The title's a little longer, but whatever. Like Peter North, it gets the job done. So I had my appendix removed yesterday, and like everything else that happens in my life, it deserves to have a story written about it. I would have written about the time I lost my virginity, since that was an ordeal, but I promised your mom that I would be discrete. Here's how I got my appendix taken out. A story that proves the human body shares qualities with pressure grenades.
The story begins on my goddamn day off. The day I booked off, in fact, because as Murphy's Law states, these things can't happen any other time. I can't even have the satisfaction of vomiting on something at work. For shame. It was around 8:00 or 8:30 after I had essentially eaten a bowl of beans, when I had me one hell of a stomach ache. I was sure the stomach ache and beans were linked in some fashion. Felt like a Scottish marching band was using my stomach as a drum, or that I'd just eaten a quesadilla laced with dead bird. Either way, I felt like a bag of ass. Also, I don't know if this is the drugs talking right now, but I just realized that humans resemble bag pipes in a lot of ways. We're awkward looking bags of air with tubes sticking out, and we make funny noises when someone squeezes us.
Anyway, I believe it was around three in the morning when I was wide awake and decided, to hell with it, it's vomit time. Normally I will do anything to avoid vomiting, like how my girlfriend will do anything to avoid watching Dragon Ball Z with me, but it had to be done. Luckily I keep a picture of my ass crack on me at all times, so vomit was induced quickly. Problem was, I still felt like dead rain barrel squirrel afterwards. The rest of my sleepless night was full of more vomiting, ceaseless chest pain and only somewhat successful bowel movements. I shat out a green pebble the size of a ping pong ball at some point, that was funny.
Eventually it was morning and I felt like Kurt Cobain, post mortem. I had a sip of tea, then buried myself in my pillow to sort of sleep. I woke up with a sharp pain slightly above my love hammer, meaning I was either still sick, I was about to start pissing wasps, or I had rolled over one of my balls in my delirium that I would barely classify as sleep. At some point I decided to watch Fringe to take my mind off of things, but that was a stupid idea. When you're focused that show can be hard to follow. I had just spent the night clogging the toilet with my internal organs. I thought I was fucking hallucinating. All I remember was that someone got shot and I didn't care, and then someone got crushed by a car via telekinesis. That was awesome. Instant raspberry yogurt.
A little while later my girlfriend came over, and not long after that, the pain had migraded to the lower right quadrant of my mid-section, which is one of the many imminent self-destruct areas in your body. So my mother, who became tired of my repeated screaming, decided it would be best to take me to Emergency at Grey Nuns hospital. I'm not sure why the hospital is named Grey Nuns. Why would a nun be grey? Do some world views fall in a grey area? Is there a difference between grey and gray? I'm confused. Anyway, as the roads in Edmonton are in similar condition to Stalingrad circa 1945, the drive to the hospital was about as pleasant as dental work on the eyeballs. But, we arrived, and thus began the day of waiting. I may have waited longer to lose my virginity.
First, we waited in line in Triage, amongst people who didn't look like they really needed to be there (sorry), and others who looked more deserving of medical attention than myself. Like the lady who looked like the letter "C". Completely bent in half and barely shuffling herself around in her jogging attire. Diagnosing her must have been easy. Something inside this woman has exploded. Operate now, please.
After waiting in line in Triage, we were then sent to admission. For those who aren't familiar with how hospitals work, when you go to admission, you're essentially granted permission to sit in an uncomfortable chair for several hours while people ignore you. As movies would have us believe, medical attention is instantaneous, when it usually isn't. It involves waiting and lots of paperwork, and if that paperwork gets lost, be prepared to wait forever.
2 and a half hours later and I was moved to a room marked "Patients Only", which is another room largely designated for more waiting. While I was waiting, I was told to provide a urine sample. For future reference, if you are headed to the hospital, hold in your piss. It's highly probable that someone who probably dreamed of doing more with their life will want to examine your urine. If you pee before you leave the house like I did, you get to drink shitty Dasani, which I'm sure is made of sea water, and wait until your bladder feels like filling up and emptying again. I somehow managed a decent squirt, like if you put a piece of tape over one of those peeing statues. A lady comes up to me a while later and says, "Your urine sample was inconclusive. You need to provide another one." What? That doesn't make any fucking sense.
