My Appendectomy, or So I Still Have My Bellybutton After All: a story in three parts

Prologue: All week long, I've been insisting that the surgeon sewed closed my belly button when he made the middle incision during my operation last week. My husband, sound-minded doctor that he is, kept shaking his head and assuring me that I did, in fact, still possess a very viable belly button.
Me: Then where is it?
Husband: Same place it's always been.
Me: I can't see it.
Husband: (shakes head and walks away)
Today, I discovered that he's right. I do still have my belly button! I am both excited and annoyed at the news since it is, on the one hand, smaller and more like the belly button of yesteryear before four pregnancies stretched it into the giant cavern of abdominal black holes, but on the other hand, now I still have to clean it. Turns out it's been there all along, hidden underneath the top steri-strip, happily allowing me to assume that the fold of skin located directly below it was the remains of my stitched-together-umbilical-insertion-point when it was actually just another incision.

Part I: A week ago Saturday night, I went to bed feeling bloated and wondering what I ate that was causing such horrible indigestion. I woke up on Sunday morning feeling more of the same, and my discomfort continued all day long, gradually growing worse. I didn't want to tell anybody, because it's just not a subject for polite conversation.
Somebody: How are you?
Me: Actually, I'm feeling really gassy.
See?
But husbands are different. So when I came home after choir practice and a YW activity and told him something was wrong, he promptly assessed the situation. Appendicitis is really easy to diagnose if you know where to push.

Part II: My most favorite things about the hospital are
1. Pressure socks-it's like a continuous, alternating massage on your legs for hours on end.
2. Trying to hold a polite conversation with the MA while you're being pushed through the hospital on a wheeled gurney and staring straight up at the ceiling.
3. Positionable hospital beds.
4. Waking up after being anesthetized. It beats waking up to a screaming baby at 1:30 am, that's for sure.

My least favorite things about the hospital are
1. The pre-CAT scan dye.
2. The liquids-only diet.
3. The solids too.
4. Pretty much anything you have to or get to ingest.
5. Having a nurse assist you into the bathroom after surgery and stand there holding your IV while you're trying to pee. After you've had an IV and been on a liquids-only diet for eight hours.

Part III: So far, recovering from an appendectomy is way worse than appendicitis. One downside is that it hurts to laugh for about a week afterward. Another is that my career as a two-piece swimsuit model is forever defunct. But they did give me some pretty heavy painkillers. I took a total of four during the week I was recovering, and got some of the best naps I've had in years as a result.

Credits: The whole point of this story, aside from the joke about my disappearing bellybutton, is so I can thank the people who helped me pull through. So without further ado, I'd like to thank

-Raegan, who loves my kids enough to not tell me when they've given her a very difficult time.

-Bethany, a wonderful friend and visiting teacher who has now saved my life twice when I've taken all-expense paid trips to the emergency room. (Honestly, I'd never been to the hospital before I moved to Jacksonville; I don't know what it is about this city.) But Bethany's consistent and selfless acts of service on my behalf are such that I will be forever in her debt.

-Christina, the best next-door neighbor ever, who walked my older kids to and from the bus stop every morning and then spent two of her own precious mornings watching my younger kids so I could rest. I ask you, does your next-door neighbor do that?

-Michelle, who heard the panic in my voice and came to the rescue at a moment's notice.

-Julie, who gathered and sorted my laundry.

-Connie, who watched my kids so I could take a drug-induced three-and-a-half-hour nap. That hasn't happened in forever!

-Carol, who swooped in like an angel of mercy when I thought I had things under control and got things under control for real.

And last, but certainly not least, John, who changed the dressing on my wounds, fixed my back, listened to me cry, and never uttered a word of complaint about seven straight days of frozen dinners.

Here's to belly buttons that survive appendectomies and appendices that don't.
Exeunt
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