Modern science has found the appendix to be a useless sac of tissue that mostly does nothing, but mine managed to convince the girlfriend to destroy half our furniture
It all started last Saturday afternoon when the girlfriend and I decided to have a monumental Mexican feast. I bought the chicken and peppers, while she purchased the Old El Paso enchiladas kit and guacamole. We also went splits on some nachos and refried beans, which were luckily on offer that day.
It wasn’t quite dinner time yet (we eat our main meal of the day at a reasonable hour, usually between 6 and 8pm, because we’re not fucking barbarians), so we decided to have a snack first. I nuked the refried beans and slapped them on the nachos with a sprinkling of grated cheese and a spaff of sour cream and guac. They were utterly delicious. And then something ripped along the bottom of my stomach, leaving me doubled over in agony and sweating profusely. A few hours later, I ate four enchiladas and another portion of nachos, and then went straight to bed.
The next day, I immediately realised something was wrong: I’d somehow gone to sleep wearing my socks! In addition to that, the crippling pain in my stomach was still present, more intense if anything. After briefly consulting Google to find any links between microwaved refried beans and a stabbing, burning sensation in one’s abdomen, I decided to call 111.
Thankfully, I was able to push ahead of anyone calling about COVID-19 and a man who sounded like he was probably called James managed to book me an emergency appointment in A&E. I’m not sure if A&E actually do appointments, but the fact I only had to sit in the waiting room in writhing agony for five hours left me fairly assured that they were expecting me. A further six hours later, someone sat me on a temporary bed and injected some morphine into my mouth, which was top bollocks.
At this point, part of me still believed that the pain was probably just colossal trapped wind, and that a big fart would remedy the situation. Fortunately, I was able to test this theory when a scary man handcuffed to his bed and guarded by two burly cops rolled into the room. He glared at me, I released some gas, but the pain still persisted.
After just 12 hours in A&E with suspected demon gut, I was moved onto a ward consisting of a man with a broken ankle, another with a puss-filled elbow, and a third with an anal abscessssssss… I only had to wait another half a day to be told that my appendix was about to explode, and that I could die if it did. I was slightly alarmed.
“Oooooo!” cried the man with the anal abscessssssssss at 3am, waking up the entire ward. “There’s blood everywhere! There’s blood and shit everywhere! Oooooo! How am I meant to go to the toilet with this inside me?! You need to take it out so I can go toilet!” he barked at the doomed night nurse. “For God’s sake, there’s blood everywhere!” Doing my best to ignore his discomfort, I courageously went back to sleep.
When the doctor/surgeon/stranger who could have potentially walked into the hospital off the street eventually confirmed that my appendix would be removed to prevent possible death, a wave of relief washed over me like Coca Cola over a Polo mint. My demon gut would be exorcised, but at what cost?!
Squeezed in-between a few knifings and broken hips, it was finally time for my bed ride of shame to the operating theatre, where 37 people in gloves were waiting with monitors, tubes, anaesthetic, prongs and anal beads. As they placed the night-time mask over my mouth and nose (you can’t be too safe these days), and I began to drift away, the last thing I heard before entering the land of nod was the reassuring sound of someone saying, “What are we doing, then?”
As far as I’m aware, they removed the correct organ, although you wouldn’t know by looking at my wounds. I have one incision just below my belly button, which is where the surgeon used a tube to inflate my entire stomach to the size of a bowling ball, so he had somewhere to place a cup of tea and a biscuit; another on my left-hand-side, where they inserted a crafty spying camera, which I suspect may still be inside me; and a third just above my luscious public hair, where they yanked out the inflamed bugger.
Thus, my three-to-four week recovery process has now begun, and I am rendered a bloated and swollen bastard who requires a complex system of pulleys and levers to erect me from my mattress and any given chair in the flat. To make this somewhat easier for me, the girlfriend took the executive decision to hurl half of our furniture over the balcony, crushing only a handful of people eating outside in the restaurant below – they knew they were taking a risk dining out during a global pandemic.
Although my entire abdomen is green and yellow with bruises and looks as though it’s been stabbed numerous times by someone who likes to stab stomachs, it’s important to remember that there is greater suffering going on in the world. A few weeks back, for example, I elected to watch The Old Guard on Netflix. While I am confident that, like the immortal characters in that film, my wounds will eventually heal, I fear permanent damage may have been done by the director, cast and crew, who quite clearly conspired to violently attack my mind.
If it weren’t for The Old Guard, suffering appendicitis would be the worst experience of my life.