Mood:  accident prone
This is the story of my ruptured appendix and the subsequent trips to the hospital to try and fix it.

On the Friday morning, around 4am, my appendix ruptured. The pain was so intense it woke me from my sleep. It felt like my lower right abdomen had been stabbed with a rusty serrated kitchen knife and twisted around in my gut.

I'm not sure how many Motrin I took, but it was well above the recommended dosage. If by "well above" I mean "half the bottle." I was in such incredible pain I nearly finished a bottle of Motrin. There are 100 to a bottle-kids, don't try this at home.

At the behest of my friends, many of them doctors, and one being juan pancho,I decided to go to the ER.That was at 11pm on Sunday night, and I went to ER right away.

I arrived at KHMH, parked my car and got in line to register at the desk. Right before the triage nurse got to me, a screaming ambulance pulled up and unloaded a bleeding gunshot victim. I am not sure how many times he was shot, but I saw at least three holes. They even had to call a janitor to come wash blood off the floor.

At this scene, the triage nurse didn't even look up, and handed me my number. It is--I swear to god--187. I looked at my number, watched the paramedic disappear down the hallway with the low-rent Tupac, and walked right out the door. No fucking way. I don't believe in xianity and I'm not even the least bit superstitious, but some signs should not be ignored.

I was in agony all day the next day. I was laying on my sofa at around 10pm when a tsunami of agony crashed over me. Nothing I've ever experienced prepared me for this pain. I have broken an arm, some ribs and a hand, torn a rotator cuff, hyper-extended both knees, severely sprained both ankles, popped an eardrum, torn off finger nails, stepped on carpenter nails, had a planar wart, etc, etc, so I thought I had experienced a wide and representative spectrum of pain. I was wrong.

It was so crippling it took every bit of courage I had to reach from the sofa to the table, pick up my phone, and call Juan. He was in his house..in his bedroom.

Juan "Seth, why the fok are u calling me ass?"
Seth [barely audible whisper] "...hospital..."
Juan "Oh shit! OK, OK, hold on nigga!"

By the time we got to KHMH I was almost in shock the pain was so bad. A nurse rolled a wheel chair out to the car, brought me straight into the triage room and was about to take me back to the ER, when another nurse told her to instead take me to the nurses station to take my blood pressure and temperature.

On the way there she bumped me into every single chair, wall and assorted encumbrance along the way. I groaned in pain at every nudge, each rattling my appendix at what felt like an 8 on the Richter scale. We got to the nurses' station where the nurse, who was Asian and spoke a sort of broken ghetto English, put me in line behind 6 people.

I gaze at these people, and none seem to have critical, life-threatening internal injuries. This infuriated me. A rush of adrenalin enabled me to muster a voice loud enough to completely silence the entire front of the KHMH Emergency Room:

Seth "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING? WHY AM I HERE? MY FUCKING APPENDIX EXPLODE AND YOU WANT ME FUH WAIT BEHIND SLAPPY AND HIS IN-GROWN TOENAIL?"
Nurse "You're you in pain?"
Seth [This question inspires such utter disbelief I can only resort to my basest reaction] "YOU FUCKING STUPID?"
Nurse [Remember, this is in broken ghetto Asian] "HEY--You don got to be rude. I'n just try-ing to hep you. You don got to disrespect. How much it hurt?"
Seth "MY APPENDIX EXPLODE--MY FUCKING STOMACH FEEL LIKE SOMEONE FUCKIN STABBED ME. HOW WOULD LIKE IT IF SOMEONE STUCK A KNIFE IN YOUR STOMACH? YOU WOULDN'T BE IN A GOOD MOOD EITHER, MAMA-SON."
Nurse "YOU GONNA STAB ME? [Turns to other nurses] "HEY SHANDA, HE TELL ME HE GONNA STAB ME!"
Nurse 2 [Comes over to investigate] "You say you gonna stab her?"
Seth [I try to be calm about this] "I no say I was going to stab her I was describing what my pain was like."
Nurse "HE SAY HE GONNA STAB ME. HE SAY HE GONNA STICK KNIFE IN MY STOMACH."
Seth [And there goes my patience] "I DIDN'T FUCKING SAY I WAS GONNA STAB YOU. LEARN TO SPEAK ENGLISH GODDAMMIT! I WAS DESCRIBING MY PAIN YOU IDIOT!"
Nurse "HE CALL ME IDIOT TOO!"
Nurse2 "Sir, you need to be respectful or we are going to call the police, and you--"

