When Body Organs Revolt

"There are several steps to realizing that your appendix must be removed."

Thus begins the paper that i wrote about my eighth grade trip. See, where i went to school, every year up until the year after my class (they don't do it anymore - but that's a different story), the school would take all of the eighth graders on a camping trip to Camp Lucerne in Neshkoro, Wisconsin. As you may have gathered from the opening of this post, mine didn't go exactly according to plan.

The first night of the trip, a Tuesday in the spring of 1999, largely consisted of the journey to Devil's Lake, where the students were divided into groups and dumped unceremoniously at random locations around the park. We were instructed to find our lunches from there. My group came in last. After lunch, there was another lengthy bus ride to the actual campground, where we spent some time lighting things on fire before being sent to our cabins for the night. My cabin got yelled at for playing loud music well past lights out, which shouldn't be much of a surprise, really.

Wednesday morning, i woke up and i felt absolutely awful, but it's not like i could really call in sick to camp, so i got up and tried to make things work. At the time, i didn't really feel like anything was out of the ordinary, just your average run-of-the-mill sick day. Of course, my little group, or task force or whatever they called it, had been assigned to kitchen duty for breakfast. So, ill as i was, i went ahead and prepared breakfast for seventy odd kids and a fistful of teachers. It was eggs. Also notable: the camp's tap water came out of the faucet green, and after about ten seconds became somewhat transparent. We were assured that this was normal.

My little group was then sent to a canoeing class, which was a subject i had some experience with, what with my being a Boy Scout and all. Really, all that knowledge really only served to tell me that this was not going to end well, given my present physical condition, but i dutifully followed instructions and got into a canoe. I suspect that my motivation up to this point, what with the breakfast preparing and the canoeing and all, was that i was in a group with this girl that i had an enormous, immeasurable crush on. Eventually, though, even that got outweighed. Due to a strange set of coincidences, i ended up wrecking my favorite pair of pants, and i asked to leave the class early since i wasn't feeling up to it.

I walked straight from the beach to the payphone to call home. What had started as a run-of-the-mill sick day had taken quite a different direction, and i really couldn't bear to be there anymore. I had a five-minute calling card, which at the time were free in packs of Pepsi, so i put it to use. My conversation with my mom basically consisted of me trying to convince her i was dying, and her trying to convince me i was fine. In a strange twist on normal parent-child relations, it turns out i was right.

Well, my calling card ran out midway through the argument, and asking around for change was of no avail, so i decided that she had been right and i'd just stick it out. One of the teachers (one of the best - and i'm very sad to say that she is no longer with us) made me a pot of honey tea, and i retired to my cabin for some rest. Conditions were somewhat less than ideal - it was difficult to get comfortable on them anyway, so the burning in my guts made it nigh impossible.

Within the hour, i jumped bolt upright from a dead sleep, blasted out the door and puked completely undigested eggs all over a tree. About an hour after that, my first lucky break occurred: my dad showed up at the camp. On the long car ride home, i attempted to sleep, but things were getting worse and i just couldn't do it. Upon arrival back home i returned to bed, where i spent the remainder of the day and subsequent night. All i ended up eating and keeping down that day was a bit of ice cream late in the evening.

Thursday morning, the pain had localized itself into my right side. I crawled downstairs and into my parents' bed, since they were both gone to work, and watched MTV while my brother and cousin (two cousins and an aunt were living with us at this time) got themselves ready for school. Later, i had relocated to the bathroom and was sitting on the toilet, clutching a bucket, when i vomited up what i could then only identify as "yellow stuff." In retrospect, i'm almost positive it was bile.

After that, i thought i was feeling better, but the pain was starting to grow exponentially. I started to speak to God, and after a few minutes moved on to a more plausible immediate savior: my aunt, who was sleeping upstairs. I think she worked second shift at that time, i'm not really sure. Shouting became yelling became screaming and after ten minutes or so, my younger cousin came down the stairs angrily and demanded, "What do you want?!" I told him to get his mom.

