Three Days in the Hospital

One morning, a Thursday, I woke up in darkness to my alarm going off and my stomach hurting slightly.  I didn’t think too much about it, however; it wasn’t incredibly painful.  It just ached.

 

 I lay in bed for a few minutes, staring at the darkness and thinking about going to school and whether or not it was worth it to stay home.  I didn’t want to miss school, since it was the beginning of the year and I wanted to avoid getting too far behind.  However, I didn’t want to go to school class, either.  Finally, I decided that I should get up for a while, and see how I felt when I needed to leave.  Then, in one motion, I sat up and swung my legs over the edge of the bed.

 

Immediately, I was hit with a wave of pain.  My stomach hurt more -- a lot more -- and I felt sick.  I stumbled towards the door of my bedroom, reaching out in front of me in the dark to feel for the doorknob.  I was scared, and had no idea what was wrong.  Not knowing what else to do, I made my way to the living room, where my mother was sleeping in the recliner.

 

“Mom,” I gasped, “Mom, I think I’m sick.”

 

She stirred slightly, and blinked up at me, still half-asleep.

 

“What’s wrong?”

 

I began to shake my head, but it made me dizzy, so I stopped.

 

“My stomach hurts.”

 

My mother sat up in her chair, as I dropped down to sit on the ground and wrapped my arms around my torso.  My father stumbled out of his bedroom, woken up by the commotion.  He looked at me curiously.

 

“She says she’s sick,” my mom told him, noticing his look.  He nodded in acknowledgment, then glanced down at me.

 

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

 

“I don’t know!”

 

I turned over and lay on my back, staring up at the ceiling.  Both my parents looked down at me, then at one another, probably trying to decide what to do.

 

“She says her stomach hurts,” my mom informed my father.  He nodded again.

 

“I have to lie like this, because it makes it hurt less,” I announced.  One part of me, a small part, felt stupid about sounding so melodramatic.  But it was true: sitting up felt awful, and lying down didn’t make me feel as bad.

 

My mother sighed, and then leaned forwards to put her hand on my forehead.

 

“You have a fever.  I’ll take your sister to school, and you can sleep a little.  When I get back we’ll see how you feel.”

 

I carefully got up, and walked towards my room.  It took a long time, because I had to keep stopping and waiting for the pain to subside, but after a lot of effort, I managed to get to my bed and crawl in.  Lying down helped my stomach feel better, and I quickly fell asleep.

***             

When I woke up again, it was sunny outside, my stomach still hurt, and I was thirsty.  I tried calling for one of my parents to bring me a drink, but there was no response.

 

Well, I thought to myself, I feel bad, but I’m not dying, and the bathroom is only a few feet away.  I’m sure I can get a drink on my own.

 

Having made a decision, I got out of bed again.  I didn’t leap out of bed like I had done earlier in the morning - this time, I slowly and carefully sat up, and slowly and carefully pushed myself into a standing position.

 

Once up, I ran a quick mental check: my stomach hurt, but it wasn’t unbearable, and I felt okay otherwise.

 

Yeah, I thought, I’m sure I can do this.  If all I have is a stomachache, I can probably go to school,if it’s not too late.

 

I walked to the door, and then down the hallway to the bathroom, without any problems.  I got a cup of water from the bathroom sink without problems.  However, when I went back out to the hallway, my streak of luck ended.

 

As I turned to walk towards my room, a wave of dizziness hit me and I saw, to my vague surprise, that the world had suddenly tilted far to the left.  At the same time, cloudy blackness appeared at the edge of my vision, and the last thing I knew, the world had started to go dark.

***             

I woke up a few seconds later, to find myself lying on the ground with my father standing over me and my lip hurting.  I hesitantly touched my fingers to my mouth, and found, to my horror, that they came back bloody.  My lip was bleeding --I had cut it on my tooth when I landed.  It wasn’t a big cut, and it wasn’t even very painful, but my confusion and shock amplified it, and I started to panic.

