Nate’s Appendectomy

I was 37 weeks along and anticipating giving birth at any time as I had been having lots of contractions each evening. On Sunday, December 18th, Nate lounged around all day. He was not feeling well at all and had a pain just below his sternum. We assumed it must have been something he had eaten.

After a long night with neither one of us getting much sleep (Nate from the discomfort and me from heartburn), I woke up and got showered and dressed for work. I was ready to leave and realized that Nate hadn’t even gotten out of bed. I went to kiss him good-bye and asked if he was planning to go to work. He said he was still in pain and wanted to lay in bed a while longer. I suggested he call our family doctor. I thought maybe he was having gall bladder issues based on where the pain was. I went ahead and left for work. In hindsight, I feel so bad for leaving him like that, but he must have been tolerating the pain very well, because I had no idea, nor did he make me feel that it was really bad.

I had only been at work for about 30 minutes when Nate texted me and said he was on his way to the emergency room. He had called the doctor and they said they would end up having to send him for tests anyway, so they suggested he just save time and go straight to the ER to see what was wrong.

I left work and met him over there, still not thinking this was going to amount to much. When I got there, they showed me to his ER room and the doctor and nurse were in there working on him. The doctor was evaluating him and the nurse was starting his IV. Turns out I knew his nurse. He seemed to be in good hands. The doctor pressed on his lower right belly and the pain was so intense that tears sprang to Nate’s eyes and I could tell he was fighting for composure. With that, the doctor felt certain that he had figured out the problem…Nate had appendicitis. A trip to have a CT scan confirmed that diagnosis. After that it was a waiting game for a time slot to open up on the surgery schedule. The nurse helped manage Nate’s pain by keeping him well dosed with meds. Everyone was very good to us and kept asking if I needed anything as it was quite obvious that I was ready to have a baby at any time. Nate kept saying to me “please don’t have that baby yet”. I kept teasing him that he must not have been getting enough attention and was trying to steal my thunder.

I had been trying to reach Nate’s mom and step dad all morning to let them know what was going on, but kept getting their voicemail. After a few hours, I finally reached them and it turns out they had been attending a funeral not too far from the hospital. They headed right over to the hospital and spent the rest of the day hanging out with me while we waited for Nate’s surgery.

Nate was finally taken into surgery at around 4:30 that afternoon. His doctor was one of the best in the area. He did a fantastic job and surgery only took about 30 minutes. The doctor came out and talked to Kathy, Dick and I and told us that it had gone well and that the appendix definitely needed to come out. I was glad that we caught it before it had ruptured. The appendectomy was done laparoscopically. They inserted a little camera in through his belly button and made two incisions on the left side of his belly for the instruments to go in to remove the appendix located on the right side of his belly. Definitely less invasive than this same type of surgery years ago and it no longer requires an overnight stay in the hospital. Amazing!

Nate was in recovery for a couple of hours. He needed to be able to urinate before he could be released. All the pain medicine he had in his system was causing him not to be able to relax his bladder and go on his own. After several frustrating attempts, Nate was fed up and ready to go home, so he agreed to be catheterized so we could get out of there. Kathy and Dick left to head home and we were soon on our way home as well.

They had advised Nate to eat very bland foods to start off with…things like soup, applesauce, toast, etc. He was starving as he had had nothing to eat since the night before. I didn’t have any brothy soup at home, so we stopped at the store. NEVER take a starving man into the grocery store. He wanted everything in sight and within moments, we had $75 worth of groceries (and not much of it was nutritious) in our car and were headed home. He did start off with the soup, but immediately followed it up with more food than I think I’ve ever seen anyone eat. I was worried that he was going to make himself sick, but he kept it all down!

Nate took a few days off but was well enough to return to work by that Thursday as he needed to save his remaining vacation days for the following week when we were scheduled to have our baby.