The saga of the burst appendix
The other night I was hanging a coat up in my bedroom closet when I slammed the door shut on my finger. If I’d been a cartoon character, you would have seen stars and tweety birds circling my head and my middle finger blown up and throbbing red as I paced around the room holding my hand up in front of me.
I’d just come home from a meeting after a day in the office and all I’d wanted to do was to get back downstairs to my dinner heating in my air fryer. Instead, I sat on a bench at the foot of my bed moaning and wondering if my manicured fingernail was going to fall off.
The next day, I pointed out the purple bruise running down my finger to my therapist and joked: “If a single woman closes her finger in a door and nobody’s around to hear her cry, did it really happen?”
The incident, while not serious, was just another in a series of things lately that have shined a light on my aloneness.
A few weeks ago, my college freshman Facetimed me early on a Monday to report he’d been vomiting and had terrible stomach cramps. I told him he had a really bad stomach bug, but thought to myself that it was really weird that his face looked so swollen. I’d never heard of that happening from a tummy virus.
Throughout the week, Nick checked in to report on his symptoms – the vomiting had stopped but things were starting to happen on the other end. But throughout, his stomach continued to hurt.
On Wednesday, I suggested he start going to classes again, to help take his mind off how he felt (don't think he didn't mention this later). That night he couldn’t sleep, the pain in his abdomen wouldn’t let him get comfortable, and he texted me at 1:47 a.m. to say he was going to make an appointment at the university’s health center the next day. We spoke that morning and he told me his appointment wasn’t until 4 p.m. and also that he’d started throwing up again.
My company had given us Veterans Day off, so I spent that Thursday running a few errands and mostly relaxing. I told my therapist at a session that afternoon that I was having the most luxurious day of doing nothing. I was on my couch, reading a book and thinking about what to heat up for dinner when Nick texted, "Weird being in a doctors office with no mom." I told him he was doing a great job and that I was only a four-hour car ride away. “I’m right here!” I texted.
Then came the text that way deep down I had contemplated but didn’t really expect: “Might be going to ER.” The health center even made him sign a waiver that he’d get himself to the hospital, either via an Uber or a friend.
In the end, I’d get in the car and drive the four hours out to Penn State and bring him to the emergency room at the local hospital at 9:30 p.m., down the road from the university’s football stadium (that will become important later). We’d sit for over four hours in the waiting room before seeing a doctor and it wasn’t until around 6 a.m. that would we have confirmation that it was his appendix that had ruptured and he would need to be admitted to be put on an IV for heavy-duty antibiotics.
From there, what would become a week-long ordeal became an exercise in acceptance. When the surgeon first came in and stopped everyone from prepping for an appendectomy, he said that first Nick needed to be on antibiotics to clear up the infection that his white blood cell count indicated was brewing. This was early Friday morning and he said he’d probably be in the hospital until Tuesday, and my first thought was, “No fucking way.” That did not fit the mental timeline I had, of how the whole appendix thing was going to go down.
That was where my head was initially, and I could tell Nick could tell, the way he narrowed his eyes as I asked doctors and nurses about how long it took to recover from an appendectomy (when we first thought that was what was happening). How long until he could get back to class? Would the hospital write a note for all the classes he would be missing? Nick, who was now in a hospital gown, barked at me for focusing on school instead of his health, and that's where I started to loosen my grip on trying to call the shots. To pull my fingernails out of whatever expectations I continued to cling to around what I wanted to happen, vs what was actually happening. I pried my sticky fingers off the wheel of the spaceship we found ourselves in and stopped trying to fly the thing.
And then there were all the logistics involved in having a child hospitalized four hours from home, beginning with lodging and compounded by the home Michigan football game the next day. Any hotel rooms still available in the area were going for well over $500 a night and I spent a lot of that early morning trying to find a workaround. Could I stay with my son in the hospital? Did they have a Ronald McDonald House? How about a deal with a nearby hotel for out-of-town family members? Maybe the hospital had like a concierge or liaison who helped families with loved ones in the hospital? “Great idea,” said the nice but very busy ER nurse. “But no.”
