Some of the worst pain I’ve ever experienced in my life was when I was 12 years old.
I had been dealing with what I thought was a bad case of stomach flu for several days when I awoke one night in the early hours of the morning with stomach cramps so severe that I couldn’t straighten up.
I made my way to the bathroom as quietly as I could while I was hunched over in extreme agony so as not to awaken any other members of my large family.
I looked in the medicine cabinet to see if there was anything in there to ease my discomfort, but the only thing I could come up with was some aspirin, which was as useless as putting a band-aid on a foot-long knife wound in trying to deal with my situation.
Several months before when I was working through a stomach ailment, I found getting into a hot bath had helped (for some reason) so I started to fill the tub with water.
That caught the attention of my parents who were sleeping in a nearby room and they got up to see why one of their children (there were seven of us) had decided that 2 a.m. was a good time for a wash.
When they realized that that I couldn’t straighten up without putting myself through torture, they bundled me up in a blanket, put me in the car and rushed me to the hospital.
Waiting times in emergency rooms weren’t much better then than they are these days, but when the nurse at the front counter assessed me, I was quickly taken into the nearest observation room and a doctor and another nurse immediately began checking my vital signs.
I was distressed to see the growing concern on their faces and I heard them tell my parents that I was suffering from acute appendicitis, and that my appendix was so inflamed, it was on the verge of bursting which would spread poisons through my body.
They made it clear it was a life-threatening condition, even for a young boy of 12.
The doctor said I required immediate surgery to remove my appendix before it burst.
The next thing I knew, I was rushed back outside and placed in an ambulance which sped through the almost empty city streets at that hour on the way to the children’s hospital at the other end of the community.
I wondered why nobody had given me anything to deal with the pain which was still ravaging my stomach but, apparently, there was no time for that.
I remember a whole crew of doctors and nurses met us at the door and they began sedating me for my operation as we charged through the hallways even before we got to the operating room.
A nurse told me to count backwards from 10 and I made it to four before it was lights out.
The next thing I remember was waking up in a hospital bed with tubes running out both my nostrils and a fresh 12-inch wound on my abdomen with what appeared to me to be a small rubber hose sewn into the side of it.
It was later explained to me that toxins had been released into my body before the operating team had removed my appendix, and the nose tubes and the rubber hose in my stomach were intended to drain the poisons away before they could do any damage.
I remember I was in a very drowsy condition when I woke up, and I was surrounded by family members who were looking very concerned.
I was still experiencing some pain, but it paled in comparison to what I was going through before the operation.
Most appendectomies require the patient to be in the hospital for about two days after the surgery but, because my appendix almost burst and released the poisons, I was in the hospital for almost two weeks.
The staff at the hospital explained to me how serious my condition was when I arrived, and encouraged me to tell my parents and/or older siblings right away if I ever experienced such pain again.
The truth of it was that, living in such a large family, I simply didn’t want to be a bother to anyone.
It was almost a full week before they removed all of the hoses and tubes and, during that time, I was considered as an example of what happens in cases of acute appendicitis, so groups of medical students came through my room to poke and prod at me.
I was mortified.
I was just a youngster, so I began feeling sorry for myself during my hospital stay and wanted to go home.
But in my second week before I was released from the children’s hospital, I attended a “school” that was set up for long-term patients and my melancholy over my situation was shattered when I met kids that had cancer or some other serious ailments who pretty much lived at the hospital and had futures that didn’t look so promising.
The whole experience gave me a new perspective on my young life as I realized just how fragile life can be.
