My housemate got a Spesh camber a few weeks ago and last week we took him out for his first ride.
All week he's been complaining about a pain in his side and naturally I told him to MTFU.
Dropped him off at the med-centre this morning, he got referred and he's currently sat in A&E.
How serious is this and whats the normal procedure?
death.
or an apendectony, or its probably just a "grumbly appendix" given that he's sat in A&E rather than laid down crying.
Ask Houdini.
It hurts a lot, but is a pretty straight forward op to sort out.
Imagine injecting about half a cup of poo that's been festering in its own juices for 30 years into your bloodstream and the gaps between your organs. That's what's happened to your mate.
Just got text saying "passed out while giving blood" and "They're trying to sort out an overnight bed"
Is this the serious end of the spectrum or and "Appendix-TFU"
A doctor will stick his finger up his bum and poke him in the guts a bit,rebound pain is a telltale sign.He may be admitted to an observation ward to be monitered for a couple of days and as a last resort they might operate.
I went through all this 3 times in 18 months.Each time when I was admitted I was curled up on the floor in unimaginable pain convinced i was dying.The last time I was under observation for 5 days and they kept saying I just looked too well.In the end the surgeon decided to have a look.He ended up converting to an open procedure as my appendix was on the point of perforating and a 20 minute operation lasted 3 hours and now I've got a nice big scar.Close shave as they were going to send me home that morning.
I almost died of this when I was 14. Mine was AGONY, vomiting blood for months, doc kept telling my mum it was indigestion, etc. Eventually my dad took me to the hospital.
It wasn't indigestion and my appendix almost burst.
30 minutes between arrival at hospital and being operated on as I recall.
It can be a simple op with minimal pain, or it can be like my fathers, that pole axed him with no warning, resulting in fours hours of major abdominal surgery and the removal of 2ft of intestine.
He was in for a month, It took him three weeks for his guts to start processing food again and a further week of light solids before they were happy enough to send him home.
Friend of mine went to Indonesia when she was a final year medical student, there was another final year student with her.
They were 4 days up river from the nearest hospital when her appendix decided to go.
She knew she'd get peritonitis if it wasn't whipped out fairly quick but they only had fairly basic medical equipment (scalpels and local aneasthetic). Her 'freind' decided she couldn't do the op in case it went wrong and, to be fair, she hadn't done one under any circumstances before.
It got to the point where the woman with the appendicitis had done a local anaesthetic and was preparing to cut herself open before her freind decided that she might be able to do it after all. In the end it went pretty smoothly and she got to go down river on a stretcher.
Result is she's got a nice story to tell and an appendix in a jar.
So on a par with Manflu then.
I went through all this 3 times in 18 months
Similar experience here. Must have been at least 5 times before I saw someone who knew what the problem was. It was always taken seriously and I had ultrasounds for stones and blood tests. The pain was fairly bad, the worst thing being I couldn't sleep as I couldn't stay in one position for more than a few minutes. The nausea was pretty unpleasant as well. It usually lasted between 24 and 48 hours and then everything would be fine for a few months. Mine came out as a planned operation a couple of months after seeing the specialist and was nice and straightforward.
It all began shortly after sailing over the bars while going downhill resulting in a fairly heavy landing. I've no idea if there was a link.
It got to the point where the woman with the appendicitis had done a local anaesthetic and was preparing to cut herself open
starting to feel a bit faint ...
I think she was trying to bully her freind into doing it to be honest, although she's the sort of person who'd probably go through with it if she really thought she had no choice.
I don't know how much rummaging around in your own guts you can do before you pass out but it can't be much.
You could save him the wait in A&E and Do it yourself
Or if your friend/patient is a busy metrosexual with things to see and people to do he can do it himself
He's in the right place.
You don't want an apendaplosion while you're out bivvying!
I suspect he'll be admitted to a surgical assessment unit and then processed for surgery if necessary. Should be back on the bike within 3 weeks assuming the surgeon isn't a "blind cobbler."
I had an appendectomy a couple months ago. I was in unbearable pain. It was a matter of minutes from being admitted to being cut into. All a bit of a haze now due to the quantity of opiates I was given.
Depends. Mine burst inside me after about a few hours of bad stomach pain. When it burst it's more pain than you can imagine, proper hallucinating pain cos by that stage you are very weak and effectively being poisoned.
I was home alone and had to crawl out of bed to call an Ambulance etc.
Funnilly enough the exact same thing happened to my wife. On our wedding day. 
All of it sounds like bad news, i'd better get myself down there with the Louie DIY guide.
It can't be any harder than servicing a float shock.
Mine burst when I was 8. A horrible experience, esp for my folks who had a numpty Gp put it off for days and had to see me in serious pain.1 month in hospital and tubes draining puss out of me for days. I suffered with boils for years after and had problems with adhesion and scar tissue, muscle problems also. Get it out sharpish!
Went out for a curry on the Thursday night, sat in work on Friday feeling rough as **** and gradually turning green - finally realised it was something proper when I couldn't actually stand up out the chair on Saturday morning, so hunched double sideways to the car and drove to casualty...
