Appendicitis

I always thought that political topics would dominate the contents of my blog, but lately, it's been my tales of random emergency procedures (see Spinal Tap and X-Ray for recent examples).

Well, I've got another one. And, similar to Spinal Tap, it wasn't that serious but because of negligent doctors, it sucked pretty bad. And I am feeling the need to vent again (so feel free to stop reading now because it's a kind of gross story and probably TMI).

So I woke up a few weekends ago with the worst pain in my belly. It was high up near my lungs. I started projectile vomiting and about 3 hours later I decided I couldn't stand it any longer and went to the hospital. UCSF. They wouldn't process me right away so I had to sit there vomiting in the waiting room which is always a pleasant. They finally took me back and did all sorts of tests. You need a CT to tell if you have an appendicitis (and a bunch of other things), but they told me I shouldn't get a it because there is a 1 in 200 chance of me getting cancer from it eventually.

They also said it was most likely stomach flu but if it was my appendix we could wait until it burst (he actually said that in Britain they won't operate unless it bursts--i've come to learn that you can easily die from sepsis when your appendix bursts).

So they sent me home. I stayed at home in agony for about 12 hours until the pain localized on my right side and Sep's friend Matt Ladra who is a resident at St. Mary's felt my belly and told me to come on in to his hospital where he was working later that night.

I went in, they did a CT, and found it was classic, massively infected appendix. And for the record, they were SO much nicer at St. Mary's than at UCSF.

Surgery was the next morning and went fine. But then it took me like 2 whole weeks to recover! It was ridiculous. I can't help but think if I hadn't been sick for 36 hours longer than I should have been that I would have recovered a lot easier.

Oh and this is a non sequitur but guess how much the hospital billed the insurance company for my 2 day hospital stay? $55,000. Isn't that insane? I'm still waiting to see what I'm going to have to kick in. I feel very lucky to have insurance. What do people without insurance do when they have an appendicitis?

Diagnosis: Our health care system is just all around messed up.