Well, I hope yesterday was the worst day of my life.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I hope it never gets worse than that.

Yesterday, Mr. Rilch woke up with stomach pains. Since this is a frequent occurrence with him, and he has his ways of dealing with it, I mixed him up some psyllium husk and went on with my day. Shortly after I made my last post in the thread about the Original Hot Dog Shop closing, he started throwing up, and continued until he was dry-heaving. Clearly, this was serious. He slept off and on until about 8pm, and then it was decided that he had to go to the emergency room. After Googling his symptoms, he figured it was his appendix. At least, we both hoped it was his appendix, because other possibilities were disturbing to think about (ulcer, tumor…).

I drove; the friend who is quarantining with us stayed home. Naturally, I wasn’t allowed into the hospital, so I hung around in the parking lot until word came down that it was indeed his appendix, and surgery would be first thing in the morning. Another friend, who lives five minutes from the hospital, had been briefed, so I scooted over there, and had no more settled in before I got another call. Mr. Rilch was being prepped for surgery right then; they weren’t waiting until morning.

My phone rang again at 12:30am, and all the courage I’ve ever had was condensed into the five seconds it took me to reach it and answer. But he was out of surgery and doing just fine. He told me afterwards that he’d barely gotten a look at the anesthesiologist before he was blinking and asking “When will you operate?”

Of course, they already had. He was told “We got to it just before it would have ruptured,” but I’m wondering, how would they really know what would have happened? But erring on the side of caution is always good. So they decompressed him, so to speak, and at 12:30 I collected him, got his meds from the pharmacy, and now he’s home watching wrestling! Soup and salad for him tonight. And ice cream, if he feels like it.

Speaking of salad, the night before last, he had salad with a blue cheese dressing that had an iffy expiration date. That’s what we both thought the problem was yesterday morning. and it would be tempting to blame myself for not tossing out that dressing. But I choose to look at it as, the appendix had been a problem for some time, and if the salad dressing was the back-breaking straw, then Og bless the salad dressing, because now the appendix problem is over!

Also, I kind of want to smack our guest. When I called the house to tell him we were coming back, he said, “More good news – Mark Cuban is going to buy the O!” :eek: :cool: When I got home, I Googled “Mark Cuban, The O”, and the only hit was a joke site. :smack: I’m not going to link to it because it’s not relevant. Still, I’d rather have Mr. Rilch healthy and the O without an investor, than the O coming back and Mr. Rilch…not.

2

Any surgeon who’s performed enough appendectomies will know what an about-to-burst appendix looks like. Just glad it was caught in time, and that he’s going to be okay.

3

Thank goodness this one had a happy ending! I know that moment of the phone ringing was horrid but now you can relax (and enjoy getting irritated with Mr R for being whatever irritating thing he decides to be since it’s impossible not to be irritated with your fellow shelterers in this awful time). Hurrah for a successful outcome.

4

Yes, now that Mr. Rilch has been able to tell me the details, I understand. The scan revealed that the appendix was dangerously swollen, plus his white-blood cell count was abnormal. He was told there had been a window of 6 - 10 hours before rupture.

And they were able to start prepping him at a moment’s notice because they had virtually no traffic. And very few Covid-19 cases. Never thought West Virginia would be #1 in anything, but it was the last to get a confirmed coronavirus case, and I believe still has the fewest cases.

Which is something to ponder. Suppose there had been enough people prioritized ahead of him that they would have been unable to operate in time? And since there were few to no CV cases, it’s safe to say he wasn’t saved at someone else’s expense. So it’s possible that coronavirus saved his life.

kayT, we’ve been getting irritated! I’m hoping this will alleviate that. He won’t be in the same kind of pain as before; he’ll know it will end soon. That should help a lot.

5

I hope it was too.

With a thread title like that, I was fearing worse. Glad everything went as well as it did.

6

Glad everything turned out okay. When I first read that they were going to wait til morning to do surgery, I thought, “Oh no you’re not!!” :eek:

Now that he’s on the mend, Auntie ThelmaLou is going to get on your case for this:

Next. Time. Don’t. Wait. :mad:

7

I’ll never forget the evening at my old hospital where they got so many cases of appendicitis all at once while I was working one evening, they were having to triage them! :eek: Thank heavens this is a procedure that usually doesn’t take very long. That, however, wasn’t as bad as the New Year’s Eve at another hospital where we were admitting one elderly stroke patient after another. The appies were mostly otherwise healthy and going home soon to make a full recovery; the stroke patients were probably another story.

