Exactly 1 week ago today, I go out to dinner with my wife at Market, one of my favorite restaurants.  The following morning, at 2am, I'm awoken by pains in my stomach.  I go back to sleep, only to be awoken again at 5am, by some more severe pain, which has now moved to the lower right side of my abdomen.  I go back to sleep.  Wake up at 9am, with a fever, pain still at my side.  It seems like my appendix.  A quick check to WebMD confirms my symptoms match, and I grudgingly agree to go to the emergency room.

It's the 4th of July, and I spend all day in the emergency room.  Only after a few hours of waiting, plus a blood and urine test thrown in the mix, the doctor tells me there's a 90% chance it's appendicitis, 10% chance it's something else.  Given the probabilities and the fact the appendix is completely useless, he recommends the operation.  I choose the laporoscopy -- 3 small incisions instead of 1 large incision using the traditional method.  I have surgery at 5pm. 

[BTW, anasthesia is a wonderful thing -- like time travel.  You have no sense of time passing while you're out.]

When I come out of it, the pain that in my side is totally gone (but replaced with the pain from the incisions and bruises from the surgery).  The surgeon tells me that I did not have appendicitis.  He does tell me that the pathologists will examine my removed appendix and the pathology report will reveal whether or not my appendix was the cause.

Thursday morning, I wake up feeling pretty good.  I have no temperature, and no pain except for the stitches and bruising.  They discharge me from the hospital, and the surgeon prescribes me Vicodin for the pain.  Later in the day, I start getting a temperature.  I start popping Vicodin.

My body temperature starts to yo-yo.  I go through a couple of days of this cycle:  My body temperature goes up, I take Vicodin, temperature goes down, Vicodin wears off, temperature goes up again.  And to top it off, I'm constipated.

Saturday comes around, and I'm tired of the cycle.  I go back to urgent care.  A different doctor this time.  Another all day affair with several tests... blood tests, urine tests, and this time, a CT scan.  If you've never had a CT scan, you're lucky.  They make you drink about 2 liters (over 2 hours) of something that tastes like dishwater.  They stick an IV in you, put in some contrast dye into your bloodstream that makes you feel really warm, like you've just had some brandy.  Ok, I liked that part, but you would too if you'd had chills all day.  The scan itself takes about 10 minutes.

So, the result of this all day affair was this prognosis from the doctor:  You're not dying.  All tests negative.  Go see your own doctor on Monday.  And by the way, Vicodin causes constipation.  But cheer up, drinking 2 liters of that liquid will in all likelihood give you diarrhea. 

Oh, how I love the American Health Care system!

I finally see my own doctor yesterday and get the explanation of what the hell was going on inside me.  First, the pathology report on my appendix indicated I had a "stone" in my appendix.  That caused the pain.  There was a 50/50 chance it would have caused appendicitis in the future, so the appendectomy was the right call.  Second, checking my lungs, he realized I had an infection, likely caused by seepage in the appendix removal.  He prescribed an antibiotic (oddly enough, the same one given to me prior to surgery).  Within 8 hours, I feel dramatically better.

The morale of this story:  Before going into an emergency procedure, make sure to talk to your own physician, assuming you trust him/her.  Mine has actually served 2 tours of duty in Iraq, and I imagine he's seen and done things most general practitioners don't.  Emergency room doctors are there to make sure you don't die.  They really don't care all that much if you're uncomfortable.