I woke up with a throbbing pain in my stomach. But it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle so I went back to sleep thinking it would go away soon. Again and again the pain came back though, and then I started puking. The taste and smell was horrible! The pain continued, I couldn’t eat or sleep it was just miserable.

After not eating or sleeping for three days it was time to go to the walk in clinic. On the way to the clinic the ride didn’t go so well, at every bump and turn I would get the sharp pain in my stomach. We got to the clinic filled out the paper work and waited for someone to see me. As I walked into the room the pain was so bad I had to hunch myself over and grab my stomach. The nurse looked at me and asked if I could jump up and down? Looking at him in confusion I said “yes” then jumped. As I landed I clenched my stomach thinking someone had shoved a knife into it! The nurse then said “you need to go to the E.R.” We arrived at the E.R. and checked in; they then checked my vital signs and told my mom and I to take a seat. While sitting down I looked around the room filled with injured and sick people and was depressed how many people had to wait to be seen. Closing my eyes to try and sleep didn’t work out to well for me, between the pain and all the noise from the others waiting. Three and a half hours later, it was a great relief to hear the sound of the nurse saying “Conrad”.

I got into the room and they checked my vitals again then put an I.V. into me. I felt so weird watching them slide the needle into my vein, I thought it would be worse but it just felt like someone pinching me. Once it was in they gave me some medicine through it. The medicine worked great and took away most of the pain, while also helping me get some sleep. After sleeping for a while the nurses took me in to get a CAT scan. I’d never gotten one before and had no clue what to expect. The x-ray tech first put some liquid in me through my I.V. he said it would help make the x-ray clearer. The liquid was warm and I could feel it slowly working through my body, I got a warm tingling sensation as it moved through. My insides were slowly warming being warmed by it. After the CAT scan was done they took me back to the holding room where I went back to sleep while the doctors looked at my results.

The results came in and my doctor said my appendix had burst and needed surgery soon! He also said if we would have waited any longer to come in I could have died. So within the next hour I was all prepped and ready for surgery. The next thing I know I’m awake in one of the hospital rooms, the surgery was all done and everything seemed to go well since I was alive. After looking around for a little bit I realized I was really thirsty! I could barely swallow my mouth was so dry. So I pushed the call button that was place in my bed and waited for the nurse. She came in and asked what I needed and I said “Something to drink please” in a raspy voice since my mouth was dry. A couple of minutes later she brought me some apple juice. She said to try and take it slow but I was so thirsty I drank it all in about 15 seconds. The feeling of it going down my throat was great! A short while later the doctor came in and explained what was going on. He said the surgery went well and I should be out in about 5 days. But little did I know that it was going to take three and a half weeks to get out.

The first couple of days went pretty well, my incisions were healing and I was feeling better. Every four hours a nurse came in to check my vital signs and every morning I got a blood sample taken from me. I was on a liquid diet and didn’t get much but jello and juice. I finally got to try some real food. It was fish, rice and a roll. I don’t know what I was thinking but I ate till I was completely full. After that, things went downhill, I started to bloat and had a lot of pressure in my stomach. I could barely drink anything because the pressure would get worse. By the next day I was puking up this nasty green stuff that had a nasty smell I had never smelt before. This continued for about four days. Finally my doctor said we had to try a nasal tube before he would have to do surgery again. The tube had to go up my nose and down my throat. The two nurses told me it wasn’t going to feel very good but I never though it would be that bad! The one nurse started shoving the tube up my nose, my eyes instantly started watering. It hurt so bad and ones it got to my throat I wanted puke and I was gagging viciously. The other nurse then gave me a cup of water and told me to swallow it, so it will help the tube go down. I could smell the rubbery plastic as it was sliding down but finally it was in place. The other end of the tube hooked up to a pump that started sucking all of the junk out of my stomach. I could watch the green slime go through the tube and into the container.

For the next couple of days I couldn’t really talk because of the tube so I just sat there and watched TV. The doctor then came in and said “I’m going to have to do another surgery on you and figure out what is wrong. I was kind of excited since after the surgery all I had to do was recover, but the bad thing was that I had to keep that horrible tube in for another five days or so. Within the hour the doctor had his team ready and before I knew I was asleep again. When I woke up I could barely move and I had a big bandage over my stomach with an ice pack on top of it. The nurse then came in and wanted me to try and get up and walk around. She gave me a pillow to hold against my stomach and a button that would give me pain killers when I pushed it. She first had me lean to my side, it wasn’t too bad. But once she helped me sit up I thought my stomach was going to rip open it was a terrible feeling. I pushed the button a couple times and the pain kind of went away but not as much as I would have liked. So for the next four days or so I couldn’t even get up or move very well by myself.

By now I had lost about twenty pounds. Every day they continued to take a blood sample and x-ray every morning as well as checking my vital sign every four hours. My nurses would make me get up and walk around the hall ways. This went on for about a week then I finally started improving. I got back on a liquid diet; it was so great to get some kind of food in me. They also pulled the nasal tube, the feeling was amazing. I could talk and not gag on it all the time. A couple of days after that I was eating solid food again which was awesome! At last the next day I packed up my stuff and went home. By the time everything was over I lost about thirty eight pounds and couldn’t do anything physical for about two months.