 

“I’m bleeding!  I’m bleeding,” I yelled at my father, pointing at my mouth.  He said something, trying to calm me down, but I could barely understand him over my own voice.

 

My father finally decided he was tired of listening to me yell, and helped me off the floor and back to my own room, again.  This time, I didn’t manage to fall asleep once I was lying down - instead, I spent almost an hour staring at the ceiling and holding an icepack to my mouth.

 

When my mom returned from doing errands, I could hear my father telling her something.  A moment later, she walked in to stand at the edge of my bed.

 

“Honey,” she said softly, “We really think you should see the family doctor.”

 

“No,” I said, as firmly as I could.

 

My mother’s face went quickly from concern, to confusion, to irritation.  She gave a heavy sigh.

 

“Why not?”

 

“Because I don’t need to, Mom,” I mumbled.  “I’m fine.  I don’t want to go to the doctor.”

 

I was adamant about not going.  There was no logic in my decision -- I usually had no problems going to doctors -- but in my mind, admitting that I needed to see a doctor was terrible idea.  It was like giving up, and I didn’t want to believe that I had a serious problem.  Unfortunately, my mother was even more adamant that I went, and it didn’t take very long before I found myself stumbling out of the house and into the back of the family minivan.

***             

While I slumped down in the back seat, my parents talked quietly in the front, probably trying to decide what to do.  I blocked out most of their conversation, until my father decided to make his own diagnosis.

 

“... think it’s appendicitis.”

 

“What?” I said, trying to hear what he was saying.

 

My father turned his head around to look at me.  He seemed surprised, probably because I hadn’t spoken until then.

 

“I said, I think it’s appendicitis.”

 

I rolled my eyes.

 

“It’s not appendicitis, Dad,” I informed him sullenly.

The problem with my father was that he had a habit of assuming everything was appendicitis.  Everything.  Any time I had a stomach flu or a bug, he would look concerned and ask, “Could it be appendicitis?”

 

Since it never was appendicitis, I had grown immune to the suggestion.  That was why, instead of considering it, I wrote it off immediately.

 

My dad gave me an odd look.

 

“It might be.”

 

“It’s not,” I said, more loudly.  “I’ve read about appendicitis and I know what happens, and this isn’t right!  The pain isn’t even in the right place.”

 

My father looked stunned at my outburst.  Even my mother took her eyes off the road to glance back at me.  I sunk further down in my seat, closed my eyes, and wished I was at the doctor’s.

***             

The checkup didn’t take very long.  The doctor prodded my stomach, asked me to tell her where it hurt most, and then told my parents that she thought we needed to get to a hospital.  She was very calm when she said it, but the unspoken message was obvious - get going.  Now.

 

My father needed to get to work, so my mother dropped him off at our house.  Then, she and I went to the Oakland Children’s hospital.

 

When we pulled into the parking lot, there weren’t any spaces left.  My mother parked in an ambulance zone, and then told me that she would get me to the ER and come back to move the car.

 

She planted me in one of the plastic chairs of the ER waiting room, told the receptionist that I was sick and she was parked in a bad spot, and hustled back out to move the van.  While I waited for her to come back, I looked around the room.  The receptionist was sitting behind a desk, looking bored and tired.  There were a few other people besides me - a couple with a crying baby, a woman holding her young son in her lap, but the large room was mostly empty.  Occasionally someone would make a muffled announcement over the intercom, but there wasn’t much action taking place.

***             

Even after my mom returned, we still had to wait to get attention.  It was the ER, after all, and since I didn’t appear to be in immediate danger, the people with more urgent injuries were treated first.  It wasn’t unreasonable of the hospital, but to me, it felt absolutely unfair.  It didn’t help that the pain in my stomach had turned into severe nausea.

 

“Mom,” I said, turning around to look unhappily at her, “I feel really bad.”

 

She glanced at me, and sighed.

 

“I know, sweetie,” she said, reaching up to pat my shoulder.  “And I’m sure we’ll-”

 

“No,” I said, “I feel really bad.”