This was my breaking point. I just turned and started rolling my wheel chair towards the ER. The pain was still intense but my adrenaline is so high I was able to manage it. I guess the nurses decide to go along because the ghetto Asian started pushing me towards the ER. She lectured me the whole way to the ER about respect, telling everyone she saw how I threatened to stab her.

We got to the actual ER area and she rolled me into one of the triage rooms and handed me off to an ER nurse.

ER Nurse "So what's his problem?"
Nurse call me idiot and say he gonna stab me.
ER Nurse [Turns to me] "Did you threaten to stab her?"
Seth What? My fucking appendix burst."
Nurse say he gonna stick a knife in my stomach.
ER Nurse "Did you say you were going to stick a knife in her stomach?"
Seth [I am wincing in pain through this whole thing] "What? What is this? NO! She asked me what my pain felt like and I said it felt like I got stabbed. I'M THE ONE IN PAIN!"

They laid me on a gurney and instead of attending to me and my pain, continued discussing my abusive and threatening behavior. Honestly, does anything ever go normally for me?

Two doctors arrived almost immediately, a male American attending and a female nurse. They questioned me, poked my abdomen, etc, when the male doctor asked me to roll onto my side:

Seth "Roll on my side? What for?"
Doctor "I need to check your prostate."
Seth "WHAT?????? WITH YOUR HAND??
Doctor "Yes."
Seth "IN MY BUTT??"
Doctor "I have to, you may have serious colon or prostate problems, and the only way to check those is by hand."
Seth "Well this is just FUCKING GREAT."

As he put on a rubber glove, the female nurse was snickering at my comments, even though I was not finding them very funny at the moment. He turned to her and pointed for her to go on the outside of the curtain. I interrupt:

Seth "Actually, doctor, can she do it? If I'm going to have fingers up my ass, I'd rather have them be female. You know--they're smaller, more petite...you know...less gay.

He was completely taken aback at this request. The shock was evident on his face, and for a second I even thought he would agree to it,

Doctor "No. Sorry.
Seth" Well, she can stay anyway. Fuck it. Might as well invite everyone to my party."

I didn't need this. I really didn't fucking need this. I couldn't stop thinking, especially as he wiggled two fingers into my anal cavity and pressed them against my prostate, about how I'll have to make a story like "The Most Disturbing Conversation Ever story about my anal virginity".

The ER doctors eventually decided that I had a burst appendix and needed to get prepped for surgery. Never could I have imagined that the words, "prep him for surgery" would have such horrific consequences.

A male Hispanic nurse began prepping me. He took off my clothes, put me in a hospital gown, took various measurements like blood pressure and what not, hooked me up to an IV needle that was only slightly smaller in diameter than PVC pipe, and refused to give me any painkillers, because he said that they might affect the anesthesia.

At this point, I thought it couldn't get any worse. My appendix was absolutely killing me, I had no painkillers, there were numerous needles stuck in me, my ass was still greasy from some guy putting his K-Y covered fingers in my rectum, some guy was undressing me--really--what the fuck else could go wrong?

The Pais told me to pull my gown off my crotch and took out a long tube. It is called a Foley Catheter, and it is used to drain your bladder when it is not under your control, either because you are unconscious (for surgery) or cannot control it yourself (paralyzation). I measured it later, and it is exactly 16 inches long.

I took one look at that garden hose he was holding and my heart stopped. I'd rather get fucked in the ass with a lampost than take that thing up my urethra. I have heard absolute horror tales about what that thing feels like going up your dick on "discovery".

Seth"No, no, no-You aren't putting that thing in my dick are you? Please god in heaven tell me no."
Nurse "Yeah, man. Got to--It's how you piss when you're in surgery."

