My appendix and me

It is a mystery to this day what role the appendix serves or might have served in the past. It has no apparent biological function except to randomly get infected and cause misery and possible death.

Shawna Sweeney Volunteer Staff

At first I thought it was food poisoning. My guts woke me up early one morning with a strong message that I needed to find a bathroom immediately. As I rushed to the toilet, I considered the midnight bread bowl of chicken noodle soup I had eaten at a local diner many hours earlier. I had enjoyed it the night before, but it didn’t seem like such a good idea by the time it came up as round two.

I spent the rest of the morning huddled around the toilet waiting out the dry heaves. I cursed the restaurant owners and cooks that worked that evening and vowed never to return. But it didn’t help my condition any. The rest of the day passed miserably as I rushed back and forth between the couch and the bathroom.

As the evening wore on, the problem evolved from nausea to intense cramping and abdominal pain. I started to suspect that things might be more serious than I had originally thought. I wasn’t sure if you could die of food poisoning, but I decided I should go to the hospital and find out.

After I arrived, the nurse on the night staff began our visit by asking me 20 questions about the symptoms I was experiencing and stabbing me repeatedly in the arm as she tried to draw blood. By that time I was so dehydrated that my veins had withered to anaemic tracks of sawdust creeping through my body and she had trouble finding one. But eventually she struck plasmic gold and stopped slaughtering my forearm.

When the blood tests came back, it turned out that it was not food poisoning at all, but that it was probably appendicitis. I was informed that I needed to get a radioactive enema so they could take x-ray pictures of my guts. I was not too thrilled with the idea of having a tube shoved up my ass so they could flush diagnostic juice into my intestines, but what choice did I have?

The x-ray pictures revealed that my appendix had split wide open and was burping poisonous toxins into my abdominal cavity. The doctor told me that it was life-threatening and had to come out immediately.

At this point the full reality of the situation began to hit me. One second I have food poisoning and the next second I need to have my stomach cut open? Are you kidding me with this?

What is an appendix even for? And why had mine suddenly decided to become infected and ruin my day? I asked the doctor how one contracted appendicitis and he told me that no one really knows. It is a mystery to this day what role the appendix serves or might have served in the past. It has no apparent biological function except to randomly get infected and cause misery and possible death.

Some scientists believe that it is a relic from our herbivorous past. When our apelike ancestors began eating more plant matter as they roamed the high plains, they needed the extra processing power of the appendix to break down all of the plant fibers and cellulose in their diet. As the centuries passed and human diets changed, the appendix became obsolete but never disappeared.

But whatever the origin or prehistoric function, my rogue appendix had suddenly become Private Enemy #1, and it had to come out. The doctors scheduled me for surgery a few hours later. I called my parents to let them know what was going on, and they rushed in and felt terrible that they weren’t there from the beginning and it was all tears and tension and time passing like molasses.

They did a form of surgery called laproscopy, which involves three small incisions, one camera, one laser and one vacuum cleaner. My appendix came out neatly and disaster was narrowly averted. I guess by the time your appendix bursts, the chances of peritonitis setting in and killing you dead are pretty high. I dodged certain death by a few short hours thanks to the crackerjack medical team down there at the hospital. And I will be eternally grateful.

I was not impressed that my appendix tried to stage a coup and overrun my entire abdominal cavity with toxic fluid, but I am glad they caught it in time to do something about it. The nurse later told me that it’s pretty common to misdiagnose appendicitis because the symptoms (nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain) can resemble a whole host of other problems. Not too cool for an organ that serves no apparent function, but I guess those are the breaks.

Now that my appendix has been removed there is no chance that it can ever hurt me again, but sometimes I find myself thinking about the place that it used to be and fingering the fading scars on my stomach. Something that used to be there is gone, and no matter how useless it was, occasionally I still miss it. I enjoyed our short time together, but all good things must come to an end. Even internal organs.