I’ve had strep throat, ear infections, toothaches, and migraines that were pretty intense, but my gallstone attacks – which resulted in laproscopic surgery – were excruciating. Still, my personal best was a ruptured appendix a week after I first had symptoms, and while I was pregnant! Yes, that was quite the experience.
It started one routine Wednesday night when I was pregnant with my second child and about eleven weeks from my due date. I made turkey chile that night, and later became quite sick to my stomach. I assumed it was the chile, and even though I have long known that was not the cause, I associate turkey chile with so much subsequent pain that I will never be able to eat it again. Anyway, I just got sicker and sicker instead of better, so on Thursday or Friday (it’s kind of a blur now), I went to see both my obstetrician and my internist. They both thought it was a bad case of food poisoning, and sent me home to rest and recover.
The weekend was horrible. Finally, on Sunday night I went into labor. Luckily, my mother had come to stay with us to help out and watch my first-born son, so my husband was able to take me to the hospital. The doctors thought I had gone into labor because I was so dehydrated from throwing up, and the underlying diagnosis was still food poisoning. I was sent home sometime on Monday (after being on IV fluids for several hours, I think) with a prescription for Terbutaline for the premature labor. Well, Monday night I was at the stage where all I wanted was for someone to hit me over the head with a big mallet, like in the Road Runner cartoons, so that I would become unconscious and escape from my pain. It was so bad that I felt that the pain itself was causing me to throw up. (I mean the pain from what turned out to be appendicitis; the labor pains were actually not that bad at that point.) As other people have said, that kind of pain is truly mind-altering.
Anyway, I was readmitted to the hospital on Monday night because my labor had not stopped and I was still so sick. At that point, they started running tests, including an x-ray, but were still not able to come to a conclusive diagnosis. If I had not been pregnant, they would have done an exploratory operation, but with the pregnancy, they advised that I just stay in the hospital for observation.
Well, on Tuesday night my labor got more intense, until finally at around 2:00 a.m. on Wednesday they had to do an emergency c-section, because that baby was coming out! They actually had enough time to give me an epidural, so I was awake for my son’s birth. Then the obstetrician stepped aside and my surgeon stepped up to do the exploratory. I was actually awake for the start of that, but hearing the surgeon and his resident talk about what they were doing grossed me out, and I remember saying, “I don’t think I want to hear this!” The anesthesiologist said he could take care of that, and they put me under.
When I woke up, I found out my appendix had indeed ruptured. My doctor said it was the appendicitis that caused me to go into premature labor; basically, my body was in survival mode and was trying to expel the fetus so as to have one less thing to deal with! I stayed in the hospital for two weeks on IV antibiotics, and my little son stayed in the NICU for four weeks and one day. Aside from being born ten weeks early, he was actually in great shape. Now, he is a happy and healthy eleven year old, and one of the lights of my life! So, that was truly a case of all’s well that ends well.
Whew, sorry this post was so long!
(My older son – who was 2 ½ when this all happened – asked to add the following: Mereson wishes to note that when he was born, he had such a big head that a C-section was necessary. He believes that his and his little brother’s respective births say a lot about them – namely, he is a genius of the first degree and the younger one is a giant pain. [Just kidding, of course!])
