January 26, 2007 Cairns, Australia

January 26, 2007
Cairns, Australia

Happy Australia Day!

Last night we visited the Serpent hostel and used their plugs to charge my computer and watch a few episodes of Deadwood while charging iPods. We then returned to our van and headed back to the parking lot to fall asleep (22:30).

At around 4:00 I woke up with a sharp pain in my side. I left the van, took a pee, and decided to try to go back to sleep. The pain was so bad that this was impossible. Initially I thought it was a gas bubble. I sat up waiting for the pain to pass. It did not go anywhere.

Sometime around 7:00 I woke up Spizz and confirmed that the appendix is on the right side. At this point I decided I needed to go to the hospital and get things checked out. I woke up B and we drove to the Cairns Base Hospital. I went straight to the emergency room.

Once in the Emergency room I had to wait almost half an hour before I was let in. Still in severe pain, I was forced to fill out a number of forms and wait for the medical staff to change shits. Needless to say, I was not very happy about this.

Eventually I got into a hospital bed and then waited to see a doctor (I told the other boys they could take off and check back later). When the doctor finally came, he poked my belly and had me jump up and down a bit. Shortly thereafter he concluded that I had appendicitis.

I spent the next several hours waiting for the diagnosis to be confirmed by the surgical staff. Through all the waiting the nursing staff was quite nice and gave me painkillers (morphine) as needed. At around 11:00 a surgeon confirmed that I had appendicitis.

At this point there was a lot of waiting as some of the staff wanted to transfer me to a private hospital and some wanted to keep me where I was (something to do with my insurance policy – which was in our van). Once the boys got back I had them get the policy and handed it over to the staff. A nurse by the name of Ben was very helpful and informed me that I would not have to transfer anywhere.

As I sat in the hospital bed waiting to go into surgery I tried to make some phone calls to the USA. For some reason the lady running the switchboard had the wrong extension for America and none of the calls went through. Eventually (after lots of arguing), B was able to explain to her what she needed to do. I finally got connected to my mom.

Just minutes before I was wheeled to the surgery room I got a phone call from Jackie and said goodbye to the boys. For the first time in my life I was going to have surgery. While somewhat nerve-racking, I also found it kind of exciting.

Interestingly, my entire surgical staff was from New Zealand. They tried to get me to pee into a bottle on the bed but I could not do it. Instead I hobbled to the bathroom and relieved myself before the surgery.

Almost as soon as they put the mask on me I fell asleep. It was just as I imagined it. There was a bright light shinning on my face and several doctors standing over me…

When I woke up I was in a different room and felt as tired as I have in my entire life. Still, the nurse asked me to stay awake so that I could control my breathing. It was quite difficult and my throat hurt like crazy!

Once everything was under control I was wheeled into a room with some other patients and promptly fell asleep. I woke up several hours later (sometime between 16:00-17:00) and had to pee really badly. But, for some reason, I could not get anything to come out.

I informed the nurse and she told me this is not entirely uncommon. Apparently the anesthetics were making me retain urine. She said she would give me until 22:30 to pass urine before putting a catheter inside me (I was then highly motivated to get some urine out).

A few minutes later the boys showed up and I ate my dinner. They made sure that I was ok and headed out to enjoy the Australia day celebrations. I got a few more phone calls (from my dad and Jackie).

I then decided to try to pee again. Nothing would come out. I tried everything. I had a hot shower, sat and read (gossip) magazines, turned on the water faucet, and jumped up and down a bit. None of it worked. I began to fear that I would have to have a catheter put in.

Though I was extremely uncomfortable (because of my inflated bladder) I fell asleep for a few minutes. When I woke up it was 22:00 and I gave it one last effort to pee. With a lot of concentration I managed to urinate! I have never been so excited to take a pee in my entire life. From now on I will be grateful every time I go to the bathroom…

The rest of the evening was much more relaxed. I watched some of the Australian open on TV and then watched Predator as I fell asleep…

NOTE: Though I was initially very frustrated with the medical staff here they were great once everything got figured out. They did a wonderful job of taking care of me. And, it just so happened that my appendicitis occurred on casual Fridays so all the doctors were wearing Hawaiian shirts and other fun clothing…