 

I stared at her, trying to look confident and stern.  In my mind, all I needed to do was project an image of absolute control and nurses would come flocking over to tend to my every complaint.  As out-of-it as I was, it seemed a perfectly reasonable idea.

 

My mother didn’t respond, and since no nurses came running to help me, I leaned back in my chair and looked around.  There wasn’t much to see.  The room was huge, but fairly empty, and the white walls gave a glare that made my eyes ache.

 

I dozed in my seat until the receptionist behind the desk called my name, and a nurse came to get me.

 

The nurse brought me into the back room of the ER and told me to sit down.  She gave me a gray  bowl, in case I started feeling worse, and a plastic cup filled with water for me to drink.

 

“So,” she said cheerily, “what’s wrong?”

 

My mom leaned forward and started to explain what had been happening.  I focused on trying not to throw up, though I occasionally added my own comments to my mom’s story.  Most of my comments were basically, “I feel sick.”

 

“... And the doctor told us to come here to get more testing done,” my mom concluded.  The nurse nodded.

 

“I see.  Well, we’ll take you to a bed and you can lie down -sound good, sweetie? -and we can see what’s going on with your tummy.”

 

Tummy, I thought to myself unhappily.  Is she serious?  Then I thought, I think I’m going to puke, and then I focused all of my attention on following the nurse down a hallway to a bed.

***       

The room I ended up in was hardly even a room.  It was tiny, with a small white bed that could be raised or lowered, a chair next to the head of the bed, and a curtain that provided patients with privacy.  Above the bed, a small television was suspended, presumably for people to watch as they waited for a doctor.  Unfortunately, the TV in the room I ended up in barely worked.  It only got one channel, a dog show.  I felt a little better, lying down, even though the only thing I could really do was watch dogs parade around on the screen above my head.

 

Nurses occasionally came in to talk to my mother or me, but I spent almost three hours waiting for something to happen, especially since the dog show I was watching was, apparently, on infinite repeat.  Just as it was starting over for the third time, a nurse walked in with a wheelchair.

 

“Okay,” she said, smiling happily, “you’re going to get an ultrasound!  That will tell us what’s happening.”

 

She gestured towards the chair, clearly indicating I should walk over and sit down.  I wasn’t quite up to walking gracefully, but I lurched the few feet across the room and fell down into the seat.

 

The nurse started wheeling the chair down another hallway.  I tried to entertain myself by looking at my surroundings, but everything was the same: sparse, pale, and bathed in eerie florescent light.  Even the elevator the nurse wheeled me in to was white and empty.  And with nothing to look at or do, I was free to focus on my own problems.

 

Oh man, I thought, my stomach is killing me again.  Sitting up was a terrible idea.

 

I opened my mouth to tell the nurse how I felt, but before I could say anything, she swung around abruptly and pushed the wheelchair into a new room.  It was dimly lit, unlike the hallway outside, and had a lot more in it than the places I had been before.  At the center of the room was a large machine with a space long enough for a person to lie on.  Behind the table was a screen, and above the table was a long bar.  Looking at the machine, I guessed that it was used to do ultrasounds, and sure enough, the nurse told me to lie down and wait for a doctor.

 

My mom sat in one of the chairs that were placed near the door, as I stared up at the gray ceiling.  After a few minutes, the silence was broken by footsteps.  I looked towards the door and saw an elderly man in a white coat.

 

The doctor introduced himself, then gave me a tube with gel in it, and told me to put it on my stomach.  This, he explained, was how the machine got ultrasound readings.

 

The gel was cool, and fairly uncomfortable, especially once it started to dry.  I watched the doctor work the machine and make clicking noises at the images on-screen, and wondered when I would be able to get some food --I hadn’t eaten anything since dinner the night before.

 

Finally, the doctor seemed satisfied with the procedure.  He turned off the machine, then turned to me.

 

“Well,” he said as he helped me sit up, “the good news is, you aren’t pregnant!”

