Saying Goodbye… To my Appendix

The last two weeks for me have been very different from the rest of my time here. Two Saturdays ago I had to have an emergency surgery to remove my appendix which was obviously pretty unexpected, so here is that story.

I started having pain in the lower right side of my stomach about two days before I went to the hospital, but at first when it started it wasn’t that bad so I just assumed maybe I had eaten something weird and it would go away on it’s own. It slowly got worse and worse over the next two days but it was still not so bad that I couldn’t work. I talked to my house mates about it and one of them told me that she was pretty sure it was my appendix, but I didn’t really want to go to the hospital so I just kept hoping it would go away.

By the time Saturday morning came however, it had gotten really bad really suddenly to the point where I could hardly stand so I decided (with the encouragement of my coworkers) that it was probably time to go to the hospital. I was nervous because of the language barrier and dealing with insurance and all those kinds of things and that’s the biggest reason it took me so long to go get checked out. They got me into an exam room in the hospital right away though due to Covid restrictions I wasn’t allowed to have anyone come with me at the beginning. The doctor came in and poked around my stomach a bit and told me that he was 95% sure that it was my appendix because of the degree of pain I was in and the location, but he wanted to do an ultrasound to be absolutely sure. His English was pretty good which was really helpful for me to be able to know what was going on.

He only did the ultrasound for about 30 seconds at which point he said that it was definitely my appendix and it needed to come out as soon as possible. He didn’t even finish the ultrasound, just called the surgeon and had the nurses start getting me ready for surgery. My friend Rebecca was allowed to come and see me before so that she could take my stuff with her and also to get instructions from the doctor as to what I would need for the next two days. I was really glad to have her there even for a few minutes because I knew she would be able to get everything sorted out for me with work and bringing the things I would need for after the surgery. So barely twenty minutes after going into the hospital I was taken upstairs for surgery. Luckily I hadn’t really eaten anything the day before or that morning so that made everything easier because they didn’t have to wait. The doctor told me after that it was good that we came when we did because if we had waited even another hour my appendix likely would have burst.

I went into surgery sometime around noon and woke up in recovery around three hours later, very sore, very tired and very doped up on painkillers. Everything is a little bit fuzzy from those first few hours of being awake. I think I was in recovery for about two hours before I was taken up to my room in the hospital. At some point I was able to call my family and tell them about it; I would have called them before but there would have been no point because the time change meant they were still sleeping at the point where I went into the hospital.

About 10 minutes after they took me to my room, my friend Johann came and brought the stuff I would need for a few days in the hospital which my roommates had packed up for me. They all wanted to come but I was only allowed to have one visitor per day for 30 minutes due to Covid. I think he was probably a bit confused because as soon as he came in I started bawling my eyes out for absolutely no reason. So when I say I was doped up on pain killers at that point, I really mean it. But we talked for awhile before the nurses kicked him out and it was nice to have some company for a bit.

The next two days that I was in the hospital were long and painful. I was really really sore which is normal of course, but it was also difficult to be somewhere where it’s hard to communicate with anyone. I was in a room with three other older ladies, only one of which spoke any English. And while they were really kind I also had a hard time understanding them because of their local dialect and so I couldn’t really talk to them much beyond very basic things. So both days I was really glad when Johann came to visit because then at least I had an hour where I wasn’t bored. I also slept a ton though because of the pain killers so it was okay even though I couldn’t do anything. I basically just read and napped and listened to audio books for those few days. Not the most interesting but I wasn’t up to much else.

On Monday morning the doctor came and looked at the incisions and told me that I could go home that day if I wanted. He actually recommended that I stay a few more days so that I could have better painkillers but said that if I thought I was good enough I could go. In hindsight I definitely should have stayed longer because the first few days back at home were really difficult for me, but at the time I just wanted to not be in the hospital anymore so I went back to Tauernhof. One of my coworkers and one of the full time staff came to pick me up and I was really glad that my coworker, Ilka, was there because dealing with the insurance, banking and pharmacy stuff would have been even more of a nightmare without a native German speaker.

So after a few stops we were back at Tauernhof and I was pretty happy. Even though I couldn’t do anything by myself at first, even walking, I was happy to be back somewhere with people again. Basically the first three days I spent almost entirely in my room in my bed because I was still in a lot of pain. But I was really well taken care of by my housemates, other staff and students. That was the really amazing thing about this whole experience. Because I always had help when and how I needed it and they never made me feel like I was a burden on them even though I definitely was.

Pretty much the whole first week I needed help with every little thing, every little action just exhausted me and put me completely out of breath, but once I started feeling better it got better really quickly. This whole last week has been pretty good for me because even though I still had to rest lots, I was able to listen to the lectures with the students and spend a lot more time out of my room building back my endurance. On Wednesday I got the stitches out and all three cuts have healed really well, the only reason I wasn’t able to start work again mid week was because the biggest incision had a lot of bruising and formed a small hematoma so the doctor said I needed to wait a few more days.

Tomorrow or Monday I’m allowed to start work again and I’m really looking forward to it. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to do a full work day right off the bat because I still get tired really quickly with some things, but I’m sure I’ll figure out pretty quickly how much I can do.

So that is the adventure that was my last two weeks. Completely crazy, hard and unexpected but also a good time of rest and reset for which I’m really thankful