One Sick Little Girl

Later, when I asked my mom how sick I was, she said "You were one sick little girl."


It started when I was ten, like the stomach flu. I began sleeping on the couch, simply because it was closer to the bathroom when I had to throw up. I'd be in enough pain that my mom couldn't deny it anymore. After a few different clinics, I ended up having repeated appointments with my family doctor, this woman I couldn't understand through her thick accent and it frustrated me beyond belief.

At first, test after test, they went through the typical list of stomach ailments and for a while had settled on an over production of stomach acid. They sent me home with every chalky remedy in the book, Tums, Rolaids, Milk of Magnesia, so on and so forth. It didn't help, none of it helped. They took another look and basically came up with nothing and sent me on my merry way.

For months it was like I just couldn't quite get past the stomach flu before it would hit me full blast again. A year after my first visits concerning my condition I was again back at my family doctor being poked and prodded. I can't even put a number on how many times they drew blood, once out of both arms at once. I was eleven, and scared. They sent me to another doctor, a gynecologist, a man. I had my first women's health exam at eleven. Again I was poked and prodded, more blood drawn, yes something was wrong but still nothing. They sent me to the hospital, X-rays. First normal, then second after drinking some foul liquid. They didn't find anything to tell them what the problem was.

A few visits to the hospital later, they took me into a dark room. I laid on the table as they looked one last way at what was going on inside me, an ultrasound. I remember how cold that gel was. It was only moments after my insides popped up on the screen that they knew there was a serious problem. There was a mass, and a big one. After being left alone in that dark room for one too many moments everyone came back. I was told that I'd have to have emergency surgery at noon the next day, I was to go home, gather a few things and be back the next morning.

I can't tell you how scared I was. I was eleven and the worst medical issue I had was tonsils that repeatedly got irritated when I was younger. I had packed a bag with some books and stuff, from what my mom told me, I would be in the hospital for a few days. I don't think I slept much that night.

The next morning we arrived at the hospital and were directed to a room. I had to change into one of those paper gowns, nothing underneath. It's just as humiliating as you think, even when you are younger. I crawled into bed and waited, anticipation wasn't the right word for it, petrified would be better suited. After a while they came in and told me and my mom it was time to prep me for surgery. They wheeled my bed down the hall to another bigger room with several beds, I remember the television was on, Jeopardy.

A nurse came, time for the IV. I asked if it would hurt. She said it would feel like a bee sting. I told her I had never been stung by a bee. She said it will probably hurt a little. It did. I think she put something in the IV, it got fuzzy after this. I was wheeled down another hall, to the operating room. It was sea foam green, I don't think I'll ever forget that color. A man in scrubs came over, said it was time to go to sleep. I was freaked out, I think by that point I just wanted to go to sleep to get away. I don't remember if he made me count backwards or what, I was just out.

The doctors had told my mom that the surgery would last two to three hours. After she sat in the waiting room for five and a half hours, they were done. She said when they wheeled me out, pale with a towel wrapped around my head, that I looked like my great grandmother.

I remember bits and pieces from that night. Every few hours a couple nurses would come in and roll me from one side to the other, they were worried about pneumonia. I remember the main light in the room was coming from the hallway, it must have been night.

In the morning, I think, still loopy from the medication I was given during the surgery and the three bags that hung still dripping into my IV, it was time to give me the button. I was given a button to control my own morphine. Of course I couldn't over do it but it felt nice to have a little control in my medically induced swim. They had to move the IV, I was having a bad reaction to the tape and the patch of purple on the back of my hand wasn't too appealing.

They took blood, again. They started asking questions. I don't remember most of them but the one that stood out was whether or not I was ever sexually abused, it made my mom cry. I hadn't and I told them that. My mom was upset and I wanted them to stop. They were just trying to figure out what had happened. They had removed a mass the size of a grapefruit from my lower abdomen.

They called it an "infectious mass." They had tried to go in laproscopicly through an incision next to my belly button. The mass had my intestines shoved up against the surface so they couldn't even try to get in that way. They cut me open, an eight inch long incision from my navel down just past the edge of my hairline. Only nine stitches, they weren't concerned with making it look pretty and they wanted to have to go back in if they needed. Even at eleven they knew I would be a bikini person. When they went in, they found my appendix dead. There were a couple things that could have caused the mass, but they weren't sure. When I ask my mom now what caused it, she says seepage from my appendix. I only remember that as on of the options, not as the definitive answer. But then again I was on so much medication how do I expect to remember things right? I've looked up "infectious mass." As far as I can tell it's just what they call a mass that is not a tumor and they don't know what else to call it.

I was in the hospital for nine days. They had given me a pillow to hold against my stomach when I coughed, to prevent the stitches from tearing, they tore anyway. They took my blood daily, watching my white blood cell count like a hawk. They kept checking my lung capacity, I'm not sure why. After the first day they made me stand to change the sheets, even with all the morphine it hurt like hell. After the second day, they wanted me to start making small treks down the hallway. I was just so heavy. They wouldn't let me eat or even drink, I was restricted to damp sponges on a stick, hardly satisfying. With the trauma of the surgery and removing the mass, my digestive system needed some time to recover before trying it out.

My teacher at school was amazing. While I was in the hospital she had a sign up sheet, and anyone who wanted (a car full anyway) to come visit me, she'd bring them by after school. Every day a gaggle of girls would file into my room, one friend the same every day. I don't remember doing so, but apparently I had said no boys. Another one of my teachers later feigned offence that he wasn't allowed to visit me, I felt bad because he too was amazing. I missed outdoor school because of the surgery, but he kept me in mind the whole time. He had made me a nametag like everyone else who did go, a disk of pine with a squirrel wood burned into it, with the number five, the bunk I would have been in. He also made it an assignment while all the kids were there, to make me get well cards.