Lady, my dick looks like a shrivelled bean right now. I have no fluid left in my body. I distinctly remember peeing with my dick, what did I do wrong? Did someone mistake the sample for apple juice? They didn't explain shit to me, they just handed me another cup and walked away. This time, I ignored their meticulous instructions of first peeing, stopping, peeing in the sample, holding again, then peeing the rest in the toilet. Y'know, because everyone can gauge how much they have to piss with such precision. Those instructions are more complicated than going down on a vagina. So I mustered what few drops I had left and just peed it all into the cup. Take that, you bastards. Way to ruin a perfectly good batch of pee. May I just say, that it's incredibly funny handing someone a tiny bottle full of your urine.
Then my piss was never spoken of again. Later on, a guy calls me into a room and says he's going to give me some medicine. If you are like me and dislike needles, should you find yourself in a hospital, let me mentally prepare you. When someone tells you that you're getting medicine, they're about to stick a needle in each of your arms. The first needle I got was a shot of anti-inflammatory, I assume because my appendix resembled a balloon, and the other was supposed to help with nausea. Hilariously, it only made me nauseous. My temperature also skyrocketed, and then just as quickly dropped again. I was having a fantastic day thus far. Also, this is completely unrelated, but my hands smell lovely right now, my gosh.
Then a lady came in and took my blood. If I wasn't already well-versed in having my blood taken, in my state of mind at the time, I probably would have thought she was a vampire. No, instead she was just a woman with a needle, who no doubt took my blood to stockpile it for the eventual clone wars. Then another lady came in and stabbed me with more needles. I felt like a pin cushion, or more appropriately, a dart board, because I could have sworn the last needle she put in my arm left her hand for a moment. She threw it from a short distance. She was good enough to not throw it at my neck though. Best to look on the brightside.
Then, after hearing more nothing forever, a guy comes in and says, "I'm going to hook you up to an IV." By this point, it's a miracle I wasn't dead. I hadn't slept in almost 24 hours, I hadn't eaten anything since the day before, my system was full of drugs, I had several viles of my blood taken, and my appendix could very well have been on the verge of bursting that exact moment. I asked what the purpose of the IV was, since again, no one was telling me anything. Do I need the antibiotics because my appendix will be fine afterwards? Is it simply a good idea that my body be hydrated intravenously? Do I need surgery or not? I guess hospital staff don't like when you ask questions, because the man went away after my barrage of questions and never came back. Sometime after that I also got an x-ray for no reason at all. I hear those are great at detecting soft tissue damage.
At the time, I felt really stupid for essentially refusing medicine that was critical for my health at the doctor's recommendation. But in retrospect, the guy that was going to do my IV, did it for another man instead about an hour later. I eventually got an absolute sweet heart nurse who took extra care in finding a suitable vein to jam the IV in to, which she did, mid left arm. The dude nurse didn't. I noticed that the guy he helped, his hand was covered in a lot more blood than it was before. A substantial amount, in fact. He had a bandage on his hand, fucking soaked in blood. Guess that dude nurse totally missed the vein, or forgot to remove the barbed wire from his syringe. Either way, dodged that bullet.
So I sat there for another couple hours until I was sufficiently drugged up. Then, after the bag of salt water or medicine or whatever was empty for about 20 minutes, the other dude nurse in the room finally decided to stop pretending to do paper work, came over to me and said, "We're leaving this in your arm over night." I was convinced it was a needle that he left in my arm, despite him telling me otherwise. I was terrified the rest of the night and kept my arm perfectly straight. Worst part was, that asshole taped my arm so thoroughly, he essentially turned it into an eventual wax job. Thanks, man. I don't need hair anyway.
