The death of an appendix. Part IV

Excuse our rather lengthy break in this saga, but your regularly scheduled programming was interrupted by a day of fun for Austin and I.

On to Part IV.

After the doctor had told us the diagnosis, we then got to meet with tons and tons of more doctors, up until finally getting put into a hospital room at 4 am in the general surgery ward.

The conversations about his history can about be summed up like this: Every question you are going to ask, the answer is no. The doctors seemed to enjoy that. Again, there's that humor at o'dark thirty for you.

The funniest moment for me was when Austin looks at the doctor and says,

"OK, so I should be getting out by tomorrow?" (Remember this is in the wee hours of Saturday morning.)

Doctor: "Try Monday at the earliest. Oh, and we can't let you eat or drink anything while you are here because we might have to pop you into surgery at any time."

In the meantime they started him on an antibiotic drip in his IV. The same stuff they give to people with Sepsis. Yikes.

Once we finally got up to the hospital room, we tried to get some sleep before the doctors made their rounds the next morning. As I cuddled up in the hospital chair in my clothes, covered by Austin's jacket, I thought to myself, "Man, I am going to look a wreck in the morning."

And a wreck I did look. To top it off, the head of surgery came in at 7:00 am to do rounds, looking tres cute (these are the things I was worrying about while my husband was ina hospital bed? I know, I am crazy).

Seriously though, picture me after three hours of sleep (in a chair no less) with mascara all smudged all over my face, hair coming out of a poorly done french braid (done at 3:00 am) and contacts stuck to my very eyeballs, trying to follow what this woman (and the 18 other doctors with her) were saying after being awoken by the switching on of lights and barging in of this large party. Wowza.

The general gist of the information was this (read on for way too much medical info):

• The CT scan was the worst the head surgeon had seen in "a good long while"
• Because Austin is young and healthy (aside from this whole appendix thing) his body was responding to wall off the infection with white blood cells
• Should his body succeed in walling it off, it could create an abscess that then would need to be drained before moving on to the course of medicine they would be beginning Austin on (since they didn't believe it had yet completely walled off)
• When your body does this, it uses the nearest organs as natural barriers and includes them in the wall, which weakens the organ walls
• Because of this, if they operated now, they may end up having to do a much larger operation than an appendectomy because they may have to take parts of his other organs
• Instead they would start him on antibiotics, clear up the infection in his abdominal cavity, put him on more antibiotics at home and then check back in to do a simple appendectomy once all the infection cleared up in a few weeks

Whew. Maybe I was able to pay attention after all. Long story short, no surgery until the infection clears up. This may take a while, so get comfy.

Get comfy we did as a stream of visitors came to see Austin, who was feeling better with every minute.

For your enjoyment:

Before you ask, no I did not kick him out of bed. 

He was tired of being in it and I was, just tired.

Up next, Part V or "The Conclusion to this Never-ending Ballad"