Eddie's Appendectomy

Eddie woke up on Saturday, March 26, feeling nauseous. He spent that day and the next throwing up. On Monday morning he woke up and acted fine. He had an appetite. We went about our normal activities. During dinner on Monday he began to look nauseous again. I told him not to eat if his tummy hurt. He went and laid down on the couch. He was eager to go to bed soon after. He woke up at 11 p.m. and threw up. Tuesday morning he still felt sick. He told me his right side hurt. I didn't think anything of it. He didn't mention it again until 3 p.m. He began to have a fever. Ben and I worried but thought we were being paranoid as we researched appendicitis online. By dinner time, Eddie was in so much pain if he moved at all. This is when we knew something was wrong. Ben took him to urgent care at 7:30 p.m. I stayed home with Peter and Creegan since Creegan breastfeeds.

Urgent care said there's nothing it could be besides appendicitis and sent Ben and Eddie to the ER for a CT Scan. Eddie had to have an enema that he had to hold in during the scan. He did great. The scan confirmed appendicitis, and they were told they would operate that night. The surgeon came in at 4 a.m. They were taken to the surgical waiting room at 4:30. The pictures were taken by Ben's camera phone on their way to the surgical waiting room. Another more pressing surgery came in, though, and Eddie had to wait until 6:30 a.m.

The surgery was done by 7:30. During the surgery the surgeon learned that Eddie's appendix had begun to rupture. An abscess had formed by the opening in his appendix, keeping the fluids in the appendix. It was a blessing.

Eddie's hospital recovery was slow. It took a long time for his stomach to "wake up" and begin working again. We were released from the hospital on Sunday, April 3. He's getting better each day. We are so proud of Eddie. He's been so brave about doing a lot of scary things! We learned from this experience that we can do really hard things. We hope we're done with the really hard stuff, though!