The Ruptured Appendix

Back in the fall of 1993, our little family was living in Madison, Wisconsin in on-campus married student housing.  We had been there for 3 years.  Scott was doing graduate studies in physics.  We had two little boys, David was 3 and JanPaul was 9 months. Things were going well!

This picture was taken just a few days before Scott got sick

At the very end of September, Scott got sick.  I came home from a Madison Symphony Orchestra rehearsal on a Monday night and Scott said ominously, "I feel some pressure in my abdomen." The next day he threw up and we decided he had the stomach flu.  Scott decided he needed to go to the doctor.  I was gone somewhere with the boys and the car when he made the appointment so he decided to RIDE HIS BIKE to the doctor--unbelievable. The doctor told him it was probably stomach flu and sent him back home--not that helpful.

We made a pinata and we had a little pinata party for David's half birthday (October 4) right outside our apartment. I think Scott must have been inside our apartment suffering or at the hospital.

Over the next several days Scott continued to feel terrible.  He threw up a lot and developed a pain in his lower right abdomen as well as a fever.  These are classic appendix symptoms but we were pretty clueless.  I thought that maybe he had pulled an abdominal muscle because of the violent throwing up--which seems ridiculous now. That weekend after 5 days of illness he still wasn't recovering and when he called the doctor they told him to just take it easy with his diet. Finally Sunday night he felt like someone had cut him open with a knife (foreshadowing!).  When he called the doctor he was advised to go to the emergency room. I found a friend to stay with our children who were sleeping and I drove him to University Hospital which was fortunately close to our apartment. In the emergency room, they had trouble deciding what the problem was.  All I remember them doing was feeling his abdomen and testing his white blood cell count to see if he had an infection.  The white blood cell count was actually normal (we learned later that the body does this when it is walling off an infection).  But his abdomen felt all wrong and the doctor told him, "You are a very sick man." So they decided to do an exploratory surgery saying, "We're sure we can fix it if we operate." Fortunately they were right.

Our cute little cherubs

Scott went into surgery and I drove home to check on the boys, having gotten one hour of sleep that night, not really sure if Scott was going to survive this. When I called the hospital later, they told me that Scott had a ruptured appendix and was now recovering in his hospital room. When I went to visit, Scott was very drugged and had an Anderson tube which drained everything in his stomach so nothing went into his intestines. He spent the next 9 days in the hospital recovering. When they operated, they found peritonitis had settled in and it was a serious illness. As little as 30 years prior to his experience, people were still dying of ruptured appendices.

Scott in the hospital with the Anderson tube coming out of his nose, which he hated.

It was a challenging time for us.  Because of the painkillers, Scott was really out of it and barely remembered anything about the hospital; his personality seemed gone. I had to find babysitters to go visit him or else I had to take two small boys to a hospital room where they really couldn't do anything but get in trouble. I didn't have my usual best friend to talk to about things since Scott was so sick. People would ask me how they could help but it was usually much easier if they just did something they thought would be helpful. Offering to babysit was not that helpful unless they could come to our apartment so the children's schedules weren't totally disrupted.

A Halloween party not long after Scott's hospital stay. I can't remember what David wanted his costume to be. Something he imagined I think.

Finally after losing about 20 pounds but feeling better, Scott came home.  His graduate advisor was very nice and told him not to worry about coming back in to do research until he felt a lot better--he also came to visit Scott a couple of times and he and his wife brought us a meal.  A friend in our ward loaned us their video cassette player so we could watch movies during his recovery--all we had was a small black and white TV.  Recovery was a little slow.  Because the surgeons thought maybe he had an ulcer they started cutting up by his stomach and then cut down to his appendix when they realized what the problem was.  It was a huge wound and they left it open so the infection could come out as he healed--with a ruptured appendix, the infection spreads throughout your abdominal cavity. Fortunately Scott could change that dressing himself. A few weeks after he came home, he felt a lot of pain and ended up going to the emergency room a few times.  They didn't find anything wrong but told him it was probably scar tissue causing the pain. Eventually that stopped with the help of some priesthood blessings. The first time Scott went back to church everyone told him how terrible he looked. He was actually thinking how much better he felt.

Right around this time, Jan was learning to walk. David loved to try to ride him and generally drive us crazy.

My mother came to visit (an already planned visit) for a few days a few weeks after Scott's hospital stay when she traveled to Minnesota with my father for a conference.  We still have that couch but fortunately not my hairstyle. Perms were the thing back then.

This is Jan emptying a Kleenex box on the couch.

Jan learning to walk--he was very cute.

The most amazing part of this experience was that it didn't cost us a penny.  Scott had really good health insurance as a research assistant at the university and we had no co-pay at all. It could have been financially devastating but fortunately we had insurance. The moral to the story--always have health insurance.