Doctor says "on a level of 1-10, how puch pain are you in" - four or five says I - on which basis he said didn't think it was appendicitis, but would run bloods - well, his prediction came true and eight hours later the Tramadol wasn't touching the sides and they put me on the morphine 
appendix out, gangrenous and about to burst - they managed to spill some of the juice of love on the way out - leading to an emergency readmission, a nice infection, three weeks of antibiotics and an open draining wound that needed repacking with seaweed gauze on a daily basis for the next month... lovely 
I had a bloated stomach feeling after a ride home from work 2 weeks ago, had tea, went to bed. Next morning really bloated and vomited back water. Got no 1 son ready for nursery, told 40 wk pregnant wife I wasn't going to work and curled up on sofa for the day. Managed 1 slice of toast for lunch, then migraine started.
Eventualy at 3am I called GP and was admitted for appendix. In recovery for 1 pm. Discharged by lunch next day.
My only advice - don't SNEEZE! I did on day 4 and managed to rip some internal stitches, so in a lot of pain now.
Good news, wifey waited a few days before Finn arrived 
Had on/off appendix thing when I was small. It was indeed painful. Various Dr's told me to Appendix TFU then finally out it came in not great shape. Unfortunately I reacted big time to the anaesthetic (and I suspect the surgeon was a blind cobbler), took weeks and weeks to recover. And the worst thing was I asked my brother to ask them for it in jar just before I went down and I never got it!!!
My only advice - don't SNEEZE....ain't that the truth!!!!
I carried a grumbling appendix around for a week or so-thought I had pulled a muscle playing squash. Eventually got worse so called the doc-he wasnt sure but next day on return visit he sent me straight to hospital. In theatre within the hour, appendix had started to leak. Recovered fairly quickly (week or so before being discharged) but ended up with a wound infection & abcess which required another stay in hospital followed by weeks of packing gauze into the abcess to let it heal from the inside out. Abcess was worse than the appendix.
What they all said.
Had grumbly appendix one year whilst at boarding school in my early teens. Doc wrote me off as an attempted elbaorate skive. And i recovered after about 2 days of intense pain and loss of appetite.
Roll forward an exact 365 days and it happened again. The doc in the school infirmary thought the previous chap had written the year wrong on my notes when i presented. He made out i was trying to skive again for some reason.
4 hrs later this time i was in theatre in Ipswich hospital having it removed. Epic pain.
Friend at work had appendicitis, they didn't catch it in time and he ended up spending a week in a drug-induced coma, a month or so in intensive care, then 3 months off work with a colostomy bag, another month back at work with the bag, then a final operation to get him back to normal.
(Normalish - he's still recovering...)
Someone I know had appendicitis during the final stages of pregnancy. The hospital put it down to labour pains and didn't spot it. The appendix then ruptured. The baby was saved with an emergency section. The mother almost didn't make it as she got septicemia and an infection of the abdomen.
6 months on she's still recovering.
It killed my grandfather 
I almost died of it too. I was in the operating theatre within an hour of being diagnosed at home, and then 10 days on a drip. I was 8 years old. My uncle died of it when he was 3 years old.
I went to work on nights, after a quick 20 miles on the bike and had a bit of a tummy ache. I was told to NTFU a number of times by my fellow ITU nurses, who then scoffed when I collapsed. After a night in bed on a neighbouring ward being poked by junior doctors I had the thing out, in the theatre dept I used to work in. I've previously related my relief at waking up with exactly half my pubic hair gone, but no ribbon tied around my willy, and my discovery a number of years later that the end-of-op local anaesthesia had caused an erection that was the laughing stock of a number of my former female colleagues.
Dignity, as I believe I also commented on, is over-rated.
...Oh, got paid for the full night shift though, and was out on the bike after an hour of getting home.
A friend of mine had a weeping appendix. It started when she was 14 and has been the bane of her life since (she's late twenties now). When it first flared up, she was taken to hospital with what she described as severe abdominal pains. They had subsided within thirty minutes or so and the incident passed without further investigation.
Every few months, though, she would get the same symptoms, sometimes resulting in her being left incapable. I shared a house with her for a couple of years and it was an entirely unpleasant experience to witness her curled up in agony on the bathroom floor, screaming for an early death. She underwent countless tests (although, incredibly, not one for appendicitis), with doctors unable to find a cause. The point came where they actually decided that she was making it up in order to gain attention. She is a highly intelligent person with, shall we say, artistic temperament, and her eccentricities were considered above what, to her, were very real physical symptoms; but because doctors were unable to find a physical cause, they gave a psychological diagnosis.
For the next seven years, she went from being prescribed anti-depressants to anti-psychotics and spent several periods in psychiatric care. Her medical records and the 'professionals' who worked on her case were adamant that her pain was in fact psychosis and every incident was used to justify their diagnosis.
Eventually, after roughly seven years of being disbelieved, and of desperately trying to convince people that she was enduring these episodes of extreme pain, she had one which was prolonged enough for a (new) doctor to examine her appendix. I may remember this incorrectly, but the gist is that he discovered inflammation and scar tissue which showed that the organ had been swelling and then rupturing, then healing; only to repeat the same process randomly throughout her life. The describes the relief at this diagnosis as being one of the most intense experiences of her life. Seven or eight years on, and she's still dealing with the 'help' she received for her mental health problems. No more gut ache, though.
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