It wasn’t my appendix

Waking up, the air was hot and muggy. It was early, 5:30, and I had planned on going for a 3-mile run around Davis Island before starting my day. Waking up, my stomach hurt, not a lot, but enough to understand running was not an option, so I laid my head back down and fell back asleep. 6:30 Rolled around, my dad came into the room and told me we had to leave soon to tour his ship. I said “okay” and as he left, I arose from my bed. The pain didn’t subside in my sleep, and in my lower abdomen I felt as if I was having a bowel movement, it didn’t hurt a lot, but it was uncomfortable. I dressed for the day, high waisted jeans, a cute cropped tank top, little did I know it would be my last day wearing a crop top. My makeup was residue from the day before, so I concealed under my eyes, and set out for the day.

My dad and left for the shipyard, and my stomach was in knots. Did I have to poop? Am I going to start my period? I wasn’t sure. It wasn’t the worst cramp I had ever felt, but hell, it was uncomfortable. We got to the shipyard and I ran to the bathroom, but nothing happened. After struggling to climb stairs on the boat, and clutching my stomach and dry heaving for 10 minutes, my father ended our boat tour. I was very upset with myself. Clutching my stomach, we drove back to my aunt and uncles. The pain worsened, from moderate to severe. My stomach permeated with pain as we drove back to my aunt’s house. Pain so great, with every bump in the road or sudden stop, a moan would come out of my mouth, that put a look of worry in my father’s eyes I had never seen before.

My aunt checked me out because she’s an MD, and said it could be a problem with my menstrual track, but I asked if it could be my appendix. She agreed it was possible. She left the house telling my father if I get worse to bring me into the ER. If you can guess, it got worse. the pain was so excruciating, my dad had to pick me up and carry me to the car as I screamed in pain. Arriving at the hospital, I was checked in within 10 minutes and brought to the pediatric ED where a nurse named Linda saved me. She listened to me. I told her I had appendicitis, and I was going to need to get my appendix out ASAP. I told her that I have a family history of this illness and that my brother, Sam, had just had the procedure done a year prior.

The ER doctor sent me to CT and ultrasound. Linda gave me enough morphine to knock me out through the imaging procedures. When I was back in my original hospital room. My shirt was off and in its place was a hospital jonny. My dad looked at me, he seemed sullen, with a long look on his face. The lights were dim but not dark, and the room seemed so serious despite the fact that it was just him and I in there. “Did they tell you?” he asked. I shook my head but I knew it was appendicitis, but he explained that there was a mass, a cyst on my ovary, and it had twist cutting off blood flow and circulation. Organs that don’t get blood, can’t live. What does this mean? What is happening? A million questions flooded my thoughts as my doctor walked in. He told me he paged OBG and they were on their way. He had no definite answers. I was wrong. It was not appendicitis.

A team of 4 surgeons came into my room. The resident OBGYN explained what they thought to be the problem saying, I need immediate surgery and handed me papers to sign. Signing meant they could crack my chest in case of complications, signing that they could resuscitate me in case of emergency, signing that I know the risks and I might not make it off that table. I gave them my John Hancock, and just like that, they were gone, to prepare the OR for me. After I was prepared for surgery I gave my phone to my dad and said bye, I knew there was a possibility it would be the last time I ever saw him.

The operating room was smaller than I thought. The walls seemed to confine me in. Maybe it was the lack of windows, But I felt so big, and then they moved me from the stretcher to the operating table, and I felt so small. There I was, in the middle of a room, at least ten people, naked, vulnerable, the pain meds were wearing off, I was scared. I was so scared. I was alone. As I heard the heart monitor start to rapidly increase, a plastic oxygen mask was put over my mouth. Quickly the world around me grew darker and darker until everything was black. Everything was gone.

Waking up, I didn’t realize surgery had happened. I didn’t believe the nurse when she said surgery was all over. The nurse lifted up my hospital gown to show me three scars. Not Very large ones, but big enough to be seen. Bloody, bruised, terrifying. I couldn’t look at it. Tears filled my eyes, as I realized what had happened. They didn’t just take out a cyst. It wasn’t even on my ovary. The doctor told me the mass was on my fallopian tube, and it had killed my tube. It was too big to save the tube, and they had removed it all. I came into the hospital with stomach pain and ended up having to leave without a part of me. One of the parts that define my gender, my identity, who I am.

My mistake was my diagnosis. I refused to think there was anything wrong with my reproductive organs because I had never used them before, and how could something like that happen to someone like me? I had always envisioned my life with kids, but now my chances of that dissipate by the day. Mistakes like this happen on my favorite TV show all the time, Grey’s Anatomy. One of my favorite examples of a mistake that ended in an unexpected outcome was when the man who killed Derek Shepard was on the board of doctors who were deciding if Meredith should keep her medical license. The fact that he was there was wild, and then he keeled over with a brain aneurysm and ended up needing the same procedure that Derek would’ve needed, but he just didn’t do. The doctor who killed Derek Shepard died, something I was not upset about, but the fact that he was a part of Meredith’s trial was very unexpected, and while he made the mistake to not give Derek Shepard a CT and that’s what killed Derek, the CT he received presented him with the same problem.

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