Two days before going home, they said I could finally drink something, I was stoked. I wanted a soda, I didn't care what kind, just as long as it had carbonation. Of course that wasn't the best thing to start with, but the nurses obliged by bringing me a 7-Up, I don't think there was anything better in the world. The mention of food came up and I was excited, unfortunately they didn't mean real food, I was on a liquid diet. Broth is not my friend, yuck. One nurse made those meals bareable by introducing me to orange sherbet. I am pretty sure she had to get it from the cafeteria special. To this day I still love orange sherbet.

By the last day, I was weaned off the IV and was now taking my pain medications in the form of pills. I was getting cranky. Apparently up until this point I was a model patient, while I was on the morphine I am pretty sure I even cried over spilt milk. Please and thank you, everything. That last day, not so much. I didn't know until that last day that I could have been wearing my own pajama tops, son of a bitch. My mom left for a short while and came back, I was getting anxious because there was mention of perhaps me going home. She had brought back some big huge T-shirts with looney toons on them, it was great.

Considering all of the doctors that had been in and out of my room, it was a surprise when a new face entered. Anxious me piped up, "can I go home?" One more blood test later and it was time to take out the stitches. I hadn't seen the incision yet so I was up for the adventure. The tape hurt like hell coming off. Crying one minute from the pain of ultra adhesive, giggling the next from the feel of each stitch sliding from my flesh. I can't explain the way it felt but all I could do was laugh, which made my mom and the doctor laugh as well. It was an ugly looking incision, each stitch had caused it's own quarter inch long slit from the stress against stitches that looked way too far apart.

Finally it was time to go home. They made me walk down the hallway, slowly, but once we got to the elevator, it was hospital policy to follow suit with the wheel chair. Being outside again was a new experience. The nurse waited with me while my mom pulled the car around. I whimpered my way inside the car, I was missing the morphine. It wasn't a direct trip home because of the need for prescriptions, but then it was home sweet home. One of the first things I had to do, was one of the first things I wasn't supposed to do. Stairs. I had to get home though right? Second, I wasn't supposed to lift over ten pounds, I had to cheat there, my cat was fifteen pounds and I had missed him terribly.

My mom had surprised me with a VCR, the reason behind it being that she was going to have to go back to work, which meant I was going to have to be staying home alone, something that she had never really let me do before. She had no choice, she was almost fired from her job for trying to be with me in the hospital. She spent every night with me in the chair next to my bed so she wasn't getting any sleep and the few hours a day she spared away from me during the day to be at work weren't satisfying enough to her boss. Sleep is what I needed most so I wasn't as worried as she was about being home alone. Plus I now had my own VCR in my room, nifty.

It was the beginning of May when all this happened, so I wasn't expected to go back to school for the remainder of the year. At first they had found a way to get me homework, but then it didn't seem to matter. Surprise, surprise, I was healing faster then they had expected, much faster. I did end up going back for the last few weeks of school. It was bizarre. My mom walked me to class, and some first grader that I didn't know walked up to me and asked if I was the kid who was sick. Further down the hall there was a poster with my name on it, they had been raising a little money for me, I was so confused. Making my way into the classroom, one friend panicked and said, "you aren't supposed to be back yet!" and ran off into the next room. Some announcement had been made while I was gone, everyone in the school knew I had been sick but I have no clue what details where given. One of my get well cards even said "how's your uterus?" Where did that come from?

My mom had to stay and give a few instructions to the teacher, things like I wasn't supposed to participate in P.E. or anything, then she left. Then some kids came out of the next room. They had this box with balloons and flowers and candy and a couple of other things, including a video one girl had gone around the school to make me. That's what the money was for. My teacher gave me a ride home from school that day, because I couldn't take the balloons on the bus. She walked me up the stairs and into my apartment and even stood there and waited as I called my mom to tell her I had made it home alright. Like I said, she was an awesome teacher.

I was so confused by the attention though, it's not like I had cancer or anything, but then again no one else in our school had cancer or something else either. I guess it was a big deal. It hadn't just made it around the school though, it had made it through the school district. My two teachers from my old school came to visit me in the hospital. Even years later someone I barely knew walked up to me and asked me if I was the same girl who was sick back in sixth grade. I thought it was just a big deal to me, not everyone else.

There were very few people I showed the scar off to, it wasn't pretty and it was kind of personal. I have a zipper where my zipper is. I was self conscious of it and it got the way for me years later when the hubby and I were first getting close. He made me feel okay about it though.

It was about fifteen years ago now, well in my past but I fear it could still haunt me in the future. When I was eleven the doctors sat me down and told me that there was going to be scar tissue. The mass had wrapped itself around my fallopian tubes as well as everything else in there, and it could end up being a problem when it came time in my life to get pregnant. It wasn't worth investigating then because that time in my life was so far off. Now that time is getting closer, I can't help but be afraid. I think that is what has made me so wary of going off my birth control, I'm worried that it's not the medication keeping me from getting pregnant. I know I am probably jumping the gun on things, but it's been in the back of my mind since I was eleven, how can I not think about it? Kids are what I want to do with my life, I haven't been able to wrap my mind around what the disappointment of not being able to have kids would do to me. I've kept positive enough not to go there, and god forbid I never will have too.