When you can’t sit up because you are in so much pain, you know something is wrong.  Appendicitis is not something you want to have.  It occurs when your appendix becomes inflamed and has to be surgically treated.  I am never sick, but when I am it is solemn.  I have now learned to never take my health for granted. 

In March of 2011 I was seven years old. Although I was in bed, I couldn’t fall asleep.  At this point it was about 10:00 PM.  A first grader up until that hour had to have been some type of record.  I didn’t feel terrible, but I had never felt like this before.  There was a weird pain in my stomach that to this day I still can’t describe.  All I know is that the pain wasn’t mild for long. 

            I was up all night and eventually threw up.  The second I sat up, the trash can was under my head, and I just couldn’t stop.  I had never been really sick, not like this, and so I thought it was weird that my pain was relieved only when I would lay down. 

When I am sick I normally want to sit up so I don’t cough.  This time, it was just the opposite.  Going to sleep, even then, was one of my favorite things to do, but after those first two days with no sleep, when I couldn’t stop throwing up, it was all I wanted to do. 

Although, at the time, I was really happy that I got to miss a couple days of school, eventually that changed.  My parents thought I had a severe stomach bug, one that would be gone in less than a week.  After about two days had gone by with no progress, my mom decided to take action. 

            At this point my parents had been switching on and off the days that they would call into work so they could watch me.  Near the end of the second day, when I was home with my mom and my brother was at daycare, my mom took me to the doctor.  We figured the doctors would give me some prescription medicine from Rite Aid and I would get better, but that is far from what happened. 

We went into the doctor's office, and after talking with my mom for a while the doctor starting feeling my stomach.  One particular spot that the doctor pressed sent a sharp pain that ran throughout my body.  That’s when they told my mom they were sending me to the hospital. 

Now, the hospital room I will never forget.  Since the doctors called early, they had a room waiting for me, but there were many people lined up in beds in the hallway waiting to be cared for.  It was very chaotic, and I was very happy when we got out of that room and went over to the children's hospital.  At this point I was feeling a little better, and I found it fun that I was riding around in a bed with wheels.  Then I remember thinking again about the people in the hallway, and I didn’t realize it at that second, but I was very lucky to be getting care that so many other people needed.  Some maybe more than me. 

I was in the hospital for five days. The first day was spent laying in bed in pain with an IV in my arm.  All I wanted to do was remove it.  The last four days I was in less pain because my inflamed appendix was no longer in my body.  The day before I had to go home was the worst. Yes, it was the day my grandma came to visit, and we played about five rounds of Yahtzee, but it was also the day all the tests were being done to make sure nothing else was wrong with me. 

After my laparoscopic surgery, I was a little loopy, but the nurse poking a needle into my arm trying to find a vein to take blood definitely woke me up.  The nurse on the other side of the bed was trying to distract me by asking me to find a yellow boat in the iSpy book she was holding.  It didn’t work.  The last test I had to take was the urine test.  This would tell the doctors if I was back on track enough to go home after I couldn’t eat or drink for five days.   Thankfully, I passed it and was able to go home but had to stay out of school for another week.  To this day, I still like to mess with my grandma about how she let go of my balloons as we were leaving the hospital.  They floated away, and we couldn’t get them back. 

Before I could go back to school I had to get the stitches out.  Having them in was very hard for me because they could not be touched.  My stomach was covered in gauze that I couldn’t get wet and I had to cover every time I wanted to take a shower.  

The next day my neighbor brought home a huge folder of all the work I missed.  That is when my fantasy of missing school for only a couple days went down the drain. I caught up eventually and survived the event, and now, looking back, I am almost glad it happened.  I learned to never take advantage of my health, and that taking care of my body is also very important.  How many cookies do you eat a day?  Could it be one less?   

-Bailey Yerdon