I woke up the next morning experiencing a sensation akin to rigor mortis in my left arm, and also my penis, but I interpreted that stiffness differently. My body hadn't betrayed me and bent my arm against my will during my sleep. Quite the opposite, in fact. I felt like I could have punched through a brick wall my arm was so stiff. I decided not to and showered instead, because I smelled like hospital and vomit. My mother had to wrap the area where my IV was in saran wrap before I could shower, which was funny because if you didn't know, wet saran wrap looks like a used condom. Try it sometime. Now, that morning, I was scheduled to have myself a CT scan. It's a shorter version of CAT scan that means the same thing, just with different words that doctors pretend to understand.
Before you get a CT scan, you need to fast for at least 12 hours, which is something certain people consider to be a legitimate substitute for exercise. So I enjoyed some water and headed off to the hospital to have more of my blood taken immediately. Five fucking vials of it. The first day it was two or three, I can't remember, but today, it was five. WHY?! What the hell does anyone need with five vials of blood? Is the blood being used in a cult ritual? Just take the whole fucking arm.
After the oddly humourless woman robbed my body of precious fluid, I was sent to a really weird looking section of the hospital for my CT scan. The walls were bright pink, and then just as quickly went back to turquoise. I found myself in a room with an enormous television watching the show, "Kelly and Michael". I guess Regis has retired, so now that smokin' hot ass mama Kelly is working with that dude who I think used to play football and pretends to be important. He's the guy in the next picture with the gap between his teeth that looks like the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, who looks like he wants to die almost as much as Ron MacLean on Coach's Corner.
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| That's the face of a man who hates himself |
God I would fry an egg on Kelly's ass. What a sexy bitch. Thank you for giving me boners when I stayed home sick from school as a kid, Kelly. Anyhow, if you find yourself going in for a CT scan one day, I'm here to give you fair warning. It sucks balls. While you're sitting there waiting, a lady will walk in with a paper cup the size of a 7/11 Big Gulp full of mysterious liquid and tell you three things. One, drink it. Two, do it quickly. Three, she will say something similar to, "It's mostly sort of water." Then she'll just disappear. You will actually never see her again. Her entire purpose for being is to give you a cup of shit and tell you to drink it. We really are trusting of our medical professionals, aren't we? She could have handed me a cup of paint thinner for all I know.
Now let me tell you the secret behind fasting for a CT scan. It's not because eating or drinking will disrupt the scan, no. I'm 100% confident it's because you won't have anything to throw up after you drink that filth. What they essentially tell you to drink is a giant cup of plastic mixed with toilet water. It was absolutely revolting. The other kid in the room with me must have been dreading drinking that shit, because I was coughing and gagging. Every last drop was suffering. Then I gave my cup back to some other lady at a desk, waited for a little bit, then got called down for my CT scan.
But, as I should have known, when you're called down to anywhere in a hospital, the first thing you're going to be doing is waiting. So I sat with an annoying old couple while I waited for my scan. I sat there for what felt like an hour until someone called me into the room. The whole time I was thinking to myself, "Why did I have to drink that plastic shit so quickly if they were just going to make me wait?" While I was sitting down though, that lady I saw the day before in Triage, the one who was bent in half in agony, was being wheeled around on a stretcher. She waved at me. I waved back. It reminded me of Wallace and Gromit.
A sweet little asian lady then lead me into a room and said, "You need to watch this video before you get your scan." The video outlined exactly what was going to be happening in my CT scan, clearly believing that this scan is more dangerous than it actually is. The biggest issue surrounding a CT scan is this dye they inject into you that's used to map spots on organs. Sometimes people have bad reactions to this dye, like nausea, vomiting, or dying. This is something that a person could just tell me, not this monotone asshole on the TV. After that, I was directed into the scanning room, and this lady walks up to me with another cup of that goddamn plastic water. "We need a little bit more of this in your system." Oh, so now it's instantaneous. I don't need to wait for rapture for it to spread through my system. Wonderful. So I drank the melted grocery bag and laid down on an extremely comfy table, my god, while the nurse injected the dye into my blood stream.
She told me, "You will start to experience a warm sensation, and you will feel like you wet the bed." Sure enough, a couple seconds later, I felt like I had opened a dishwasher mid-cycle and jammed my head inside, and it really did feel like I pissed myself. It was really pleasant, actually. I'm surprised people don't piss themselves more often. It's so warm (I didn't actually piss myself). Then they stick you inside a giant donut and a lady tells you to hold your breath and stuff. Really, it's a big ass donut.