I didn't even have it in me to put up a fight. I was too scared. I just grabbed the side rails of the gurney and held the fuck on. This is an approximation of my reaction:

"AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH"

It went on like that for a few seconds. When the blaze of anguish stopped, I wiped the forming tears from my eyes and looked down, expecting to see a yellow tube sticking out from my penis.

Seth "What the fuck? Hey man--where is it?"
Seth "That one was too big, I'm gonna have to go with a 16 gauge instead of a 14."

...Hasta la Madre....

This did not please me, and I expressed my feelings with a string of furious profanity such as would make a longshoreman/HEDZMAN proud. He eventually got the second one into my urethra, and I wasn't thinking about my abdominal pain anymore. I never really understood the phrase "pissing out razor blades" until this experience. The act of inserting that firehose into my penis was so horribly painful it made me forget what was, to that point, the worst pain of my life. Even writing this is making my dick hurt. Or maybe that's the herpes. Who knows?

I laid there for another few hours, without painkillers, waiting to get a CatScan. Every time I moved the catheter shifted (it was taped to my leg) resulting in a whole new wave of pain and misery. The strangest thing about the catheter was that the collection bag was laying right there on the bed next to me. I watched it fill up with dark yellow urine, yet couldn't control or feel the flow. It was weird. But it felt warm against my leg, which was nice.

Right before the CatScan, one of the nurses handed me a huge tube of liquid and told me to drink it. I had no idea what it was, but the label didn't sound appetizing:

Seth "Barium Sulfate, Wat di fok this?"
Nurse "It's an imaging agent. It's so the CatScan can get a map of your intestines."

They might was well call it Cum in a Bottle. It was white, cloudy and viscous, with a disturbing salty taste. You know what it tasted like? You know when a girl goes down on you and swallows, and then comes up and wants to kiss you? You try to avoid the kiss but if she is persistent there is nothing you can do so you give her a little peck. You know that taste on your lips right after? Hello Barium Sulfate.

This was very nearly my breaking point, "This tastes like semen. Haven't you people humiliated me enough? Should I just dump this on my face so you can get some Bukkake shots for the "Mr. Chew's Asian Beaver" website. Would that make you happy?"

I eventually got the CatScan and waited another hour or so for the consult with the surgeon. She looked at the pics and decided they weren't going to operate on me, because my appendix had not burst but rather had ruptured, and a leaking abscess had formed on it. This meant that there was a huge pocket of puss around that section of my colon and they couldn't operate without having to do an entire colonectomy. The ensuing conversation was alarming, even to me:

Doctor "When did the pain start?"
Seth "About a week ago."
Doctor "A week! Why did you wait so long to come in?"
Seth "I don't know...MTV was filming me?"
Doctor "MTV was filming you?"
Seth "Wtvr. It would take too long to explain."
Doctor "So you just endured the pain?"
Seth "Yeah, pretty much. Motrin helped. And lots of Barrel."
Doctor "Hmph. Well, just so you know, you could very easily have died. As it stands, you are going to be fine, but you were about 2 days away from sepsis setting in and killing you. That was stupid of you to wait this long."
Seth "Yeah, I'm not very smart."

The same male Hispanic nurse came in to de-prep me and get me ready for transport to my room. One of the de-prepping activities was too take out the catheter. The removal hurt, but nothing like the entry. After he pulled it out this nasty thick yellow discharge followed it out.

Seth "WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT? YOU GIVE ME CLAP OR WHAT?
Nurse "Yeah, you got the clap from a sterile catheter. It's just dehydrated urine. You're fine."
Seth "Whatever. Dick. You ever have one of those in you?"
Nurse "No. But I'll tell you what-I've inserted hundreds of those and I've never seen anyone scream like more of a bitch than you."
Seth "So now you're the fucking comedian? Hey Paul Rodriguez, Carlos Mencia-I swear to god, you better not be around when they discharge me. I'll find you, and broke appendix or not, I'll kick your fucking ass."
Nurse "Whatever. You'll just scream like a bitch."

Had I been able to stand, I think he and I would have fought.

And then the following days, i went to the creek to bash.