You know that stupid song about the 12 days of christmas? You know… “On the twelve day of christmas my true love gave to me…” yeah – that one. Well, fuck that song. What are the 12 days of christmas anyway? I’m pretty sure there’s only one stupid christmas a year, and that’s one too many if you ask me.
Before I get into why christmas sucks balls, I just wanna point out that it’s very interesting that my spellcheck wants me to capitalize “chirstmas.” Apparently, anything “holy” deserves a capital letter. Fuck that too. On a side note, I’m gonna do a search later on the term “Satanmas” to see if anyone has trademarked that term. Satanmas should be on June 6 and it should be a holiday where people get together to tell each other what they really think of each other. Oooohh… that sounds pretty good doesn’t it?
Anyway, I wake up on December 25 to a horrible pain in my stomach. I’m talking pain like I’ve never felt before. I’m trying to play Madden to keep my mind off of it, but that doesn’t work. In fact, the pain begins to affect my play-calling, and that’s when I had to call it quits.
I went up to the old CPU and looked up “appendicitis” on WebMD. Sure enough, I had all the symptoms. Recommended cure: immediate hospitalization.
The drive over there was torturous. By the time I walked up to get registered, I could barely walk by myself without doubling over in horrendous pain. Luckily for me, they attended me fairly quickly, and I found myself in a goddamn hospital gown with an IV out of my arm and morphine in my system within 20 minutes (I think).
The pain was so excruciating, the first dose of morphine didn’t even tickle me. In walks the nurse and she says: “Okay, on a scale of 1-10 – with 10 being the worst pain you’ve ever felt and 1 being little to no pain at all – where are you at now?”
“10. 11! 12!! Can I just get some more goddamn morphine please?
“Sure. I’m giving you morphine quicker than I do anybody else. But you seem to be in more pain than anybody else, so… as long as you can take it…”
“Oh I can take it. Bring it on.”
In goes 4 more mgs of morphine, and still, INTENSE PAIN. I roll around the bed for another 15 minutes or so while different nurses and doctors come in to tell me they’re waiting on my blood tests to see what they’re gonna do. All this time I’m telling them: “It’s my appendix. Please just take it out.”
“We can’t do that,” they say,” until we get the tests back and make sure it’s your appendix and not your kidneys or something else. Now, how are we on the pain scale?”
“10.”
“10? Okay, I’ll get you some more morphine.”
In goes 4 more mgs of morphine for a total of 12 mgs within 40 minutes or so. Then, about 10 minutes after the 3rd dose, I start feeling good. Well, good compared to how extremely bad I was before at least. Finally, the pain in my lower abdomen is going away, although I can still feel it. By this time I think I’m dozing off here and there, but I’m not sure. What I do know is that for the first time since I got to the hospital, I was calm.
Oh, I forgot to mention this: right after they drew blood for the tests and the IV, they asked me to pee for them to test my kidneys. I pulled my pants down, but no go. This happened over and over again during different stages and different rooms throughout my hospital stay – it was really fucken weird. I’ve been able to pee on command for all these kinds of tests ever since I was a kid, so it felt really awkward to not be able to do it. I dunno what it was, but I’ll get back to when I finally whizzed later…
Moving on, I’m high on morphine as they roll me up to the pre-surgery floor, wherever the hell that was. They change my IV tubes because blood has started to back up, and keep talking to me about what they’re gonna do. By this point they’ve already told me my appendix would need to come out. I withheld my “I told you so” for fear of them fucking with my junk during surgery. I wait and wait and wait for the surgeon to get there, and in the meantime, the good ole’ lower abdomen pain starts crawling back.
Just at this time the anesthesiologist comes in and asks about the pain scale. “I would say it’s at a six right now with seven and eight right around the corner Todd.” I didn’t even know if his name was even Todd, but I felt that finished my sentence well, so I used it.
“Well, don’t you worry about the pain anymore Gammy. You won’t be feeling anything soon.”
I look down and he’s putting something in my IV. The next thing I know I’m in some kind of bright room and there’s like four people around me telling me “the operation went well. We took your appendix out and now we’re gonna get you over to your room.”
The next couple of hours were really fuzzy. I kept going in and out of sleep to discover that random members of my family had made their way into my room. Apparently I had been saying my regular stupid shit so everybody knew I was okay. The anesthesia hadn’t completely worn off so I was really running my mouth. Speaking of my mouth – it was so full of cotton it was pathetic. My sister-in-law kept feeding me ice cubes on a regular basis to keep it from being as dry as your mom’s cooch, dface.
Naturally, my brother starts giving me shit about picking the perfect day to almost have my appendix burst. I think he was kidding only to a certain degree, because deep down inside I know he remembers these things, and I’m sure he’ll bring it up later to reiterate my propensity for fucking things up in the family.
Later that night after everyone left, I finally got up to whiz. To my surprise, it stung like a motherfucker to piss. When I asked the nurse about it, she told me the pain was normal since they had shoved a catheter up my pee-hole during surgery to drain out any piss I had in there. Boy was I glad I was knocked out for that one. If I remembered that, I think I would be traumatized. Anyways, my much-anticipated urine was taken in for analysis to check for potential kidney problems I think. That came back negative, so it was all my stupid appendix.
I didn’t get much sleep since I had doctors and nurses coming in every couple of hours to check my blood pressure and temperature. At around six in the morning, the resident doctor came in to take some more blood and okay my release later that morning if everything turned out well. Being the Saiyan that I am, of course I was ready to go. So I packed up my shit and attempted to get dress. I say “attempted” because this is where I made another amazing discovery: my stomach was bloated like a 3rd-world African kid with permanent fly companions.
Apparently, part of the surgery included blowing up my stomach like a hot air balloon in order to have more space to get that motherfucker (that motherfucker being my bitch-ass ex-appendix). My stomach looked prego for a couple weeks after the surgery, and I felt fatter than I have ever been before.
The major source of pain during my recovery has been the air that’s trapped inside my body. It had gone up into my shoulders, and the pain was actually bad enough to make me take some Percocet. That shit fucks you up like animal tranquilizers. Later, me and Justice can shoot each other with it and fuck like stoned test bunnies. Bunnggg (Sorry, I couldn’t resist). I figured my stomach and incisions would be the primary source of pain during my recovery, but the air in the shoulders bullshit definitely took the cake. I’ve burped and farted just enough now that the pain has subsided significantly, but it’s not entirely out of me yet. We’ll see how that goes.
You know what the worst part of this entire thing is? You.
El Gammy Note: I started writing this post a few days after the surgery, and then I was distracted by some goddamn kidney stones. Maybe I’ll write my heroic tale of pain and triumph, but maybe I won’t.
