Emergency appendectomy

Live blogging from my bed in the Christiana Hospital (7:45 am) using the interactive touch-screen thing that's attached to one of those mechanical elbows like in the dentist office. Pretty cool.

Friday, August 5: Felt pain in abdomen, increased throughout the afternoon and evening - localizing at lower right. To the "Doc-in-a-box" med center, examined and sent straight to ER (10:30 pm). Long wait in triage, finally examined (Saturday, 1:00 am) and CT scanned (3:00 am). An hour later the word comes back: surgery.

Appendix is inflamed and infected, in danger of "perforating." Rupture would flood internal organs with pathogens, that's bad. I felt a little like a ticking bacteria bomb while in the queue for operation. Surgery commences sometime after 9:00 am 11:30 am, procedure is done lapriscopically and goes well.

Emerge from general anesthesia, sans appendix. Day one of recovery goes smoothly, riding a wave of IV pain meds, and receiving good support from hospital staff, family and friends. Day two is now.

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P.S. - Home from the hospital after a two night stay (not counting Friday night in the ER, will I be billed for that?), recovery going well. Happy to report a resumption of normal traffic past the area under construction.