Appendicitis Stole My Weekend!

On Friday night Miss 13 developed pains in her side.  Now Miss 13 thinks a paper cut is worthy of urgent medical attention so trying to assess the level of pain was difficult but allegedly the pain was getting worse.

I considered taking a ‘let’s wait and see’ approach which I have done with various ailments in the past…but I have also paid the price for this approach with a few middle of the night trips to the hospital so I reconsidered and decided to to hit the afterhours gp with Miss 13 at the reasonable hour of 7.30pm.

Two hours later we returned home with a probable diagnosis of appendicitis...no immediate action required unless the pain worsened.

I went to bed Friday night praying that the pain did not worsen and I was overjoyed when I awoke to a bright Saturday morning.  Stupidly I went to check on Miss 13 only to hear tales of how she had been unable to sleep and the pain was like an 11 out of 10...

I left other family members in charge of Miss 13 and took Miss 5 to a birthday party.

I returned home with the usual headache that inflicts you after spending two hours with a room full of 5 year olds and since Miss 13's pain had not improved I took her to our local gp.  Same diagnosis but he thought it best that we go for scans...and as it was Saturday afternoon our only choice was to head up to Emergency….argh!!

That was the point where I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that my weekend was about to be stolen away from me!!

Six hours after arriving at Emergency Miss 13 was admitted to the children's ward for observation. The first time that one of my girls has had to stay overnight in hospital....eeek !!!   I left the hospital full of mummy guilt that perhaps I should be staying with her....but also yearning to get home to my bed!!

Up early the next day....which is oh so wrong for a Sunday!!....I showered, dressed and returned to the hospital just in time for the surgeon to assess Miss 13 and decide that they would schedule her for an operation to insert a camera and have a look around...with the most likely result being that her appendix would be removed.

With the surgery not looking likely until late afternoon I returned home for two hours to wash the school uniforms, find the black ink cartridge that nobody else seemed to be able to find, prepare lunches for the next day and leave hubby a nice long note of things to do (though I am pretty sure he delegated most items to the older girls!!)

Back to the hospital armed with a magazine the wait continued....and continued....and continued!!  Given that Miss 13 had not eaten for some 48 hours her thoughts were consumed with food and when she was finally called to theater at 7pm she kept the staff entertained with her stories of how she wanted a sausage sandwich and some icecream lol !!

Two hours later she returned to the ward minus her appendix....let’s just hope that that was the cause of the pain in the first place!!  After settling her in I returned home once again.

After getting everyone off to school on Monday I returned to the hospital.  Now despite Miss 13's passion for food the previous night her post-op self was far from interested in sausage sandwiches!  The best she managed was a lemonade iceblock!

Finally on Monday afternoon Miss 13 was discharged and is now home resting...feeling a wee bit sorry for herself!!  I think I even heard her say that she would rather be at school than be feeling like this….now that’s something you don’t hear her say….ever!!

So that was the weekend that was stolen by appendicitis!!  I hope your weekend was a bit better than ours….!!