I ended up booking a room at one of those Super 8 motels with the giant sign looming over the highway about 30 minutes back up the mountain into Happy Valley. It was dinnertime by the time Nick got settled in a room and while I tried to keep eating healthy waiting in the ER all night, choosing a bag of shelled pistachios over Cheez-Its from the vending machine, that night after I left I sat in a Chick-fil-A parking lot and ate a spicy chicken sandwich sitting in my car.
I had planned on sitting at a table inside and reading my book but learned when I walked into Chick-fil-A that the reason cars were snaking from their drive-through onto the highway wasn’t because Pennsylvania people prefer eating in their cars or at home but because covid rules were still in place. I could get back at the end of that long line or download the app. I walked back to my car to do the latter and when I opened what I thought was the door to my car, a woman sitting at the steering wheel screamed and then I screamed, too. It was the wrong car. It didn’t even look like my car (it was, however, next to it). I tried to apologize and explain I hadn’t slept in a long time later when she was walking back to her vehicle with her Chick-fil-A bag, but had a hard time explaining what I'd just been through. I devoured my sandwich sitting in the dark of my car and drove to the Super 8 where I finally crashed with the heating unit humming me to sleep.
Recently, I had to write down a list of my personal assets and towards the top, I wrote: Resilient. “Tell me my son has to stay in the hospital for a week,” I continued, “and I buy more underwear.” And that’s pretty much how I got over any hurdle that appeared before me that week. I went to Target and bought some new sweats and a brush for my hair. Checked in and out of hotel rooms four times, dragging all the bags I’d accumulated with me through parking garages. I bought a lot of meals from nearby Wegmans and increasingly complicated Lego sets to keep Nick from losing his mind sitting in a hospital bed for a week.
One of the bigger obstacles I initially bucked against was the limited visiting hours still in place due to covid. When I was first told I could only see my child from 2-6 p.m. every day, I thought, “We’ll see about that.” Like I was some important dignitary and not just another person trying to visit a loved one who was sick.
But I’d show up every day at 2:00 with bags of treats from Wegmans (once he could eat real food again) and Target. He worked on his Darth Vader Lego sat while I sat in the chair smooshed next to his bed in a room he shared with an old man who had trouble even sitting up.
Nick and I sat together for those five nights and chatted a little but mostly watched whatever was on tv, which always seemed to be The Office or Seinfeld. I’d bought him a John Grisham novel and sometimes we sat side-by-side and just read our books with the beeping and alarms of the third floor going off in the background.
I’d usually wait until the night nurse came on at 7:00 to leave. I’d introduce myself and make sure they knew that Nick was only 18 and had a mom nearby. That I could be called at all hours if something was to happen and that I didn’t want anything invasive – like putting in a PICC line – to happen in the middle of the night. I’d walk out into the cold night air wearing the hat and gloves I had to pick up at Target when the temperature dropped over the weekend, and get into my cold car and drive back to the hotel and heat up my Wegman’s dinner in their lobby microwave and watch Netflix.
Eventually, the hospital case manager was able to arrange for Nick to continue his IV treatment back in New Jersey a week after I’d arrived in Happy Valley. I brought him home with that PICC (google it) that a home health nurse taught me how to flush with saline and hook a bag of antibiotics up to once a day for 10 days. I’m basically a nurse now and have the IV pole and red medical waste container to prove it.
We finally arrived home Thursday night and on Saturday morning, Nick and I were stopped at a red light talking about what bagels we were going to get at the bagel shop where we were headed, when another car rear-ended us. I remember hearing Nick yell, “WHOA” and felt the impact square in my shoulders and thinking, “Is this really happening?”
And it’s moments like this that make me wonder just what the universe is trying to tell me. What lessons am I supposed to glean from all this?