"Which side is your appendix on?" i asked as soon as she came into the room. I remember being more than a little surprised at her calm demeanor as she handled the rest of the situation; she called 911 and spoke with professionalism that i'd never known from her. Soon after, i was riding in an ambulance with my pastor. He's an EMT. Odd combination?

"I don't think you're going to have an appendix for very much longer," i remember him saying on the drive.

As the ambulance sped out of town, i was asked where the pain fell on a scale of one to ten. "Nine," i quickly replied. "Because the only thing worse than this must be childbirth."

After half an hour, maybe 45 minutes, of speeding along some hideously neglected roads and feeling every bump ripple through my body starting with the lower right abdomen, i was admitted to the UW Hospital's ER. They stuck an IV in my arm and started to pump me full of fluids, handed me a jug, and requested a urine sample.

This proved more difficult to provide than i had anticipated. I simply could not pee. The nurses were pumping me full of a massive quantity of water. They started the obligatory conversation about waterfalls and rainstorms and floods and fire hydrants, They left me alone in the room with a dripping faucet. Minutes went by. Hours went by. Days. Years. Decades. Braveheart. Finally, a doctor walked in, took one look at me, and said, "Well, i guess we'll have to get a catheter." The floodgates opened up, and suddenly that jug was not big enough. That's not a metaphor; i overflowed it.

They confirmed appendicitis, put me under, and took it out.

Six hours later, i woke up in recovery with a tube up my nose.

"How do you feel?" i was asked.

"Fine," i said. "Can i go home now?"

"No, we've got to keep you in the hospital until at least Monday," was the reply. "But you may take the tube out of your nose now."

"Tube...?" I reached up, and there was a tube in my nose. THERE WAS A TUBE IN MY NOSE. So i pulled it out. Sucker was long, too, i could feel it way back in my skull.

Then i requested my appendix in a jar. I had heard that they do that, give them back. My request was denied. Something about a biohazard. Bunch of bullshit if you ask me. I should've had my appendix removed in the sixties.

I was wheeled up to my room, where my parents were waiting. The pediatric level was full, so i ended up in a regular-person room, single occupancy. Worked out pretty well for me.

Being as i was fourteen at the time, i was highly disappointed to discover that the hospital did not get MTV. When you're a fourteen year old male in the United States, MTV is on the level with God. If there's a Gideon's Bible in the room, there ought to be MTV. I would never say that about MTV nowadays, but my memories of it in the late 90s are fond ones. Sifl n Olly 4 life!

Yeah, i went there.

Anyway.

I was still required to do my business in little plastic jugs. They didn't call them jugs, though; they called them "urinals," which they clearly were not, but i suppose it's a more friendly term than "specimen jar."

This is probably my favorite part of this story; i've told this part to just about everybody i know multiple times and probably every random stranger foolish enough to speak to me between 1999 and 2001ish.

Friday morning, sometime after sunlight is visible but before the break of dawn. I woke up with a bladder full to bursting. I laid there, staring at the ceiling for a moment considering my next course of action. It was, of course, to stand up and use a "urinal." I was almost rolled onto my side, which was the first step of the great ordeal that was standing up, when a Hispanic man entered my chamber. It was immediately apparent that he was not skilled with the English. These are the exact words of the exchange. They are burned into my memory forever.

"Hello. I come to take some blood."

"Um," i replied. "Ok, could you wait a minute? I have to take a pee."

A blank look. "What is that?"

"Umm...i have to urinate."

"Ohh! You have to make a urine? Ok, do you need help?"

I wonder now what my eyebrows may have done at that moment. I've been told often that they're very expressive. "Could you just wait outside for a minute?"

"Ok," he said, and exited.

I conducted my business, and returned to the bed. I picked up the intercom attached to the bed and paged the nurses' station. When they responded, i recited my most frequently used line: "I need assistance with the urinal."

A nurse, who identified herself as my nurse-of-the-day, dutifully responded to my call, recorded the volume of my excretions, and disposed of them.

"Um, there was a guy in here a minute ago who wanted to take some blood," i stated.

