Surgical Surprise

I had emergency surgery and got diagnosed with diabetes!

Normal day, no big deal. Except that around this past Monday morning, I started noticing some distinct pains in my stomach. Reminding myself that I had just drank an awful lot of sugary drinks (I’m talking like three full-size bottles of Gatorade and a bunch of soda), I got it in my mind that maybe I had a urinary tract infection. I took some ibuprofen, chugged a bunch of water and some cranberry juice, and hoped that it would resolve itself in a day or two. By Wednesday morning, the pain was still there and so we decided it was probably best to pay a visit to the Urgent Care facility.

When I got to the Urgent Care facility, I presented them with my information — my stomach hurt, I believed it might be a UTI or perhaps a kidney infection — and that I might just need some antibiotics. They had me do a urine screening and that’s when they noticed something else alarming. My blood sugar was really high. Like really high. When they told me this information, I immediately knew it was the beginning of a diagnosis of diabetes. Everyone in my immediate family, somehow with the exception of my junk food-loving father (go figure!), deals with varying levels of diabetes themselves, so once they told me this was suspect, I knew I was going to at least be going home with some kind of life and diet-changing diagnosis. They told me they wanted me to go to the ER though to confirm their findings and so that they can do a scan of my stomach to see what the greater issue was.

We went to the ER afterward and I was poked and prodded some more in the name of blood levels and had a scan of my abdomen done as well. When the doctors eventually came back with their initial assessment, I was surprised that the plan included emergency surgery. The reason my stomach hurt so much was due to appendicitis and I needed to have my appendix removed that day. Say what? I came out today in hopes of some antibiotics to clear up a UTI and you’re telling me that I need to have surgery?! Come here a little closer, friends. Let me tell you a secret. At 38 years old, I’ve somehow never had any kind of major surgeries performed on me. When he said I needed to have a laparoscopic appendectomy done, I was terrified. Had everything not been moving and progressing so fast to get me prepped for surgery and for the surgery to actually happen, I probably would have wept like a baby. In retrospect, I’m kind of proud of myself for not having done so.

I spent the night in the hospital that evening and it was perhaps the most boring night of my life. I had trouble sleeping, even with them pushing morphine for the pain every so often, so I spent the majority of the night watching reruns of Friends on the hospital TV and wishing I was basically anywhere else doing anything else. I finally got to come home on Friday and things have been progressing since then. I’m getting up and down a little easier without the stabbing pain in my gut telling me to slow it down now. I’m still not fully comfortable lying in any position other than flat on my back and sitting up in chairs is a crapshoot. Writing this at my desk right now, in fact, is a little uncomfortable, but I feel it’s important to do. I know there are some folks wondering what happened and, less than 24 hours after I got home from the hospital, someone that I follow on Twitter was posting about stomach pains of their own. Please don’t hesitate to get yourself checked out, friends. It’s important, even if the only option is surgery that makes you want to cry.

The only remaining mystery is the insulin that I was prescribed at discharge. Insurance hasn’t decided if I’m worthy of getting it yet or not, apparently. I’m assuming that they’ve decided to pursue it as an “after-the-holiday” task. Which, I totally understand — going into a three-day weekend, everybody has those tasks that they put off until they come back. It’s just alarming that, with the insurance company, some such tasks could wreck the lives of others. Get your lives together, insurers.

I’m going to go rest now. Thank you all for the kind words and encouragement on social media, friends. Sometimes I don’t think I’d pull through if not for the strength of others. Much love.

Until next time…