Then your kidneys soak up the dye almost instantly, marking the first time in my life where I've fully appreciated my kidneys, so you're good to go and wait some more while they analyze the scan. Typically you're getting your chest scanned when you get a CT scan, so you have the pleasure of still not being able to eat or drink anything while you wait for results. For an hour. Joyous. I'm not sure if it's ever expressly explained why you can't eat, but what I do know is that this process could loosely be considered torture at this point. I did learn something interesting while I waited in Triage some more. There are three distinct sections of the middle of your body.
I used to refer to the whole thing as my chest, as every layman does, but as I discovered, it is indeed split into three different sections. Chest, stomach and abdomen. They also fall into their own categories of severity. There's a sign in Triage that reads, "If you are experiencing chest pains, you are permitted to skip the line." This is important, because if you walk in there with a stomach ache, they will tell you to fuck off to the back of the line. If you tell a doctor that you are having chest pains, they generally interpret that as, "Your heart is about to explode" and medical attention comes immediately. If your abdomen is bothering you, that's not terribly worrisome. So long as your appendix hasn't turned septic, most doctors assume you are just struggling to take a crap. And unless you have a bullet in your stomach, like I said, enjoy the back of the line, you pony bitch. I drew a diagram to illustrate this better:
So over an hour later, a nurse struggled to pronounce my name somehow, and I was lead back to Patients Only. I'm sure there's a proper name for that room, but I can't be bothered to remember what it could be. Unwanted Accupunture Victims would be most appropriate, because when I entered that room again, the barrage of needles was astounding. I got more shots in my arms and sweet jesus, they took more of my blood. The amount of blood they drained me of at this point roughly equates to a small child. I felt like that nazi dude at the end of The Last Crusade.
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| Should have moisturized, bro |
Come to think of it, they may have just taken my blood. I'm not sure anymore. The amount of needles at this point has sort of blurred in my mind into one giant harpoon. They did hook me up to an IV again, that I remember, because I sat there for another hour or so watching a show called Cake Boss. I think a better title for the show would be, "Asshole Makes Cakes", as it's more honest. The host is a complete prick douchebag from New Jersey who pretends to be in The Godfather 90% of the time, yells a lot for no reason, and generally takes cake making far too seriously. You bake and design sugary sponges for a living. This isn't fourth down in the fucking Super Bowl. Take it down a notch, Don Corleone.
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| Nice cake, asshole |
Then after waiting some more, and mustering the dumbest answers I possibly could for some nurse's questionnaire, I was summoned into a room with a doctor and a surgeon, at long last. The surgeon was quick to confirm what I already knew, I was going to have surgery. Kinda figured, since I was talking to a surgeon. Took them along enough to get around to saying it. They said it would be happening later in the evening, and simply told me to sit tight until they called me down. No problem, I'm already well versed in doing that. The look on the surgeon's face after he broke the unsurprising news to me was weird. He looked at me with such dismay and said, "I'm sorry" and paused dramatically afterwards. This isn't Grey's Anatomy, boy. Am I gonna die or something? How bad are you at your job that you have such little confidence in yourself? I'm not scared of surgery. I'm more frightened by your enormous math teacher mustache. Felt like I was in a German porn movie.
Just to go back to the questionnaire for a moment, I wasn't entirely honest with you. It was just one really dumb answer. She asked me my name and birthday, marking the 83rd time I answered those questions for some reason. Either hospital staff are extremely forgetful, doubt my credentials and/or existence on this plain of reality, or need to constantly check if I'm still lucid. Then she asked me, "How much do you drink in a week?" Keep in mind, I don't drink alcohol, so when someone asks me how much I drink, I interpret that question very differently than the average person. I answered, "I don't know. I don't really keep track. Is a lot a good answer?" I didn't realize it at the time, but the shocked expression on her face was very justified. I followed up a second later by saying, "I drink at least four glasses of water a day..." The look of relief on her face looked like she'd just found Jesus. She said, "No no, I mean how much alcohol do you drink?" I replied, "Oh. None. I don't drink." She then began to laugh her ass off for the next 30 seconds. In fairness to me, she could have phrased that question better. To be unfair, I'm an idiot.
