“It felt like knives mercilessly carving up my insides.”
“A few months ago, I came home from work on a Friday with plans to meet up with friends that evening, and the pain came out of nowhere. It hit me like a ton of bricks. I had to cancel my plans because I was curled up in a ball on my bed in the fetal position trying to find an angle to position my body that would give me a moment of reprieve. Nothing worked.
“This sounds ridiculous, but around midnight, my roommate came home and I was lying in my robe on the linoleum kitchen floor to keep cool, because I was sweating with pain, and still I refused his offer to take me to the hospital. Finally, by about 2 A.M., I drove myself to the hospital. I didn't want to wake my roommate to take me or call an ambulance, and I couldn't bear to wait any longer than necessary.
“I was 18 and going on college trips, deciding which school I wanted to go to. While visiting one of the schools, I came down with a [high] fever and started to feel lightheaded. Later in the night, I started to feel a sharp pain coming from what seemed like my lower stomach. At first it would come in waves, then at some point the pain intensified and didn't leave.
“I've had appendicitis four times. Yep, four times. The first time was when I was 26 years old. The back story as to why I've had appendicitis four times is because the first time, my appendix wasn't completely removed. Only a portion was removed, unbeknownst to me until two years later. I had an appendectomy in 2016 in New York City, where my appendix was thought to be completely removed. I had a second appendectomy in Boston in the spring of 2018.
“Two weeks before my big move-in day for my first year at university, I started to feel excruciating pains in my stomach. I thought they were just cramps. This was particularly interesting because I typically don’t experience cramps when I’m menstruating. So for the next two weeks, I continued to feel debilitating pain without thinking anything of it. This just goes to show you what women go through every month.
“They decided the best route was to give me heavy antibiotics. I was in the hospital for four days, and they released me with two more weeks of antibiotics. About six weeks after the original hospital stint, I went back in to have the abscess and remains of the appendix removed. There was a good bit of scar tissue that had formed from the burst that also had to be removed.”
“I was visiting my parents in Toronto at the time and thought I’d sleep it off. After pretty much laying in bed not sleeping because of the pain all night, I woke my dad around 6 A.M. and said that I thought I had appendicitis. We headed to the hospital shortly after and went through all the hoops of being an American navigating Canadian health care.
“I called mom and she told me to have my friend take me to an urgent care. I walked into urgent care and they sent me over to the ER pretty much right away. You know it must be bad when you get to cut the waiting room line. “I first noticed slight abdominal pain, almost like gas pains, that started to severely increase. To be honest, I thought it was something I had eaten for lunch, or constipation. But as the pain got worse, it started to align with the horror stories of appendicitis I had heard. It felt like someone stuck a knife in my side and slowly pushed harder every 30 minutes. After about five hours of pain I realized it wasn't going away and I needed to seek medical care ASAP.
“The pain was super erratic, and at first it felt like indigestion. But it increased rather drastically, and I got to a point where I couldn’t even stand up. I had a complete loss of appetite and was feeling very fatigued. I was 22 and in college at the time, and luckily my dad is a doctor. When the pain started to become more severe I FaceTimed him.
“I had been having stomach issues for a few years. I had also been in Thailand for two weeks, and my diet was super out of whack and I was on my period. So I thought I was either experiencing the worst cramps of my life or that I had caught a virus while I was away.