More Dr. Wife health adventures

On Friday Dr. Wife started to complain about abdominal pain; she thought she was constipated. But the pain kept her up almost all of Friday night, and Saturday morning we called the health center. The fact that the pain was now focused on the right side of the lower abdomen was absolutely classic appendicitis sign, and the weekend triage nurse at the clinic said we should go straight to Mt. Auburn Hospital's ER.

We got to the ER at about 10, and were seen by a triage nurse within the hour and given a room in the emergency part. Dr. Wife had to drink a contrast liquid, and then after about two more hours she got a CAT scan. Sure enough, it looked like the appendix. The next few hours were very unpleasant for her, because the contrast liquid is fairly vile stuff once it's inside you, and in addition to vomiting and diarrhea it gave her a bad headache. Weirdly, the IV Dilaudid they gave her knocked the belly pain right out, but did almost nothing for the headache.

The day dragged on very slowly. We sat around in the ER roomlet playing smartphone games (though Dr. Wife had to stop when the headache got bad), and after receiving several visits from medical persons and answering exactly the same history questions every time, we finally got to talk to a surgeon who said she would take out Dr. Wife's appendix sometime Saturday evening. Then they checked Dr. Wife into a real hospital room, and we waited for our turn.

It was a very busy day there, and they only got Dr. Wife into the operating room at about 10 pm, but after that things went fast; the surgery was over in about an hour, and went completely perfectly; they were able to complete it laparoscopically, with three tiny incision-holes; there won't be that classic vertical scar.

Dr. Wife spent the night at the hospital, and this morning her blood pressure was low enough that she had trouble standing up, so they kept her the rest of the day and boosted her with IV fluids and two meals. Finally she was discharged around 6, and we came home. Pain is already less than it was before the surgery. We're glad she's home.