preschool cut me open. It was nice knowing my homicide would have a witness.

About an hour later, I was wheeled into an operating room and a plastic mask was placed over my face. Dr. Preschool hovered over me and said, “Just breathe deep. You might feel a little dizzy from the gas, but don’t worry. It will feel like you just drank a lot of beers really fast.”

It was not a very comforting statement. Right before being cut open, nobody wants to hear that in addition to your surgeon being a child, she might also be a raging alcoholic. Before I could object, however, I passed out.

When I woke up a couple hours later, I couldn’t breathe. I mean I literally could not breathe. I couldn’t draw air into my chest, and I began to thrash around in a panic. Somebody put an oxygen mask on me and started an albuterol treatment to open up my lungs. It helped. Several minutes later, when I was certain I wouldn’t die of asphyxiation, I finally began to calm down.

I found out later that while I was unconscious, they had experienced some difficulty intubating me. By “some difficulty,” I mean they couldn’t get the tube into my lungs to keep me breathing. It took several attempts and by the time they finally accomplished it, they had done so much damage to my larynx that my throat closed up from the swelling. There was some damage to the vocal cords as well. I didn’t talk normally for months afterwards.

That was the bad news. The good news was that I was so traumatized by the whole event that they gave me some really powerful drugs to calm me down and stop any subsequent panic attacks. So … thanks for that, guys.

A few hours later, they let me go home. I got the usual warnings about taking it easy and not lifting anything that weighed more than ten pounds. That didn’t go over really well with my wife since our new baby weighed about fifteen pounds at the time.

“Sorry, dear. Dr. Preschool’s orders.”

Fortunately, my parents lived close by and they were able to help out while I was recuperating.

Well, actually my mom was the one that helped out.

My dad was too busy getting coffee.

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Many years ago, I had my appendix removed. It was supposed to be a simple procedure; I would be on the table for twenty minutes, wait another couple hours to wake up and recover from the anesthetic, then they would send me home.

Things did not go as smoothly as I was promised. In fact, I am quite fortunate to still be around to tell the harrowing tale.

This is the main reason that today I do not trust hospitals or doctors.

Or my parents.

Especially, my parents.

It all happened about twenty years ago when my wife and I still lived in San Jose, just a few houses away from my mom and dad. Yes, I lived in the same neighborhood as my parents. My wife and I moved there right before my oldest daughter, EM1, was born. We figured it would be a good idea to be close to family because they could help with the baby.

This was a mistake we corrected about a year later.

Anyway, back to my appendix.

I went to work that night, feeling absolutely fine. I worked the graveyard shift from 7 o’clock at night until 7 o’clock in the morning. The first few hours of the shift were quiet, and at about 10 o’clock I decided to get something to eat. I went to a local pizza shop and ordered a small pepperoni pizza.

Three hours after I ate, I was in the bathroom of the police department locker room, throwing up. I thought I had food poisoning, or that an employee at the restaurant had put something noxious on my pizza. Between bouts of vomiting and stomach cramps, I contemplated going back to the restaurant and fire-bombing the place. Fortunately for everyone involved, I was far too ill to act on any of my delirium-induced fantasies. I wasn’t going anywhere.

On a side note, if you have never had the pleasure of being on your hands and knees in a locker room bathroom, throwing up into a toilet that probably had not been properly cleaned in over a decade, I don’t recommend it.

My supervisor found me in the fetal position later that night and sent me home. As soon as I thought I could stand up without throwing up again, I took his advice. I drove home, crawled into bed, and fell asleep immediately.

I woke the next morning with sharp pains running through the lower right side of my stomach. It wasn’t food poisoning after all.

I woke up my wife and told her I needed to go to the hospital.

Because we had the new baby in the house, my wife called my parents and asked them to drive me to the emergency room to get checked out. They came over right away.

And by “right away,” I mean about an hour later. Apparently, driving the car 200 feet from their house to ours was quite an ordeal.

They hustled me into the car and headed for the hospital. I was in so much pain, I closed my eyes. Not because it made me feel better, but because if I threw up, I didn’t want to see the look of disappointment in my parents’ eyes when I ruined the upholstery of their car. A few minutes later, I felt the car pull to a stop, and my dad turned off the ignition.

I opened my eyes and asked if we were at the hospital already. Instead of a big, red-and-white emergency room sign, I saw a giant, neon owl, and the words, “HOOZ DONUTS.”

My mom turned around in her seat and told me, “Your father wanted to stop and get coffee. He’ll be just a minute.”

Then, as an afterthought, she asked, “Do you want anything?”

What I wanted was to not die from a burst appendix in the parking lot of a donut shop. But rather than say what I was thinking, I just sat there and watched as my dad went inside the shop, stepped up to the counter and ordered coffee. He chatted with the only employee in the shop while the kid poured coffee into a Styrofoam cup, then he paid and waited while the same kid fished out twenty-eight cents in change from the register.

How do I know it was twenty-eight cents? Because I watched him drop those same coins into his cup holder when he got back to the car. I had plenty of time to total up the amount while my dad took a sip of his new coffee, set the cup into a different cup holder, and lit up a cigarette. I guess he figured he had two other kids, so if one died in the back seat of the car while he was having his morning coffee and cigarette it wouldn’t be that great of a tragedy.

My dad was always so practical.

He cracked the window (because he was such a thoughtful guy) then finally drove out of the parking lot to take me to the hospital. I sat in the back seat shivering in the 35-degree air blowing over me during the entire drive. Did I mention it was winter? No?

It was winter.

At last we arrived at the hospital. I staggered into the emergency room, hunched over like Quasimodo and grateful I had lived long enough to reach help. I thought the worst of the ordeal was behind me now that I had found trained professionals that could aid me in my hour of need.

I was so very wrong. How much worse could it get? Come back next week, and find out what it’s like to have your surgery conducted by a toddler.

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Enjoying Deep Dark Thoughts? Follow me on Facebook so you don’t miss a post. Just go to my page and click the “Like” button to receive updates on my blog and other projects.

And you can follow me on Twitter @gallenwilbanks.