"Yeah. There's going to be someone in here to take blood every day."

"Ok, could someone else do it? This guy makes me kind of nervous."

It might seem a little insensitive now, but if you can look at things from my perspective then, the guy was a little nerve-wracking. A medical professional who does not speak the same language as his patient is probably not going to have the appropriate bedside manner. I ended up with a lady who was probably old enough to be my mom who was very talkative and friendly, and we ended up debating the social merits of Marilyn Manson.

Later on in the night, a group of medical students came by to check me out. That's when i got my first look at the incision. It was a wide-open cut with the sutures loosely strung through, not really doing anything. It looked like i'd been knifed by a cross-stitching old lady. As a fourteen-year-old boy, i thought it was pretty cool. They changed the bandage for the first time, a process they would repeat twice a day.

Saturday was dominated by a Police Academy marathon on USA. For lunch, i was given solid food for the first time since those eggs at camp, which i promptly chucked, so it was back to liquid diet for me.

Late in the afternoon, my nurse-of-the-day took me for a walk down the hallway, using my IV stand as a support. It felt good to be moving under my own power again. Upon successful completion of the walking program, the nurse inquired about my bowel movements. This led me to the realization that i hadn't had any in five days. Normally that only happens at summer camp with the Boy Scouts, where it is intentional.

Now that the defecation seed had been planted in my head, it had to sprout into a glorious, urgent flower. Sunday was the day i tried to poop.

It happened first thing in the morning. I called the nurse to disconnect the IV from AC power and help me walk to the bathroom, no easy feat in itself. Next came a completely indescribable feeling, when i tried to actually sit down; i couldn't do it. It was probably akin to the weightlessness that astronauts feel, where there is no distinct sense of "down," only a general vicinity of what you think might be "down." The feeling passed as soon as i was on the ground in between the toilet and the wall, leaning on the shower door for support. It took three nurses and the IV stand, which i bent, to get me back up again. I estimate the total time of getting me ten feet from the bed to on the toilet at half an hour. Then the vicious hand of irony struck: i couldn't shit. It was all for naught.

Lunch brought another unsuccessful attempt at solid foods.

That night, my IV sprung a leak. So, they had to put in a new one at a different site. The nurse found several of what seemed to be good locations on my arms; unfortunately, this was false hope. Every time she stabbed me with that fucking needle, she'd either hit a valve or, worse, a nerve.

My original essay on this states that the process of moving the IV took three hours and five doctors. I find that hard to believe now, but since eleven years have passed and that essay was written the week after, i'm forced to believe it. What it came down to was the last doctor wanting to stick it in the back of my hand, which i put the kibosh on immediately. That sounded painful and unwieldy, so i was having none of it. I suggested they try the same site on the other arm, which seemed terribly obvious but for some reason had not been tried. The doctor put up a bit of a fuss about how it wasn't feasible for some reason or another, but that if i wanted to give it a go, we would. And we did. And it worked.

On Monday i was finally on solid foods and walking around unassisted. Late in the morning, the same pediatric team who'd been changing my bandages came in. I had assumed that it was time for our little ritual.

But it wasn't.

No, now it was time to close the wound. Their pulling on those sutures was almost as painful as the bursting appendix was in the first place. If i hadn't been able to see what they were doing with my own eyes, i'd have sworn that they were playing with matches down there. Probably an 8.5 on their little pain scale. Maybe an 8.6.

I was basically free from there. I walked down to the "teen room" a level below, where i played video games and listened to music on their stereo with three-foot-tall speakers, all the while being observed by a gigantic poster of the original five Spice Girls. At 4:30, i checked out of the hospital.

On Thursday, i went back to school, all drugged up and ready for class.

The following Tuesday the stitches were removed, a painless process, especially when compared to closing them up. They were replaced by "sanitary strips" which strongly resembled packing tape.

I think it was two weeks after discharge that we got a phone call from the hospital, giving us the go ahead to send me back to school.

I spent the next several years showing strangers my wound/scar and telling them it was from when i got knifed in Vietnam.