Then, in uncharacteristic fashion, a nurse called my name like half an hour after my brief meeting with the surgeon and said, "They're ready for you now!" Damn, that was oddly fast. I had hoped to use the time before the surgery to mentally prepare myself for it. Then they called me down, and although I consider myself a brave and exceptionally manly person, and despite being in a positive mood, I'll admit. In that moment, I was scared shitless. Literally. Some dude told me to get naked and put on a robe, so I went to the bathroom and pooped. My fight or flight response was leaning more to the flight path, as I immediately began plotting escape routes and excuses I could spin to get out of the surgery. But like kisses from grandma, there was no escape. So I exited the bathroom, laid down on the stretcher thingy and was wheeled off to the surgical wing. Though it did feel kinda cool having someone wheel my naked ass around, I must say. Hospitals kind of do a bad job at making you feel like you're not going to die.
Once I got to the wing, slightly curious if I'd just flashed everyone on the way, a really nice nurse gave me a blanket and said, "The anesthesiologist will be along in about 15 minutes." Although a blanket is what Yoda was wearing before he died (spoiler alert), it was so wonderfully warm, I didn't care. Felt like she put my feet in a microwave. Then she put a shower cap on my head and walked away. Then the anesthesiologist came along and essentially said, "I'm going to drug you." Again, kinda figured, since you're essentially a drug dealer, but it's good to know medical professionals can describe what they do. It instills confidence that they know what they're doing as well. Then my girlfriend came in, and what a sight that must have been for her. Fucking shower cap on my head, tube in my arm, old blanket on my feet, piece of shit robe on me that looked like umbrella material, disgusting facial hair, and more pale than a masturbation addict. All that's missing is a missing leg and bleeding eyeballs. On reflection, I should have said "Hey sweet cheeks." Fuck.
Then I said goodbye to my mom and girlfriend and got wheeled into an extremely bright room filled with people with masks on, who would be removing a piece from my unconscious body in a few minutes. Man, if the hospital setting hadn't been well established by this point, that would be a really creepy sentence. I then lifted myself off the stretcher and on to this tiny ass table, absolutely flashing the dude pretending to do work infront of me. I also noticed there was some young looking nurse looking at me and smiling. She was wearing a mask, but I could tell. I'm also pretty sure I went to high school with her. I don't know how I could tell, but I could. Damn, what's with all these people my age making more money than me? Fuck you, I can beat Halo 1 in under an hour and twenty minutes. Bet you guys can't. Suck it.
Anyway, then a really nice lady asked me to hold out my arm, so I did. The anesthesiologist walked up, and I swear to god, just tapped my IV. He didn't stand there for a few seconds and carefully inserted a needle or something. He just walked up and tapped it. There was no way to make that sentence not sound dirty. Less than five seconds after, the ceiling appeared to start moving up and down. A lady put a mask on my face and the anesthetic guy said, "You should be feeling light headed." I'm not sure how I was supposed to answer him with a tube on my face, but indeed I was. 10 seconds later and I was gone. I don't even remember a fade to black. Just cut to black. BAM. Out. Damn that shit works fast. I potentially could have just died, and I didn't care at all.
Then two seconds later I woke up to a lady asking me, "How are you feeling, Scott?" My first thought was, "How do you know my name?" My second thought was, "I wonder who that nurse was in the surgical room..." Then I replied, "I feel like I'm on drugs, so quite pleasant, thank you." She giggled, then I went back to sleep, and immediately woke up in recovery. My first thought there was, "How the fuck did I get here?" My second thought was, "I wonder how many people have seen my dick today." I could tell I was still on drugs, because my mom and my girlfriend didn't walk into the room after I woke up, they glided into the room, as if on a conveyor belt. I giggled. I don't remember the conversations that took place afterwards, just that I probably sounded really stupid during them.
