My appendix, to be exact.

On Sunday afternoon we returned from a 9-day “vacation” to Portland and Western Washington, during which I had an emergency laparoscopic appendectomy shortly after arriving in the Seattle area. I awoke at around 1am on the first night in our Bellevue hotel with severe abdominal pain that persisted despite downing numerous over-the-counter medications. Finally, somewhere around 7am, Jen summoned my sister, who rushed over to the hotel, picked me up, and took me to an emergency room in Issaquah.

Despite a mid-day misdiagnosis, by 7pm CT scan results confirmed the diagnosis of acute appendicitis. Next thing I knew, I was scheduled for surgery at 8:15pm at Swedish Hospital in downtown Seattle. And the last thing I remember was being wheeled into the O.R. and then being moved from my gurney to the operating table.

And after watching some YouTube videos of the procedure, I suppose it’s a good thing I don’t remember anything more! The videos also helped me understand why it took so long for my “insides” to start feeling normal again. Apparently, once the appendix has been removed, the surgeon goes on a little tour of your internal organs and pretty much rearranges your entire intestinal tract in the process! (Watch the videos! I particularly like the parts where they poke the surgical trocars through the abdominal wall. Yeeow!)

That being said, one week later I am feeling pretty good. I still have a little pain and a small wound infection at one of the incision sites, but twice daily hot compresses and a 1-week regimen of antibiotics should knock that out quickly.

In the days ahead, I’ll try to put up some posts and photos about the more enjoyable parts of our vacation.

This entry was posted by Steve on Wednesday, July 9th, 2008 at 7:51 am and is filed under Family, General, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.