What to do when your diarrhea looks like urine

[jmowreader]

There's only one piece of medical advice in this thread, and I think it's within the DU Rulebook: if this happens to you, GO TO THE DOCTOR, DAMMIT!

Okay, here's the spiel. On Monday night after work, my abdomen felt slightly sore. The soreness moved around--everywhere from where the appendix is, to the middle, under the ribs, all over, and it really wasn't bad. I figured it was because I got a pound of strawberries from a farm that didn't believe in hand washing facilities for its pickers.

Tuesday was my first day off. I wasn't really feeling any different until that night, when I started getting a little diarrhea.

On Wednesday I was going to go to the Veterans Administration clinic in Coeur d'Alene and get checked out. Turns out this is a clinic that does nothing but geriatric follow-up care--we have a LOT of military retirees in this town--so I bought some anti-infection herbs and decided to drive to Spokane in the morning.

Wednesday night I spent on the pot with some heavy-duty diarrhea, the output of which looked exactly like urine. It was a dark amber fluid with no solids in it. In the immortal words of Jack Russell on the stage of the Station Nightclub, "wow...that's not good." Off I go to Spokane, where a large VA Hospital is located.

They ran me through their CT scanner. The operator told me, "I don't want to tell you what you've got before your doctor does, but those are some amazing images." Jack Russell again.

Half an hour later (they were already filling me back up with Potassium Laced Ringer's Lactate) I learned my appendix had ruptured BUT I had built a capsule around it to keep the shit from leaking out and causing peritonitis. The Self Sealing Appendix is a wonderful thing. The weird thing is, NO ONE working at this hospital--neither doctors nor nurses--had seen a case of this present itself. It seems to be one of those textbook diseases, as in "the only place you're going to see this is in your medical textbook, because it doesn't actually happen."

Well anyway, they poured about a gallon of heavy duty antibiotics in me over the next few days, sent me home with a bottle of Cipro and asked me to come back in two weeks for a follow-up. And on Friday, I'm back to work.

So, the morals of this story:

1. If you are a veteran and you are not enrolled with the VA, you are a no go at this station. Added bonus: enrolling with the VA covers you under the Healthcare Reform bill's coverage mandate, so you don't have to buy extra insurance if you don't want it. (Having said that, if you travel frequently having civilian health insurance wouldn't be a bad idea; you can only use VA coverage in a VA facility, so if you're where they don't have such a place you're kinda screwed. If you do have both, the VA bills civilian insurance for whatever it can get, then pays whatever's left.)

2. If you think you're sick, you are.

[Kennah]

1. Remember to take my UC meds

[Kennah]

3. And scream while it's coming out

[PCIntern]

2. No surgery scheduled?

I don't give a damn if you have an Apollo space capsule built around your ruptured appendix. no way in hell would I walk around with that...sorry.

[jmowreader]

5. It's coming out in about six weeks

The capsule makes it very hard to get the appendix out without poking holes in the bowel. (It's made out of some sort of mucus that's the approximate consistency of caulking compound.) Enough antibiotics, and it'll shrink down small enough to deal with.

[KittyWampus]

11. eat/drink food that fights inflammation. Avoid food/drinks that are inflammatory. Do you like Miso?

[PCIntern]

15. good to hear...

I was getting nervous that they were going to leave that in you as a part of the 'budget-busting' cutbacks in healthcare...more like appendix-busting in your case.

take good care.

PC

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. Appart of VERY LUCKY you know how rare this is

go ahead and google it. Try to find an image. Something is telling me your image might end up in a textbook soon.

You are damn lucky. you know that.

[hulka38]

6. I was gonna say

don't do heavy squats at the gym. Your advice about seeing the doctor when you're sick is much better.

[Submariner]

7. Fuck Bush....Fuck Cheney.....Fuck the VA

I went into the VA urinating almost pure blood, hunched over with severe pain in my kidney. I thought I had a burst kidney tumor, or some such thing. A plaque on the wall said something to the affect; "Never turn away someone in pain."

After showing the VA I enrolled in the VA in 1969, they turned me away and sent me back out on the street, stating I had to re-enroll under the new Bush/Cheney VA. The reason? Bush and Cheney changed the VA health care access system to remove veterans who did not have service connected disabilities so they would have some extra cash to launch Operation Desert Fuckup in Iraq.

I went to a local urologist, and after raiding my 401(k) for $8,000, had a Lithotripsy to shatter a 9mm x 16mm kidney stone lodged in my kidney. I won't even mention the pain of pissing those stones out this past 6 years. Imagine an AWOL punk who deserted his NG unit, and his draft dodging coward VP taking away VA health care. It happened.

The VA can go to fucking hell. Fuck Bush....Fuck Cheney.....Fuck the VA.

[dipsydoodle]

8. Mine didn't go 'till I was sixty

From what I thought was indigestion Friday afternoon and then thought must be wind by Saturday morning it went downhill Saturday afternoon and they operated Sunday. By then it was black and I apparently had an 80% chance of infection : I was lucky and recovered quickly.

What cracked me up was friends saying to me "arn't you a bit old for your appendix to go"

[malaise]

9. Glad you're recovering

My brother nearly died from a ruptured appendix.

[chill_wind]

10. Thank the stars you got treatment just in time. Almost sounds like it might have been retrocecal.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7223938

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appendicitis

It's rare, but not so completely rare that it didn't happen to me and also a friend I knew in nursing school, I learned from her years later. I went to a doctor twice in one week who thought it was gastroenteritis and kept telling me to modify my caffeine intake and diet. I was septic by the time they figured it out, because the symptoms are very atypical. Was sick. Very, very sick.

So, quite clearly, were you.


"2. If you think you're sick, you are."

Yes.

[KittyWampus]

13. Interesting thread.

[Hannah Bell]

12. so glad you're ok.

[madrchsod]

14. well.... you are one lucky guy......

have fun with the cipro....

[jmowreader]

16. There's one positive thing about being on it...

I know that for the next two weeks, I'm not catching Anthrax.