The crash felt way worse than it was and Nick and I were quickly laughing about the craziness of it all. While there was pretty minimal visible damage, it's just more to add to my to-do list. I was much more focused on finishing his IV treatment, getting the PICC taken out and putting him on a bus back to Penn State the Sunday after Thanksgiving, all of which I made happen (with the help of some very lovely healthcare workers).
I hadn’t realized I had an appointment with my therapist this week. I’d seen her on my day off a few hours before I ended up driving out to take nick to the ER, so never put the date for our next session on my calendar. But I got the reminder text on my phone early this past Thursday and thought, “Well, I’m not feeling like I need a session, but what the hell.”
I sat down on her couch and started to unpack the whole appendix saga, and before I knew it, I started to cry. It was there, sitting on her couch that I really felt the weight of all that I had been through – alone. While it had been so important to me that Nick (or any of my kids) knew that I was always there for them, and by now I am so used to doing everything by myself, that it never occurred to me that I don't have that someone there for me.
I cried about slamming my finger in the closet door and made the tree falling in the woods joke and held up my hand for my therapist to see the bruise running down my middle finger. She walked over to hand me a box of tissues and then gently picked up my hand to look at the purple underside of my finger carefully gave it a loving squeeze. It felt like someone may have been in the woods after all and heard the soft thud of my pain hitting the ground.
I don’t think I’d be so quick to share these things here if I didn’t think there was a reason for it all. If I didn’t think that what I’m feeling right now is less pathetic than the pain of growth. That this is what it feels like to outgrow the very tough outer shell that I’ve been pulling over my head every day to protect me from the sharp barbs of life for 50 years.
That hard covering -- I picture it like the old Stretch Armstrong skin from the 1980s that was so thick and pliable -- is getting so tight that it’s starting to tear. I'm feeling things that I have tried to avoid for so many years. With alcohol. Lots of kids. Netflix. Creating a busy busy busy existence with no time for uncovering why underneath it all, I felt so bad about myself. I am starting to see that not only did that outer shell protect my heart from harm, it also kept me from allowing myself to be vulnerable enough to receive love, too.
It’s like I’m waking up and feeling it all: the love for my child, the burden of carrying a crisis alone, the bruised finger to remind me I'm alive and can feel the good and the bad. I can love and be loved, if only I let it happen.
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SUNDAY SHARES: Read, watch, cook, buy
As you might imagine, having a kid in a hospital for a week lends itself to a lot of media consumption:
All week driving around I listened to Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive, narrated by the author. I absolutely loved it.
I watched the Netflix limited series in tandem, which was confusing, and I liked the book so much more. It's like they got Andie McDowell to sign on as the mom and felt like they needed to wildly expand her part to get their money's worth. Didn't love that.
I don't know if I'd ever have finished Anthony Doerr's "Cloud Cuckoo Land" if I didn't have anything else to do sitting for hours in the hospital for days on end. At 600 pages, it was a beast but to its credit, it's broken up into quick chapters and the material wasn't dense. I'd like to know what someone else thinks. Email me and let's have a mini book club.
On the way home, as Nick listened to whatever trash music he likes through his headphones, I started Katie Couric's new memoir. I spent a lot of time with Katie in the 1990s when I was home alone raising little kids and always felt like I knew her, so the book and her voice were super familiar and comfortable. I can be super ADD and not finish things I start and I compulsively listened to all 15 and a half hours in a week. Fun going revisiting some of the familiar territory of Katie's life, but she also includes some dishy new details. I really loved it and missed it when it was over.
Over a year after I bought it, I finally got my kids to play Rummikub with me and my daughters (and sister) are absolutely obsessed. Then the girls left after Thanksgiving to go back to my younger girl's apartment in Philly and then Amazon'd one overnight so they could keep playing. In the meantime, I was left with two sons who had zero interest in playing with me.
Leaving with this TikTok I sent myself recently of a much younger woman saying everything I'm thinking lately about sobriety, another of this little guy so grateful at the Thanksgiving table or this gentleman, who would like to take you to Taco Bell.