Ruptured

On Friday, I wrote a post about my appendicitis—at 22 weeks pregnant—as I was lying in my hospital bed, waiting for my impending surgery. It had been a hell of a 30 hours, but I was OK. As long as I was lying completely still, the pain wasn’t that bad. And when I did have to move, it hurt like hell, but I could still move. I could take myself to the bathroom. I was looking forward to my surgery to give me relief.

I had no idea that instead, things were about to get much, much worse.

Around noon, the doctors told me that I’d probably be brought down to surgery around 2 p.m. Then I was told by someone else that it might be 5-6 hours. But lo and behold, around 2:15, my nurse came in and said that they would be sending a transport team for me very shortly in order to take me down to pre-op. She prepared me by asking me to take off jewelry, and then it occurred to me that I was still wearing a bra. I asked if I should take it off, and she said yes. So I sat up in bed to do so. And I was sitting there, something went wrong. Very, very wrong.

I commented that suddenly, things felt different. Things were hurting a lot more. With every passing minute, I was in more and more agony. The pain was now not only on my right side, by radiating across my entire abdomen. I was lying back down, trying to breathe, trying to talk myself through it. Michael and my mom were doing what they could to support me, but we were all helpless.

The transport team came to get me to take me downstairs, but there was one problem: They couldn’t take me on the stretcher I was on, and I literally could not move to get myself onto the other one. The pain was too much. So the doctors in L&D triage scrambled to get me some pain meds. In went one dose. No relief. In went another. Again, nothing. My mom and my nurse looked at each other and the nurse said, “I’m afraid it’s ruptured.” My OB stopped by to check on me and come with me to surgery, and she told my mom the same thing. There was really no other explanation for my pain having increased so much, so quickly.

Ultimately, they decided they NEEDED to get me downstairs, and that they would just have to move me on their own. So they moved the stretchers as close together as possible and then lifted me from one onto the other. I cannot even describe to you the pain. CANNOT.DESCRIBE.

Once downstairs, we all thought I’d be taken into surgery very quickly, but unfortunately, that was not the case. The surgical team—particularly the anesthesiologist—were taking their sweet time. Similarly to when I was in the late stages of labor with Nora, I was BEGGING people to put me out of my misery. I BEGGED them to take me to the O.R., PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE. My poor pre-op nurse, she felt so badly for me, but she could not light a fire under the asses of the necessary people. They just would.not.move.faster. She paged/called the anesthesiologist FIVE TIMES.

And then we had the pleasure of meeting my surgeon. O.M.G. He came into the curtain area and stared at me as I was writhing around in and very openly vocalizing my pain. He spoke slowly, but not in a way that was comforting… it was awkward. He never said anything reassuring. Nothing kind. After saying something about who I was and what I was having done today, he looked at me and goes, “Do you think you’re in labor?”

DUDE. WHAT THE F*CK.

First of all, I am the patient. I really have no idea what the hell is happening to me right now, other than the pain I have coursing all throughout my middle. Secondly, WHY would you say such a thing?? I am 22 weeks pregnant, and the last thing I want someone to suggest to me—especially with no evidence—is that I may be in labor.

I was freaking out. I was scared about the pain I was feeling, because in addition to my entire abdomen under fire, I actually began to think I was feeling pressure down below. The pain was too much to bear—I’d argue it was even worse than labor and natural childbirth, if you can believe it. I hit a point where I couldn’t even breathe and I knew I was minutes (maybe seconds) away from hyperventilating. Which would have been awful. And Michael? Michael was pacing back and forth, ready to gut someone.

In the meantime, the pre-op team had been giving me additional doses of the meds I had upstairs (Dilaudid), but no matter how much they gave me, it was not TOUCHING the pain. Finally, they tried something else—Fentanyl—and although I could still feel a TON of pain, it finally took enough of the edge off so that I was in that “It hurts like hell but I don’t give a crap” state of mind. I felt my breathing ease and my mind relax. Michael and my mom said that my eyes were rolling back in my head.

The anesthesiologist FINALLY came to talk to me but unfortunately for him, he was very late, so I was basically incapable of communicating any longer. I heard him explain the risks of the anesthesia and surgery to my mom and Michael. They included death—of the baby, of myself—which was scary to hear, even though I couldn’t really express myself. Of course, all warnings before surgery usually include the chance of death, but this was scarier than normal given the circumstances.

I was taken back to surgery and very painfully moved from the stretcher to the operating table. Someone from L&D came in and listened to the baby’s heartbeat with a doppler, and after a few more minutes of torture, I was finally put out.

Before I knew it, they were waking me up, saying it was all over. I knew right away that surgery wasn’t the magic fix that I had hoped it would be. I was still in a tremendous amount of pain. I spent an hour in post-op with a not-friendly nurse. She wasn’t terrible, but she just wasn’t that nice. I asked if it had been confirmed that my appendix had burst, and she said she didn’t know. She wasn’t conversational, didn’t try to keep me company. It was annoying. But soon I was transported back up to L&D.

The nurse who took me back up was someone who volunteered to go—not my post-op nurse, she wouldn’t have volunteered for anything—and she was very nice. She talked to me more in 10 minutes than the post-op nurse had talked to me in an hour. As this nurse was wheeling me into the elevator on my stretcher, these two guys rushed to help her and helped push me in. But they didn’t know to be careful and pushed me too hard, banging my stretcher against the back of the elevator. OH.EM.GEE. At that point, I was wondering if I was the subject of a bad reality show or something. So many things that were so wrong.

Once upstairs, I did learn through the L&D nurse grapevine that my appendix had, in fact, ruptured. I knew as much—there was no other explanation for that pain—but now it was officially confirmed.

This was all on Friday afternoon/evening, and it’s Monday night now. I’m still in the hospital. My stay has been prolonged for a number of reasons, many of which I’ll try to tell you about in more detail tomorrow. I’m too weak/sick to continue sitting up like this, plus this post has already grown long and all I’ve done so far is update you on what happened Friday!

It has been a lot more difficult than anticipated. More tomorrow.