Preparations were falling in place for our highly anticipated trip to Richard and Shelly's for Connor's church dedication. Getting to see Ryan and Cara-Lea was going to be the icing on the cake. Connie and I were scheduled to leave home Friday and return the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, with Connie scheduled to work Wednesday and the Regal's looking forward to having us join them for their first Thanksgiving in their Tennessee home.
(Continued)
The on again, off again pain that I had been having for a couple of weeks in my lower right abdomen decided to hurt more than usual Wednesday night, so Thursday morning Connie started trying to convince me to go see a doctor, just in case it was something serious. So I did a few errands and then about 1 PM walked into the Urgent Care department at the Erlanger East Campus on Gunbarrel Road. That started a very long and unusual adventure.
The first guy that poked around on me was a Nurse Practitioner. He adamantly announced that I had an abdominal hernia. For some reason he left the room and a Physician's Assistant came in. He poked around, found the spot that got the most response from me, and decided that he wasn't so sure it was a hernia. He mentioned that the way to get more information would be to get a ct-scan done. I had called and asked my sister Karen, an ER nurse, for some tips on hernias and abdominal pain as I was driving to the doctor's office. Since she had mentioned that they would probably do a ct-scan, when one was mentioned, I said that sounds like a good idea, let's do it.
I drank my contrast drink, a big bottle of chalk water with a little vanilla flavoring and then waited for almost two hours before they could get me into the big machine. After the scan, when the PA and the radiologist saw the picture, the PA got a little more excited.
After talking to Connie and her asking her nurse coworkers, it was decided that I should go to Erlanger Hospital, which I did, by ambulance ride. I told the two in the back of the ambulance with me that their truck needed some springs, my pain was increasing with each bump in the road.
Erlanger is a teaching hospital, so I spent from 7pm until 1045pm in Erlanger's ER being looked at, (and poked at) by a stream of resident doctors, PAs, and finally three surgeons. Of course, when they told me that the "people from surgery" were going to come down and look at me, that got my attention, since up until that time, I had somehow convinced myself that I wasn't going to need surgery. I had made it 54 years without a surgery, or having ever spent a night in a hospital bed, so why start now?
So the first resident surgeon came in and made me feel really old by saying that "if you were my dad, I would operate on you" and this is what I would do. Gee thanks.
Next surgeon up the food chain said about the same thing. In the meantime, I have to tell you that our friend, Dick Rawson had gotten off duty as a CRNA at Erlanger at 7pm, and had been in my ER room the whole time while the parade came through. Dick was pretty sure that I was going to have surgery, and had volunteered to stay and put me to sleep (yikes!).
During this time, my deathbed humor did not get any laughs from Connie, but I was having a hard time dealing with the idea of surgery, especially the BIG abdominal cut.
Finally, the chief surgeon came down from on high and proceeded to look and poke. Then he said that I had a ruptured appendices, which had encapsulated. There was some infection in the small intestine in the area of the appendices and that if he operated it would be a full abdominal opening with risk of spreading the infection. He said that instead of operating Thursday night, he wanted to have me in the hospital for two or three days of antibiotics by IV and then if my temp and white blood count was good, a follow up ct-scan in a week or two, followed by a colonoscopy in a month, and then maybe a laperscopic appendectomy.
I couldn't have agreed with him more. No surgery! I got a reprieve!
So I was in the hospital room about midnight, with Connie camped out on the couch under the window. Of course, a hospital is not where you go to get a good night's sleep, with someone coming in every hour or less, taking blood, changing IVs, taking temps and blood pressure, etc etc., turning on the light each time, and sometime forgetting to turn it off when they left the room. I did ask for pain medication a couple of times that first night, but didn't take anymore after 830 Friday morning. I was surprised Saturday morning when 5 doctors came crowding into my little room. Guess I was special. LOL
So by Saturday morning, after two doses of IV antibiotics, my white blood count was in the middle of the normal range and my low fever had broke. After a third round of IV antibiotics Saturday afternoon, I was home by Saturday night with a ct-scan and appointment with that smart chief surgeon scheduled for a week from now.
And so we missed our grandson's dedication, what a major disappointment for Connie and me. But with the help of this blog, we just got to see pictures and video of it, so that was special.
-Gary/Dad/Grampa