 

Well, I thought, well good.  At least I’m not having a baby!

 

“But,” he continued with a more serious expression, “you do appear to have appendicitis.  You’re going to need an operation.”

 

I wasn’t surprised.  I was however, very unhappy.  I don’t want an operation, I thought to myself, panicked.  What if something goes wrong?  What if I die?

 

I didn’t say anything like that to the doctor, however.  I just nodded, and carefully got back in the wheelchair.

***             

Another nurse wheeled me to a spacious room.  There were two beds, with a heavy red curtain separating them, and a table by each bed.  A large television was attached to the wall, and I could see a remote sitting on each of the tables.  My side of the room, the side further away from the door, had a window with a window seat.  As I lay down in the bed, my mother sat down in the chair.

 

I quickly fell asleep again, exhausted from everything that had happened.  I spent the rest of the afternoon alternating between dozing and watching the TV.  The only channel that really worked was the food network, which was agonizing for me --I hadn’t eaten anything the entire day, and was ravenous.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed to have any food in preparation for the operation, so I had to be content with watching Iron Chef and Emril.

 

By the time the evening had arrived, I was getting more and more worried about the operation itself.  Horrible ideas flashed in my mind: that something would go wrong, that I would get sick, that I would be awake the entire time, that I would go to sleep and never wake up.  I knew, logically, that removing the appendix was a simple procedure and there was only a tiny risk, but I was tired and hungry, and the fear took over.

 

I lay in bed, images of my tragic demise running around my head, for a few minutes.  Then, hesitantly, I turned to look at my mother, who was dozing in the chair near the bed.

 

“Mom?” I asked.  She stirred, and looked at me.

 

“What is it?”

 

“Do you think everything will go well?”

She looked confused, and then appeared to get my meaning

 

“Oh, sweetie,” she said, reaching out to brush my hair back from my forehead.  “Everything will be fine.  It’ll be over before you know it.”

 

Even though she hadn’t really told me anything I didn’t already know, the words comforted me.  I closed my eyes and fell back asleep.

***             

When I woke up again, it was because another nurse was gently shaking my shoulder.  I blinked up at her, still groggy from sleep.  She smiled, and explained to me that it was, finally, time for my operation.

 

I was helped out of bed, and onto a gurney.  The nurse wheeled me through more blinding white hallways, and through a set of swinging double-doors --the entrance to the OR.  She pointed out a different doorway on the other side of the room, that led to the actual operating room.  Then, she told me that the doctor would arrive shortly.  I waited on the gurney as my mother hovered around.

 

A few minutes after the nurse left, the door on the far side of the room opened and a doctor entered.  He greeted me and my mother, then quickly ran through what was going to happen.

 

“We’ll put this on you,” he said, holding up a mask attached to a small box.  “That’s the first anesthetic.  It won’t make you sleep, but it’ll sedate you.  You probably won’t remember much after this --that’s one of the side effects.”

 

He glanced at me, to make sure I was listening.  When he saw me paying attention, he continued.

 

“Then, we’ll give you a shot, make a couple cuts, and remove your appendix.  After that, you’re done.  The cuts will be so small, you won’t even need stitches.”

 

He smiled at me reassuringly, and then carefully placed the mask over my face.  I took a deep breath in, and felt the world spinning around me.

***             

The next thing I knew, I was waking up on Friday morning with a morphine drip in my arm and pain in my stomach.  The operation was successful --my appendix was removed with no problems, and the cuts looked to be doing well.

 

I wanted to go home quickly, but I ended up staying in the hospital for three days.  Finally, on Monday, I got to return to my own house.  I was incredibly happy to be home, but even the short trip back was exhausting.

 

I ended up staying in home for a week, spent mostly in bed.  Most of the time, I was asleep.  Occasionally, I would lie awake and think about what I had gone through.  It wasn’t a large operation, but it was the first time I’d ever needed to go to the hospital, and I was proud of how well I’d handled everything.  I had spent my time tired, scared, and in pain, but I had made it through.  I had survived.