Wednesday night, Andrew went to bed and mentioned his stomach hurt. Neither of us thought it was more than a stomach bug. His stomach worsened as time progressed and Andrew was up at 1:00am with pain and was in and out of sleep/pain the rest of the night. His alarm went off at 6:15am and he turned it off and immediately went back to sleep. At 7:30, I woke Andrew up and asked if he was going into work or not.
He was unsure about what to do. I suggested that Andrew shower and see how he felt afterwards. At this point all I knew was that his stomach was upset and he almost threw up twice. It became quite apparent after the shower that work wasn't an option as the pain progressed. Walking seemed to cause a lot of stress.
I quickly got out of my pajamas, so I could drive Andrew to the Emergency Room. We didn't bother taking the time to change James out of his jammies. (I drove faster than usual which Andrew later commented on.) We arrived at the E.R. at about 8:00am. It didn't seem particularly busy or crowded, but took a long time.
When the doctor came in, he pressed all over Andrew's stomach. When he touched near the appendix, Andrew screamed out in lots of pain and the doctor apologized. The doctor said if it was the olden days, they would have sent him back to surgery right away, but they needed to do a cat-scan just to verify. The results of the cat-scan took FOREVER it seemed.
Lots of waiting
Andrew's last time holding James for 2 weeks
The morphine had kicked in here
Right before surgery
One of the nurses came and found us before we were transferred out of the E.R. She said something like... "I didn't think it was actually your appendix. I thought it was just kidney stones." We both thought this was weird. Last time we were at this hospital was when I delivered James and the nurses didn't believe me when I told them my water broke. They must have lots of patients who have false alarms?
We were lucky that Andrew was able to have the surgery at 12:30pm and it was just under an hour long. Apparently there usually aren't openings until later on in the day. Both of my brothers have had this surgery before, so we knew what to expect and weren't too worried. Andrew has 3 incisions on his stomach. For the operation, they shaved his belly button hair. I was surprised when Andrew came out of the operation with orange (ish) iodine all over his tummy.
The surgeon said everything went well and Andrew has a follow-up appointment in a week. We left the hospital as soon as we could which was at 3:00pm. Many people mentioned how fast this whole surgery process was. Although the timing worked out in our favor, it was a very long day. (The little amount of the sleep the night before didn't help.) What a relief that we didn't have to spend the night in the hospital!
James was a trooper spending so much time bored in the hospital. He charmed all of the nurses and they even gave him a teddy bear. I'm so grateful we live near family. My sister came and stayed with me and helped with James during the surgery. My Mom brought food and followed us home from the hospital to make us delicious chicken noodle soup. We had friends bring by cookies and family order us pizza the next day which was such a treat. We are definitely watched over!
The recovery process hasn't been too bad. (Coming from the wife, not the patient.) In fact, Andrew is back at work today. Although I would never wish surgery on anyone, I was happy to get to see Andrew more than usual.
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