Well we are in the hospital for the night. I'll give you the short story first and you can decide whether or not you want to read the long story. ;)
Jacob is having his appendix taken out.
Now the long story:
Sunday we had an ER run. He had gone to work at 8 a.m. and was back home by 8:30 with lots of abdominal pain, continuing back pain, very constipated, and unable to eat anything. I am young and stupid and after a 3 hour wait in our room at the ER, the doctor came back in the room and said "Well, I think the back pain is related to the abdominal pain and you're constipated," we just left. I am so stupid. That's going to be a huge bill and we got exactly zero answers and wasted 3+ hours of our lives. Ugh.
Then Monday Jacob went to work. Later that evening he was in more pain. He had an appointment scheduled for Tuesday with a local doctor who is specifically interested in gastroenterology. Tuesday the doctor mentioned "appendix" for the first time. With his age, the symptoms, the pain, the location, everything was adding up to appendix. There were two things that were a little suspicious though. 1. Jacob doesn't have a temperature and 2. his white blood cell count has not gone up at all. The doctor wanted to see a CT scan, so that was scheduled for Wednesday (technically yesterday, but I haven't been to bed yet, so earlier today for me) at 12:00. By 1:30 we still weren't in yet. Jacob only got down about 3/4 of the "beri-water" that they gave him. They went ahead and did his scan and it worked fine.
Just like the doctor thought, it appeared that appendicitis was beginning to creep up. Something was definitely up with the appendix. Our options at this point were A. check into the hospital, talk to a surgeon this evening and have the surgery in the morning or B. leave, get another prescription, and wait until possibly Friday to have the surgery because of the work schedule of the other surgeon.
Jacob and I both leaned toward just getting it done, or at the very least talking to a surgeon as soon as possible to see what he thought. So, knowing that we would have the highest chance of having the surgery done on Thursday that we needed, we decided to go ahead and admit him for the night. It's better this way with all the pain he's having anyway. (He's been a bear at home. When he's not feeling well nobody's happy.)
The surgeon came by the room tonight and explained a lot to us. We were both very appreciative of that. He explained that he agreed - there was something suspicious about the appendix. However, he had seen this before - looks like appendicitis without the fever and without the white blood count. He said that in the past, he'd seen this with appendices that had flipped around backwards. Also, this could explain the constipation. Although it wasn't crazy strange, it's not exactly normal for someone to have constipation with appendicitis. (The first doctor was thinking since his appendix was inflamed, maybe it was cutting something off down there and keeping him from having a bowel movement.)
Anyway, so basically we all went - DING DING DING!! Finally someone has an answer that adds up. His appendix is backwards. I'm like, 99.9% sure that this is the right answer.
Which leads us to where we are now. I am sleeping on a chair tonight. Jacob is in a hospital bed. He's asleep...sort of. In and out. I'm wide awake, hoping to fall asleep directly. Surgery is tomorrow mid-morningish. (We weren't given an exact time, just because he wasn't sure when he'd be out of his first surgery/surgeries.)
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