I was really looking forward to sleeping after my mom and girlfriend left. I was completely exhausted. Naturally the drugs wore off moments after they left, so I was wide awake. Damnit. Shortly after, a really sweet nurse with a wonderful Ukrainian accent walked in with a tiny bag marked "Bath" and said, "Time to wipe yourself down!" Sweet. This should fulfill at least two fantasies at once. The scary Russian sounding nurse lady cliche didn't even occur to me until several hours later she was so nice. I will say that if our roles were reversed in that moment, that probably would have sounded creepy. "Time to your wipe yourself down! Yeah, slower." Gah. Then I got confused. Wipe myself down? What the hell is she talking about? I shit myself during the procedure, didn't I? I realized what she was referring to when I lifted up my robe. I appeared to be covered in red spray paint. A little alarming at first, I thought I was covered in blood, but it was just antiseptic. The base of my dick was red as well, confirming my suspicion that several people saw my junk today, and someone touched it as well.
After failing to get the bulk of the antiseptic off, the nurse ordered me to go pee because she was leaving soon. Apparently she was very confident in my ability to pee. She handed me a tiny bucket-like contraption that fit in the toilet bowl that measures how much you pee, and away I went. It was this moment that was very eye opening for me. I went to get out of bed, and I couldn't fucking move. I didn't have the capacity to try harder either. I was just kind of stuck there. The nurse eventually freed me from my mattress prison, and I went pee. It was glorious. Painful and strenuous, but glorious. I nearly filled that little bowl thing. She then instructed me to leave it there. Poor lady. I can't imagine that was very pleasant to deal with afterwards. Then I got back in bed and she said, "I'm going to give you a shot before I leave." Hey! One more for the road, why not? She gave me a shot of blood thinner, meaning if I accidentally cut myself on anything, I would look like I just got injured in a Tarantino movie, and I would bleed out instantly. Not really, but that's what I imagined would happen.
Thus began the night of agony. No one told me that laying down was a bad idea, so naturally I tried to lay down. People tend to do this when they want to sleep. Should you ever get surgery done on your abdomen, here's some advice. Don't lay down for a while. You won't be able to breathe, you'll be in an enormous amount of pain as the painkillers wear off by the time you want to sleep, and you also won't be able to get up. I also hadn't eaten anything in 24 hours, so my stomach was growling and gurgling like a hungry volcano on the verge of eruption. Then my shoulder started hurting like crazy. It didn't make any sense. I was also pinned to the bed, until I discovered that I could raise the bed via remote control. Sat myself back up, and savoured the next hour of ceaseless shoulder pain and my stomach trying to eat itself and die.
The best word to describe my sleep pattern that night would be "erratic". I'd sleep for five minutes, then for half an hour, then for five minutes again, then for exactly 18 minutes. I know, because there was this obnoxiously loud clock in my room. All that thing needed was a bird shooting out of it and every few seconds and a strobe light to make it more absurd. I have to emphasize it. This thing was LOUD. Felt like someone was clapping in both of my ears every second. Maybe I was going insane at this point, I don't know. Soon enough, however, my roommate's snoring drowned out the clock extremely well, so I had the pleasure of now struggling to sleep next to a malfunctioning go-cart. Every now and again he'd choke on his snore, so he'd snort like a pig for a few seconds, then snore even louder, as if achieving a higher decibel of snore would abate the choking hazard. The guy also let out a raunchy fart in the bathroom at around 4 in the morning that shook the door.
Then at around 6 in the morning when I woke up from another 10 minute increment of whatever my body was doing that slightly resembled sleep, I got up to pee again, then a nurse came into the room to check on the old bastard sleeping next to me. Then she brought me cranberry juice, which didn't taste like cranberry juice at all, and it was delicious. I was so happy to finally have something in my system other than drugs, water and surgical instruments. Then I walked around Recovery for a while before discovering the kitchen. The nurse said I could make toast, so I made a slice and went back to my room. That was the most amazing piece of toast I have ever eaten. It could only have been more delicious if Kate Beckinsale walked in and buried my face in her breasts.
