{"id":1607,"date":"2018-11-17T18:06:38","date_gmt":"2018-11-17T18:06:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/?p=1607"},"modified":"2018-11-17T18:06:38","modified_gmt":"2018-11-17T18:06:38","slug":"drzala-takes-on-appendicitis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/2018\/11\/17\/drzala-takes-on-appendicitis\/","title":{"rendered":"Drzala Takes On Appendicitis"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Lauren Drzala ’21<\/strong><\/h4>\n

July 23, 2018 will be a day I will always remember. After finishing my lunch for the day, I began to feel sharp pains in my stomach and immediately thought – \u201cthis is very unusual for me.\u201d <\/span>Hours passed and the pain just kept getting worse. <\/span>I was becoming desperate and anxiety crept in, so naturally, I turned to Google for some reliable advice on a homemade remedy. Long story short, the apple cider vinegar nor the lemon juice with ginger did my stomach any justice.<\/span> I decided to call a friend, willing to try anything. She said that her mom usually gave her warm milk with turmeric. Immediately, I<\/span> was a bit hesitant because I had no idea what turmeric would taste like. Looking back on it, I should have listened to my first instinct while I was chugging down a glass of that concoction. When I thought all hope was lost, I swallowed my pride and went to the people that I should have gone to in the very beginning: my parents.<\/span> My dad gave me two Motrin and told me to wait. Nothing happened. My mom didn\u2019t even believe that there was anything wrong with me, thinking I made the pain up. As I was counting down the hours to the never-ending day, my sister Emma approached my room, thinking she could give me some insight. \u201cHey Lauren, where is the pain, because it might be appendicitis.\u201d<\/span> I angrily responded, <\/span>\u201cGo away, Emma. It\u2019s not appendicitis. It isn\u2019t <\/span>that<\/span><\/i> bad.\u201d Something actually being wrong with me was the last thing on my mind. In the end, I decided the best thing to do was to go to sleep and wait for the pain to subside.<\/span><\/p>\n

At 2 a.m., I woke up to what felt like someone stabbing me in the stomach. <\/span>\u00a0Immediately, I went to my parents, knowing that there something was terribly wrong. \u00a0My dad, as any physician would do, asked me to describe the pain and its location. I pointed to my lower left abdomen. My mom suggested appendicitis, remarking that she had had it around my age. <\/span>Once she said this, I was reminded of Emm<\/span>a\u2019s earlier comment. I could just hear her saying that she was right over and over again in my head. We soon rushed to the hospital and<\/span> waited until I was admitted to a room. The pain was in full force, as if there was a war going on in my stomach. Finally, the drugs that the nurse gave me kicked in. I was starting to feel a little better, and thought that this was all a mistake and that there was nothing wrong with me. After many hours of testing, nothing showed up – that is, until they tried a <\/span>CAT<\/span><\/i> scan. <\/span><\/p>\n

Once the scan was complete, the nurse came back and said that it was, in fact, appendicitis. Sighing in dismay, I decided to accept my fate and prepared for the surgery. I was not on the list of surgeries that day so I did not know when I could get this little monster out of me. So, I decided to get comfortable and watch TV for the remainder of the time<\/span>. I mainly enjoyed HGTV, talking to my mom about how the couples chose the wrong house. I do not think that she was as invested as I was, after seeing the concern on her face. Finally, the doctors came in and wheeled me into the operating room.<\/span><\/p>\n

The doctors began to give me anesthesia. In about 10 seconds, I was out like a light. I woke up being wheeled back to my room and being set on my bed. \u201cIt\u2019s over,\u201d I thought. Wrong. The remainder of the night consisted of doctors coming in and out of my room every single hour, checking my heart beat and asking me how I was feeling<\/span>. I can certainly say that that was the worst sleep I have ever had. The following morning t<\/span>he doctors finally said I could go home and told me that I couldn\u2019t do any physical activity for a while. The next few weeks consisted of me lounging aroun<\/span>d, hunching down on my stomach so it wouldn\u2019t hurt, and watching movie after movie, including the whole Harry Potter series. I t<\/span>hink that we can all agree that Dolores Umbridge, the \u201cLady in Pink,\u201d was a far worse threat to Harry Potter than Voldemort. Fast forward to August, and I was finally starting to feel like myself again. I wish that I could say that, at the end, I learned more about myself or that I am a changed person, but I am not. I am still the same Lauren, just minus an appendix.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Lauren Drzala ’21 July 23, 2018 will be a day I will always remember. After finishing my lunch for the day, I began to feel sharp pains in my stomach and immediately thought – \u201cthis is very unusual for me.\u201d Hours passed and the pain just kept getting worse. I was becoming desperate and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":1608,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[27,28],"tags":[138,30],"class_list":["post-1607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-summer-experiences","tag-appendicitis","tag-summer-experiences"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1607"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1609,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1607\/revisions\/1609"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}