The CT scan is really a valuable tool in getting a correct diagnosis. Over the years, I’ve heard plenty of stories about people who were thought to have appendicitis, and they actually had an ovarian cyst, some kind of cancer, etc.

8

I’m so glad you got Mr. Rilch to the ER on time. I’m not a doctor, so I don’t know what the consequences would have been if it had ruptured. Glad you didn’t have to find out. Isn’t it amazing that he goes home so soon, and is eating norma food? God bless modern medicine.
Sometimes though folks just don’t want to go to the hospital. My dad had an ache in the small of his back and did toe touches to flex it out. Went to bed, the ache came back, and given that his father had died of a heart attack, my mom(ans RN) insisted on taking him to the hospital. He was mumbling he was okay but mom didn’t listen, threw a robe on him and dragged him out the door. This was late at night, and she later told me she didn’t pay much attention to traffic lights. I stayed home to call the hospital and was quite calm, as this wasn’t dramatic. He lived though because mom took him in. He even coded the next day, Easter Sunday, and later said if he had died it couldn’t have been a better day for it.

9

:smack: Yes, ma’am.

10

Wow, this is exactly what happened to me only I was eight. Got to the emergency room and in ten minutes I was on a gurney with a mask on my face and someone was telling me to count backwards from ten.

It was scary then, and I’m sure you were scared too. Glad you all had a good outcome.

11

I hope his recovery is easy and painless.
So HAPPY for you both. :slight_smile:

12

Whew. I, too, thought from the title this was going to have a grim outcome. So glad it didn’t!

I had my appendix out under very similar circumstances five years ago. It was very bad, but far from the worst day of my life, so count yourself as twice-blessed that this was the worst.

Wishing Mr. Rilch a speedy recovery!

13

“Scared to death but it seems to have worked out ok.” I like the coronavirus twist to the story. Yes, as a “worst day” of your life, that’s not bad. Glad it all turned out well!

14

I’ve heard from ER docs in this area that some people ARE waiting too long due to fear of The Virus. They’re wondering where their heart attack, stroke, and appendicitis patients are. Those are things no one should be waiting to go to ER for, regardless of what else is happening. Part of the reason elective surgeries got cancelled in most places was to have room for folks with emergency conditions like this in addition to virus patients.

So glad you took him in and that he’s going to be OK. Both my husband and his brother got emergency appendectomies (about 40 years apart!) and I’m glad both of 'em are still around to tell the tale.

15

Glad it’s worked out. My grandmother lost two close relatives to appendicitis (back in the 1930s), so she was always very sensitive when anyone in the family had a stomach pain.

16

whew! I had all kinds of bad premonitions when I opened this thread.

17

This was back in the day when people still used laxatives and enemas for pretty much anything that ailed them, and these actions can kill a person with a hot appendix. That’s why these products say not to use them in the event of severe abdominal pain.

18

wow sounds almost like my gallbladder adventure…at least he didn’t have the 8 hours of barfing because you thought the spicy clam linguini you ate was bad (and all the tums that were eaten to feel better after the 2 block walk to the convenience store ) and the er half diagnosing what was wrong … they said gallstones and it would be taken care of that night…

well, thanks to a nurse who was giving me morphine and apple juice after I gave it back to her the hard way looked down to her formerly clean scrubs and noticed the smell was awful and didn’t look right scraped it off in a specimen cup and sent it to the lab with a 911 tag on it

30 minutes later I had 3 iv’s in me one for the pain one for the medicine that was getting rid of the gangrene that was dissolving said gallbladder and the last one was taking out said poison as much as possible until my 1 am operation …

the surgeon said if I hadn’t barfed and the nurse noticed it I’d of been dead in about 90 minutes or less

19

Glad your appendix emergency had a happy ending. Mine came damn close to not having one.

20

Back in 1978 my appendix ruptured. I was in college so went to the student clinic because I was vomiting for 2 days. Stupid clinic kept me there for 3 days because they couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Finally called in a surgeon and I got to ride in an ambulance to the real hospital where the surgeon suspected a burst appendix and opened me up. He said the appendix had gangrened and the only reason I didn’t die is because the appendix was on top of my uterus, which cupped around it and held in all the stuff that would kill me.

I spent 10 days in the hospital with an NG tube sucking all that crap out. My paprents lived about 2.5 hours from school, and when I woke up my mom was sitting next to the bed. My mom wasn’t the most touchy feely person, but clearly was upset and to this day it is my fondest memory of mom.