Afterwards I finally introduced myself to my roommate, and this guy was made of balls. I noticed he had a HUGE cut on his neck, and before I could ask him what the hell happened, he told me the story. "Well, I was on the fuckin' golf course, and this fuckin' piece of calcium broke off into my brain. So I drove myself to the doctor and he looked me dead in the eye and said, 'I can fix you, but I could fuckin' kill you.' They fixed me up and I've been here since friday. I better get to leave today, I need to work on my swing. This coffee tastes like dogshit." He started telling more stories of how he visited Africa, how he met his wife on a golf course and banged her somewhere in the trees (not kidding), and how he has seven children, one of which he described to me as, "a fucking asshole". He later said to me, "When do they serve breakfast in this fuckin' place? Worst bed and breakfast ever. HAHAHAHAHA!!" This man, was insane.
Then a nurse came in and took my blood, just what I like for breakfast. I would like to go back to the hospital after I recover and ask someone how much of that blood was actually needed. Afterwards I was sitting in bed, still enjoying my cranberry juice and water, when a doctor came in with a pack of students, marking the fourth different doctor I had dealt with in two days. He looked like the Old Spice guy though, which was cool. I think I may have disappointed him though. He asked me stuff like, "Can you move? Can you pass gas? How is your pain?" I said I walked around Recovery most of the morning, I farted earlier, and my pain was non-existant. He looked so sad, like he wanted there to be something wrong with me so his students could learn something. Instead, they just learned that I'm awesome and heal like Wolverine, so they should feel priviledged instead, ungrateful shits.
Not too long after, breakfast was served. Up until this point, I had been very friendly with all of the hospital staff, and they seemed to mostly pretend to like me. So this dude walks in with my food and I asked him all cheerfully, "What's on the menu today?" He just looked at me with such disdain, like he wanted to stab me to death, mumbled something, set the food down and walked away. He didn't give my roommate Kenneth anything though, so I immediately heard, "Where's my fuckin' food, cocksucker?" I'm pretty sure the guy heard him too, considering he was just outside the door grabbing the extra plate.
Now, I expected hospital food to resemble airplane food. I don't know if airplane food has changed since I last flew somewhere like 13 years ago or something, but I remember it being similar to uncooked egg white mixed with snot, with cheese and a sausage on top. I also expected it to be primarily yogurt and jello. Not at all, in fact. Hospital food is just awkward. They gave me two extremely adorable tiny slices of toast that were bleach white, a tiny omelette that was an absolutely perfect rectangle, looked indistinguishable from a sponge, an enormous cup of coffee, probably something else that I can't remember, and a tiny cup of apple juice that honestly looked like a urine sample.
I managed to fall asleep after breakfast, which was absolutely wonderful. Then my mom and brother woke my ass up like half an hour later, damnit. But it was ok, because a sexy hot mama nurse came in to give me more antibiotics, and another shot of blood thinner. Her ass pressed against my arm at some point, that was awesome. After my body finally absorbed the last of the medicine, it was finally time to remove that fucking IV and send my ass home. Naturally, removing the tape was extremely painful, but it seemed to be hurting the nurse more than it was me. She kept wincing and saying, "Ooh! I'm so sorry! Ow! Ow!" Lady, it's not your fucking arm. Just yank the damn tape off, don't be a baby. Then she had to clean my belly button incision, which was disgusting. I felt bad for her. At some point during this process, Kenneth was able to go home. His wife escorted him. I looked at her when they were leaving and thought, "I know things about you..." Thank you, Kenneth, for making my stay in Recovery entertaining, and for pretending to be deaf while that sexy nurse asked you questions. He also asked her, "When can I work on my swing?" He was totally talking about his dick. You sly dog, Kenneth.
Now I'm at home, only just now fully realizing that they essentially pulled a finger out of my belly button with a pair of tweezers. Gnarly. I had hoped they would let me keep the appendix in a bag afterwards so I could throw it at someone, but the bastards probably threw it in the garbage instead. Wasted opportunity... So yeah, that's how I got my appendix taken out. Kind of scary how my body randomly decided to shut down on me like that. Stupid body. At least I finally get all that time off from work I've wanted. I now intend to live out the next month of my life as a vegetable. A naked, constipated vegetable. Oh, and the thing that was in my arm that whole time, was in fact not a needle. It was a little flexible plastic tube thing that looked like a tiny worm, which means that I'm an idiot.
