Adios Appendix

Unfortunately I am not reporting to you about some crazy cool adventure in Ireland, but I can now say I've made my way through the Irish health care system.....

On Saturday morning I woke up just fine, and went to the market like I normally do. That afternoon I was over at Chris's apartment watching TV and noticed a weird stomach ache. I took a nap on the couch, and woke up and noticed that the pain had localized to my lower right side. After a few more hours, he convinced me to go to the ER.... which is know as the Casualties entrance in Ireland (personally I feel like that name sounds like I'm already dead before I even got in there...)

Anyway after seeing a few doctors and having blood work done I was admitted to the hospital very late on Saturday evening/Sunday morning. Sunday afternoon I had an emergency appendectomy. Thankfully, they were able to do it laproscopically, so I have 3 small incisions in my stomach. Oh, they don't call the operating room the O.R. here... it's called the theater... what the heck!? I fell like I should be receiving some entertainment if your going to name it that! Anyway... I spent the next two days in the hospital. While those days were fine... I really wished this would have happened in the United States as we have a little more advanced medicine/hospital rooms. I shared a room with 3 others, who were all very nice, but it made it hard to sleep sometimes.

I was supposed to be in Italy this past weekend, and I'm even more thankful that volcano blew because the language barrier was hard enough with all of the accents! My ER doctor was middle eastern, my surgical team was composed of an Irish surgeon with Nigerian assistants, the nice lady who cleaned the room every day was Polish as well as the people who brought the food. The man who gave me my prescriptions was Korean and my nurses were Irish and British. It was quite the mix of nationalities and all different accents!

Overall the experience was not too bad, and I'm feeling pretty good today. Unfortunately, this cancels my travel plans to Prague next week, but I'm hoping for a speedy recovery as I do fly home exactly 2 weeks from today. Thank you for all of your emails, notes, and prayers over the past few days, and I am excited to get in touch with everyone when I get back to the states.

P.S. Chris so kindly took a photo of my after surgery... I will be sure to post that for everyone's viewing pleasure....